At the civil trial for financial fraud against Donald Trump, his daughter Ivanka distanced herself from her precise role in the family real estate empire and alongside her father, swearing under oath not to remember favorable loan negotiations with banks in the 2010s.
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Ivanka Trump is not facing civil charges in this case and left the Trump Organization holding company in 2017 to advise her father when he entered the White House, where he dreams of returning on January 20, 2025.
AFP
Arriving smiling and relaxed at the Manhattan courthouse, dressed in a black outfit over a white t-shirt, Ivanka Trump was sworn in before the Supreme Court of the State of New York (trial court, editor’s note), where his brothers Don Jr and Eric Trump and the former President of the United States have already testified last week and Monday.
When the representative of the public prosecutor called her to speak, Judge Arthur Engoron, who has presided over the proceedings since October 2, jokingly said: “Who is she?”
In a very soft and barely audible voice, Ivanka Trump continued to assert that she did not “remember” in detail the negotiations she had with banks on loan conditions as in attest to the emails that she exchanged in 2011 and 2016 with banks and that the prosecutor presented to her.
“I do not remember”
“Sitting here today, I don’t remember these conditions going back to 2011,” she said.
Also asked about her possible role alongside her father in establishing his “personal financial declarations”, Ivanka Trump replied: “It was not things that I was aware of (…) I was not involved in his personal financial statements.
Before the hearing, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who is suing Trump father and son, accused “Ivanka Trump (of) closing and negotiating advantageous loans based on fraudulent financial statements” before leave the Trump Organization.
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“She will try to distance herself from the company but, unfortunately, the facts will show that she was very involved,” insisted this senior magistrate, elected from the Democratic Party, who is demanding $250 million in compensation from the Trump clan. .
Donald Trump, who defended himself virulently in court on Monday, is accused along with his sons and the staff of the Trump Organization of having fraudulently colossally inflated the value of their assets – a myriad of companies managing skyscrapers, hotels and luxury residences or golf courses around the world – to obtain better bank loans and more favorable insurance conditions.
Before the trial, Judge Engoron had ruled in a scathing order at the end of September that the New York State Attorney General’s Office presented “conclusive evidence that between 2014 and 2021, the defendants overvalued the assets” of the “812” group. million (to) 2.2 billion dollars” depending on the year, in the figures recorded on Donald Trump’s annual financial statements.
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As a result of “repeated frauds”, he had ordered the liquidation of the companies managing these assets, such as the Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in New York or the neo-Gothic style and soon to be century-old skyscraper at 40 Wall Street.
If this decision – currently suspended on appeal – is applied, the Republican billionaire would lose control of part of his real estate empire.
This trial is only one of the first legal tests that await Donald Trump. In particular, he must appear in federal court in Washington from March 2024 for his alleged attempts to reverse the result of the 2020 election.