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Tag: ivanka trump
Ivanka Trump with former president Donald Trump at the White House

Trump Family Fails To Surrender Documents In $250M New York Fraud Case

New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office was forced to request the state Supreme Court judge overseeing her $250 million fraud case against Donald Trump help resolve the failure of the ex-president, his three eldest adult children, and the Trump Organization to hand over documents required for discovery.

James’ office (OAG) notably “singled out ‘an unexplained drop-off in emails for Ivanka Trump’ as one of the more significant issues,” reports Forbes.

The Attorney General also asked Judge Arthur Engoron to require the Trumps to complete a “compliance affidavit.”

“OAG believes this proposed order is necessary given Defendants’ failure to preserve, collect and produce documents and materials in a timely and transparent fashion,” the letter reads. “While we have recently begun receiving documents responsive to our discovery demands, Defendants have provided no timeline for the completion of their production, and more concerningly have not answered questions about the custodians, sources and means used to undertake their production.”

“For months,” the letter continues, her office “has been seeking an explanation for gaps in the productions made by the Trump Organization. Many of these issues date back to the underlying investigation that preceded this action and involved the collection and search of devices and databases.”

The letter also claims the Trumps have “either ignored the inquiries, provided non-substantive responses, or passed the buck to counsel no longer engaged in the case.” She is asking “for Defendants to provide sworn certifications detailing the process they followed for preserving, searching and producing documents in response to OAG discovery notices.”

James’ office also points to a letter from September of last year in which she expressed concern over Ivanka Trump’s drop in production of documents.

“In the first nine months of 2014, Ms. Trump is on an average of 1,218 emails per month. That drops to just 299 emails in October 2014 with an average of 242 emails through December 2015. In 2016 she averages just 37 emails per month.”

As CNBC explains, the New York Attorney General’s suit “accuses Trump of repeatedly overstating the values of his assets in statements to banks, insurance companies and the IRS in order to obtain better loan and tax terms.”

Separately, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last month charged Donald Trump with 34 felony violations related to his alleged hush money payoff to a porn star. The charges, Bragg’s office announced last month, are “for falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.”

Trump is also being investigated by a Georgia District Attorney for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He is being investigated by the Justice Department’s special counsel for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and for his retention and refusal to return, even after being subpoenaed, hundreds of documents with classified markings removed from the White House and stored at his Mar-a-Lago residence and resort.

Trump’s attorneys are also currently in court fighting a civil lawsuit brought by journalist E. Jean Carroll, who alleges the ex-president raped her in the 1990s, then defamed her when he denied her claims.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Ditching Lawyers (And Brothers), Ivanka Hires New Counsel In Fraud Trial

Ditching Lawyers (And Brothers), Ivanka Hires New Counsel In Fraud Trial

Ivanka Trump has parted ways with her family’s legal counsel in the New York civil fraud lawsuit and hired lawyers to defend her, and her alone, distancing herself from her father and brothers in the case.

The move came after the judge overseeing the case rejected Ivanka’s independent attempt to dismiss the accusations against her — and only her.

The lawsuit was brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James against the Trump Organization and its executives — including former President Donald Trump and his three adult children, Ivanka, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump — last September, alleging years of financial fraud.

James accused Trump of conspiring with his children and Trump Organization executives for years to flagrantly distort property and asset valuations to deceive lenders, insurance brokers, and tax authorities to obtain better loans, insurance coverage, and tax benefits.

The lawsuit sought to recover $250 million in financial benefits obtained through fraud, bar the Trumps from serving as executives at any New York company, and bar Trump and the Trump Organization from any New York real estate acquisitions or loans issued by New York-registered lender for five years.

Court documents submitted a week after James filed the lawsuit showed that the Trump children had hired Clifford Robert and Michael Farina as legal counsel. Ivanka also independently engaged the services of two Washington, DC-based lawyers — Reid Figel and Michael Kellogg — to represent her alongside Robert and Farina.

In early March, Figel urged the judge via letter to delay the trial to give just Ivanka time to prepare a defense stating that “other individuals” — suggestively, her father and brothers — had prepared the fraudulent financial statements cited in James’ lawsuit.

James’ complaint “does not contain a single allegation that Ms. Trump directly or indirectly created, prepared, reviewed, or certified any of her father's financial statements,” Figel wrote.

He added: “The complaint affirmatively alleges that other individuals were responsible for those tasks.”

However, at least one of James’ allegations pertains to a property that Ivanka had lived in, reports the UK’s Daily Mail.

The request was denied.

According to Forbes, the Trump children’s legal divorce occurred last week. Figel and Kellogg withdrew from the case on Tuesday.

Three days later, Bennet Moskowitz, who represented Jeffrey Epstein, informed the court he was replacing Robert and Farina as Ivanka’s sole legal counsel. Forbes stated in its report that Robert and Farina still represent Trump Jr. and Eric.

