A Play-By-Play Account Of Ivanka Trump’s Day On The Stand

Ivanka Trump arrived Wednesday morning at a Lower Manhattan courthouse to testify in a $250 million fraud case that the attorney general is waging against her father, Donald Trump. The state has accused the former president, along with several of his associates, of lying to lenders about his net worth for years.

Ivanka Trump helped her father in his efforts to convince the world he had more money than he really did, lying alongside her dad when talking with Forbes journalists who were estimating the size of his fortune. On Wednesday, Ivanka again spoke about her father’s assets, this time under oath.

Refresh your browser to follow along with a live account below, which will be updated throughout the day.

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10:01 a.m.: “All rise!” Judge Arthur Engoron walks into the courtroom. The other major players are mostly here, too, including Trump’s lawyers and the attorney general. Not present yet: Ivanka Trump, who was just called to the witness stand.

10:04 a.m.: “Witness entering,” announces an officer. Ivanka Trump walks in smiling and approaches the witness stand. “Raise your right hand,” instructs another officer. Ivanka is now under oath. She gives her name and address, on a billionaire-loaded island in Miami.

10:12 a.m.: Ivanka goes over her resume and work history. She brings up two of the assets at the heart of this case, the former Trump hotel in Washington, D.C. and the Trump National Doral golf resort in Miami. “I spent an enormous amount of my time shepherding those two projects through their redevelopment.”

10:18 a.m.: Ivanka Trump mentions the construction loan against the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago. This isn’t a loan that the Trumps like to talk about much. Deutsche Bank handed Donald Trump $640 million to build a 92-story skyscraper in Chicago. The building opened in 2009, in the depths of the Great Recession. Deutsche Bank ended up saying that Trump defaulted on his loan. Not one to back down, Donald Trump sued his creditors for $3 billion, accusing them of helping to cause the recession. Deutsche countersued, demanding $40 million.

10:23 a.m.: Then something surprising happened. Trump secured additional financing against his property in Chicago. Although the commercial real estate group of Deutsche Bank had been burned by Trump, another arm of the bank took an interest in him. Ivanka says she got to know a woman named Rosemary Vrablic in the private-wealth group of the bank. Who made the introduction to Vrablic? “My husband, Jared,” Ivanka says.

10:25 a.m.: The introduction came at an opportune time, around when the Trump Organization was seeking financing for Doral, a golf resort in Miami that Donald Trump wanted to buy out of bankruptcy. Deutsche Bank ended up lending $125 million against the property.

10:29 a.m.: But Deutsche wasn’t the only lender that the Trump Organization considered on the Doral property. The attorney general’s office pulls up an email from Ivanka Trump to Andy Beal, a super-sharp banker from Texas, who has a reputation for doing distressed deals and made a fortune in the Great Recession. Beal is worth an estimated $13.5 billion today.

10:33 a.m.: The Beal email, dated August 23, 2011, looks damning. “My father will also send you his most recent financial statement by hard mail,” Ivanka wrote to Beal. Remember, this case is all about net-worth statements that Donald Trump sent to various financial institutions. Those statements showed inflated net-worth figures. This email appears to show Ivanka facilitating the transmission of one of those net-worth statements to a bank.

10:35 a.m.: Ivanka’s memory goes blank. “I have no recollection of this email,” she says. The attorney general’s office asks whether Beal requested the financial statement or whether Ivanka volunteered it. “I don’t recall,” she says.

10:48 a.m.: The Trump Organization sought out potential financing from other lenders as well. Among them: the commercial real estate group at Deutsche Bank, the same outfit that had sparred with Trump in Chicago. The attorney general’s office pulls up a document showing the proposed terms: $130 million at 8% plus Libor, a floating interest rate benchmark. The loan that Donald Trump ended up securing came with an interest rate of Libor plus 1.75%.

