Ivanka Trump takes the stand at father's NYC fraud trial, voicing forgetful memory and polite tone

NEW YORK — Ivanka Trump took the stand at her family’s civil fraud trial Wednesday before the state rested its case — and, just like her dad, couldn’t recall the specifics about the phony statements that inflated his net worth.

Still, Ivanka struck a markedly different tone from her father, who raged on the stand earlier in the week in a campaign-style appearance.

She sounded apologetic at times and bemused at others as she responded to questions about her knowledge of the financial statements central to the case that inflated Donald Trump's net worth as he secured billions in loans.

“Those weren’t things that I was privy to,” Ivanka said, flashing a smile at Manhattan Supreme Court. “As I said to you (a year ago) and say to you now, I (wasn’t) involved with his financial statements.”

She was initially a defendant in the case, winning dismissal on appeal in June after arguing the claims were too old. She left her role at the Trump Organization as executive vice president of acquisitions and development in 2017 to work in her father’s White House and now lives in Florida.

Attorney General Tish James’ September 2022 lawsuit states she played a “key role” in securing lucrative loan terms for Trump’s Doral golf resort in Miami and heading leasing negotiations for the Old Post Office hotel in Washington, D.C.

She told the court she had been “very focused” on redevelopment of the two properties.

“I spent an enormous amount of time shepherding those two properties through development,” Ivanka testified.

In her father’s testimony Monday, state lawyers brought the tally of ill-gotten proceeds Trump gained by routinely inflating his worth to more than $300 million. He acknowledged the D.C. hotel’s 2022 sale for $375 million netted him $126 million and his eldest three kids $4 million apiece.

The AG says the lucrative sale was only possible because of a 2013 loan from Deutsche Bank that Ivanka helped him secure with bogus statements. She’s described as the Trump Organization’s primary liaison with the team of bankers that lent Trump most of the hundreds of millions he borrowed between 2011 and 2022 at “unparalleled rates.”

“It doesn’t get better than this,” Ivanka wrote of Deutsche’s loan terms in a December 2011 email shown in court Tuesday.

State lawyer Louis Solomon asked about several emails, including one from top Trump Org exec Allen Weisselberg saying Ivanka wanted to change contractual language about generally accepted accounting principles. Another detailed that she wanted to reduce management fees on property expenses — one of the methods the AG says was employed to manipulate values.

Ivanka claimed she could not remember numerous emails presented on screen. The soft-spoken scion said she wasn’t aware of having had a role in preparing the statements, providing the valuations they contained or ever reviewing them before they were finalized.

She’d fought the subpoena to testify in vain, ultimately withdrawing her appeal Friday. In rejecting her efforts to get out of the testimony, Judge Arthur Engoron cited business opportunities she continues to profit from in her native New York and that she still owns property there.

She’s publicly distanced herself from her father since he left office and during his current presidential bid. Her testimony comes fresh on the heels of his remarkable testimony Monday, in which the former president lobbed insults at Engoron and the AG while conceding involvement in financial fraud.

Outside court, James said Trump’s daughter was “cordial,” “disciplined” and “controlled,” adding that she wasn’t impressed with the substance of her testimony.

“She was very courteous, but her testimony raises questions with regards to its credibility, which will be a question for the finding of fact,” James said.

“Based on the evidence — the documentary evidence — she clearly was involved in negotiating and securing loans, favorable loans, for the benefit of the Trump Organization, for Mr. Trump and her brothers and for herself.”

Lawyers for James rested their case late Wednesday after Ivanka’s cross-examination, reserving the right to reopen it. They called 25 witnesses in their six-week case.

Trump’s lawyers expect to begin presenting their case on Monday and to rest by mid-December.

Trump, his eldest sons and former top executives Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney were found liable for fraud before the trial started for inflating his net worth on financial statements to maximize their profits in business deals illegally.

Engoron’s ruling was based solely on evidence Trump and his crew provided and did not dispute. He’ll rule on the AG’s six remaining causes of action and how much Trump and his associates should have to pay at the end of the trial.

On the stand this week, Trump repeatedly asserted that banks got richer doing business with him, were always paid back and even “liked me very much.” Engoron has heard financial institutions missed out on hundreds of millions in lost interest due to Trump’s lies.

Regardless, his pretrial ruling noted, honest brokers were the ones to lose out as a result of Trump’s illegal backdoor deal-making, which threatened to distort the marketplace “and deprive other potential borrowers of the opportunity to obtain loans and create wealth.”

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