Ivanka Trump admitted on the stand Wednesday that she and others knew her father's net worth requirement related to attaining loan rates over a decade ago was an issue.
She is the final family witness to testify as part of New York Attorney General Letitia James' $250 million lawsuit against Donald Trump for allegedly inflating his net worth by billions of dollars to obtain benefits.
These include better bank loans and reduced tax bills between 2011 and 2021. Trump has maintained his innocence in the civil fraud trial, which cannot result in jail time.
The ex-president's adult sons and The Trump Organization are also named in the lawsuit. Ivanka Trump was initially named as a defendant due to her involvement within The Trump Organization, which she left in 2017. She was later removed from the list of defendants under the statute of limitations.
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump testified last week. Donald Trump questioned why Ivanka Trump was forced to testify at all, while others wondered whether she would plead the Fifth Amendment and not answer questions that could potentially implicate her father, brothers or the business venture.
On Wednesday, New York State Attorney Louis Solomon inquired about discovered emails dating back to December 2011, when Ivanka Trump negotiated The Trump Organization's loan from Deutsche Bank to purchase the Doral Golf Resort & Spa in Miami.
The loan's terms required her father to maintain a net worth of at least $3 billion, independent of any value associated with the Trump brand.
Solomon pinpointed how that although Donald Trump's financial statement for 2011 claimed that his net worth was $4.2 billion, emails seemed to indicate that he and others in the business knew the net worth was lower than the required $3 billion.
One email in particular, sent from Ivanka Trump to then Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, stated that the terms of said loan "doesn't get any better than this" and asked that it be discussed "asap."
When Trump lawyer Alina Habba objected to the questioning, claiming that no such email had been sent, Solomon showed emails that included Ivanka Trump on the email chain. The objection was rescinded.
Another email was shown with correspondence from Trump Organization official Jason Greenblatt also seemingly indicating that the $4.2 billion net worth was inflated—an expression of concern that the loan requirement was "a problem."
Ivanka Trump reportedly testified that she and others had known "since day one" the net worth requirement, according to legal analyst Lisa Rubin. Donald Trump still told Deutsche Bank that his total net worth was in excess of $4 billion.
Michael McAuliffe, a former federal prosecutor and elected state attorney, told Newsweek via email that Ivanka Trump's testimony was used by the state to bolster its argument against her father, with some of the revealed emails "appearing to connect some of those dots."
"Her testimony supports the conclusion that the personal financial statements for Donald Trump matter for the Trump business, contrary to the defense arguments that the statements were simply a pro forma exercise of filling in blanks on an application," McAuliffe said.
"Those golden nuggets will all be combined at the end of the case to establish the magnitude of the fraud, already determined to exist by the trial judge, and the appropriate remedies," he added.
Newsweek reached out to Donald Trump's lawyer Christopher Kise via email on Wednesday for comment.
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Nick Mordowanec is a Newsweek reporter based in Michigan. His focus is reporting on Ukraine and Russia, along with social ... Read more
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