10:58 a.m.: Understanding the gap between those two interest rates is essential to getting an idea of how much the Trump Organization might have saved by providing personal guarantees, which required Donald Trump to maintain certain net-worth covenants and provide documentation about the size of his fortune. The gap between the aforementioned interest rates is 8% – 1.75% = 6.25%. That suggests that, on a $125 million loan, Trump saved 6.25% * $125 million = $7.8 million per year by securing the lower rate. At the end of this case, these are the sorts of calculations the judge will have to consider when weighing whether, and how much, the Trump Organization may have to pay as a result of the suit.

11:03 a.m.: Ivanka’s demeanor on the stand is the opposite of her father’s. She speaks calmly and carefully. Like her brothers, she claims she cannot remember lots of details. But the attorney general’s office is armed with a pile of documents showing her involvement in securing the loans at the center of this case.

11:21 a.m.: Ivanka’s lack of memory is getting suspicious. She is fielding questions about a request for a $50 million loan in early 2016, when Donald Trump was in the middle of a presidential campaign that personally cost him $66 million. Asked about whether the Trump Organization sought the loan, Ivanka says, “I don’t recall.” But then later in the exchange about that potential loan, she offers, “I don’t think this transpired,” suggesting she does remember something about the possible deal.

11:42 a.m.: The state attorney questions Ivanka Trump about her apartments at a condo building on Park Avenue in New York City. Donald Trump renovated the place, then gave Ivanka a series of sweetheart deals for units in the building, including a starter apartment after college and penthouses in later years. Ivanka leased the penthouses and also took options to purchase them down the line. That theoretically limited the value that Donald Trump could claim for his interest in them. According to the attorney general, however, Trump continued calculating values for the units at far-higher numbers. Asked about that apparent miscalculation, Ivanka pleads ignorance. “I wasn’t involved in his statement of financial condition,” she says, referring to her father’s net-worth documents, “so I can’t say what it took into account or didn’t take into account.”

12:02 p.m.: The state is now going through the interest rates of proposals for a refinancing of Donald Trump’s property in Chicago. The terms on some of these proposals are pretty brutal: 8% plus Libor, says one with Deutsche Bank’s commercial real estate group. The Trump Organization ended up with a much-cheaper loan, at just 2% plus Libor. The attorney general’s office asks if Ivanka Trump understood that the Trump Organization was able to secure better terms working with the private wealth group at Deutsche Bank than it could have working with the commercial real estate group at the same institution. “I don’t think I ever thought about it in that context,” Ivanka says. That seems unlikely, given that these emails pretty clearly show her shopping rates.

12:18 p.m.: Ivanka says that the Trump Organization was, at one point, considering partnering with Colony Capital on what became the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. In the end, Colony did not partner on the project, but its founder, Tom Barrack, nonetheless developed an interesting connection to the hotel. Trump ended up tapping Barrack to serve as chairman of his presidential inaugural committee. That committee reportedly pumped $1.5 million into the hotel during the inauguration, apparently providing at least 25% of the hotel’s revenue in January 2017, Trump’s first month as president.

12:37 p.m.: The state is zeroing in on the D.C. hotel, while Ivanka tries to distance herself from her father’s net-worth statements. She did not seem to mind talking about those documents years ago. “As part of the [request for proposal] process,” she told the Washingtonian in 2012, “we submitted a full balance sheet and audited financials showing a net worth of $7 billion with over $300 million in cash alone.”

2:26 p.m.: The court is back in session after a lunch break, and everyone is in the room, except for one key person. “Let’s get the witness,” says Judge Arthur Engoron. Ivanka Trump, dressed in a dark suit, enters the courtroom and strides up to the stand.

2:31 p.m.: The courtroom screens display emails between Ivanka and Jared Kushner. These are clearly business emails—nothing lovey dovey. “My husband was also in real estate and would have perspective for me,” Ivanka testifies, adding, “It was not uncommon that I would ask my husband’s perspective.”

2:41 p.m.: The attorney general’s office is digging into lending documents connected to the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C. Ivanka confirms that her father personally guaranteed the loan, which provided $170 million for the redevelopment of the property.

2:49 p.m.: Ivanka is reviewing documents on the structure of the entities behind her family’s D.C. hotel. She and her two brothers each owned 7.5% of the property, and their dad owned the remaining 77.5%. She cashed out along with the others when they sold the property in May 2022. “I received a payment upon the sale of the asset,” Ivanka confirms.

2:52 p.m.: The attorney general’s office asks if Ivanka remembers approximately how much she received. She responds that she does not remember the exact amount. The judge notes that she wasn’t asked about the exact amount. The lawyer from the attorney general’s office wants to move on, though. He just pulls up an email that shows distributions related to the sale. The document indicates that Ivanka received $4 million. “That’s consistent with my recollection,” she says.

2:54 p.m.: “We have nothing further at this time, your honor,” says a lawyer with the attorney general’s office. Trump’s team stands up to cross-examine the former president’s daughter.

3:17 p.m.: Trump’s team is highlighting the tight ties between Ivanka’s family and Deutsche Bank, particularly banker Rosemary Vrablic, who worked in the firm’s private wealth group.

3:22 p.m.: Trump’s team pulls up a March 8, 2013 email from Vrablic to Ivanka about a visit at Trump National Doral, the golf resort in Miami. “Ivanka, I am SO glad we got to see you and have you show us the new rooms,” Vrablic wrote. “They look amazing! I had a wonderful time here, and it is really impressive to see what you have accomplished so quickly.” The former president’s team is apparently trying to make it look like Deutsche Bank was happy with its client, in an effort to counter the attorney general’s case that Deutsche Bank was wronged by Donald Trump’s lies.

3:26 p.m.: Ivanka talks about the acquisition process of Trump National Doral. “My father had a deep and nostalgic love for that property,” she says. “He used to tell stories about going there when he was a child with his own father.” When it came time to actually do work on the property, Ivanka says her father focused on the golf courses while she spent most of her time on other parts of the resort. “My father has a particular affinity for golf,” she notes.

3:38 p.m.: After a brief recess, the judge returns to the courtroom. Everyone is now waiting for Ivanka Trump. She tends to take far longer to arrive in the courtroom than the other people testifying. After a few minutes of waiting, the doors open. “Witness entering,” says an officer. Ivanka makes her way back to the stand.

3:46 p.m.: Ivanka is now talking about the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C. “When we took over the building, it was completely dilapidated,” she says, noting that there was a food court in the basement and some commercial office space elsewhere. “We envisioned and went on to execute redeveloping it into a super-luxury hotel,” she says.

3:49 p.m.: Ivanka notes that Deutsche Bank was excited about the project as well, which makes sense, given that the bank supplied $170 million against the property. “I recall Rosemary [Vrablic] referring to it, I believe, as the crown jewel of their real-estate portfolio,” Ivanka says.

4:12 p.m.: Ivanka has spoken multiple times today about how her father’s work on the Plaza Hotel helped give the Trump Organization credibility in working on historic properties like the Old Post Office in D.C., which he remodeled into the Trump International Hotel. She has not mentioned that, on her father’s watch, the Plaza Hotel reportedly went bankrupt.

4:24 p.m.: Ivanka Trump wraps up by explaining how proud she is of the work she did at the Trump Organization—and particularly of her efforts at the hotel in D.C. and the golf resort in Miami. “They were complicated projects,” she said, “and I believe that we overdelivered on every metric.”

4:25 p.m.: Trump’s lawyer says he is done with Ivanka: “No further questions, your honor.” The judge asks if the attorney general’s office wants to ask Ivanka any additional questions. “No, your honor,” one of the state’s lawyers says.

4:28 p.m.: The state says it is done calling witnesses—with one exception. Allen Weisselberg was abruptly called off the stand after Forbes reported that he lied during his testimony. The attorney general’s office reserves the right to call him back to the stand. That’s it for today’s proceedings.