While Ivanka's decision to legally distance herself from her family in such a high-stakes legal battle isn’t unheard of, the timing of her move is, former elected state attorney Michael McAuliffe told Newsweek.

"The timing is somewhat unusual as discovery is ending, so the evidence in the case is by now largely identified and developed," McAuliffe told the paper.

“Ivanka Trump [could be] looking ahead to the trial in the fall and wants a separate advocate who is free to point out the disparity in the evidence against the various defendants. A lawyer representing all or several of the defendants can't realistically or effectively make that argument,” he added.

Blaming Eric and Don for the expansive financial fraud alleged by James could put Ivanka’s defense at odds with her brothers’, Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, told Newsweek.

The lawsuit’s ongoing discovery process is set to end on April 30, per Forbes. The trial, scheduled for 2nd October, will commence on time “come hell or high water,” the judge has since said.

Ivanka Trump Tried To Dodge Her Court-Appointed Financial Monitor

Ivanka Trump Tried To Dodge Her Court-Appointed Financial Monitor

Ivanka Trump, daughter and ex-aide of former President Trump, tried and failed to keep her finances — and hers only — away from the prying eyes of a court-appointed financial monitor tasked with scrutinizing the Trump Organization’s transactions and those of entities connected to it, The Daily Beast reported Monday, citing anonymous sources.

According to the Beast, Ivanka Trump’s attorneys sent private letters to Justice Arthur Engoron, the New York state judge who ordered the financial supervision in the state’s ongoing lawsuit against the Trump company, asking to be exempt from the monitor’s scrutiny, a step her brothers, Don. Jr. and Eric, didn’t take.

Engoron summarily ignored Ivanka’s private plea and — in a bold ruling on Thursday — said the Trump Organization had just two weeks to provide "a full and accurate description of the corporate structure” to the monitor, retired judge Barbara Jones, giving her a window into the company’s “financial disclosures to any persons or entities."

The Trump family must also provide the judge a 30-day advance notice before moving any assets, Engoron ruled, citing the audacious founding of a Trump Organization II in Delaware, “the shell company capital of the country,” according to the Beast.

New York Attorney General Letitia James requested a monitor to supervise the Trump family company’s finances until her civil suit against the organization — the culmination of her three-year-long investigation into its business practices — goes to trial.

In her over 200-page-long filing, James’ office alleged widespread fraud by Trump, his company, and the offspring he made its executives — participants in an over ten-year-long effort to bloat the former president’s finances to get favorable loan agreements.

Seeking $250 million in penalties from the Trump Organization, in a motion filed last month, James asked for the company to be barred from offloading its assets ashore and conducting any kind of “significant fraudulent and illegal business,” ensuring that “funds are available to satisfy any disgorgement award.”

Ivanka Trump — who has sought to distance herself from her father’s political operations, most recently his announcement of a 2024 presidential bid— is a defendant in James’ suit even though her name hasn’t come up in recent court hearings, the Beast noted.

“I love my father very much. This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family,” Ivanka told Fox News, excusing her absence from her father’s announcement. “I do not plan to be involved in politics.”

In the Trump family’s attempt to stave off Engoron’s ruling via appeal filing, Ivanka’s lawyers made a personal argument to get her off the hook, saying that she had not been involved with the company for over five years.

“Ms. Trump submits this separate affirmation to set forth with specificity the reasons why the trial court erred in including Ms. Trump in the Order in her individual capacity… there was no legal or factual basis to issue the Order against Ms. Trump,” her lawyers argued.

“Ms. Trump has had no involvement for more than five years… Ms. Trump has had no role as an officer, director, or employee of the Trump Organization or any of its affiliates since at least January 2017… NY AG never intended to impose an injunction against Ms. Trump,” the attorneys added.

In her tenure as a White House adviser, Ivanka Trump raised myriad ethics red flags, and as a Trump Organization executive before that, she was — as described by James in a court filing for Ivanka’s refusal to testify in January — a "key player in many of the [Trump company’s] transactions."

Video Shows Furious Roger Stone Calling Ivanka An 'Abortionist Bitch'

Video Shows Furious Roger Stone Calling Ivanka An 'Abortionist Bitch'

Longtime Trump ally and MAGA provocateur Roger Stone flew into a rage upon learning he wouldn’t be granted a post-2020-election pardon despite extensive lobbying efforts and unleashed a flurry of expletives at former President Trump’s family, newly released footage showed.

In the video — captured by the Danish film crew “The Ark” for its forthcoming documentary A Storm Foretold, and first published by The Daily Beast— Stone is seated in a moving vehicle, seething at the discovery that there would be no 11th-hour pardon to shield him from accountability for his role in the effort he helped lead to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.

“Jared Kushner has an IQ of 70,” Stone ranted on the phone on President Joe Biden’s inauguration day, when then-outgoing President Trump could no longer grant pardons. “He’s coming to Miami. We will eject him from Miami very quickly; he will be leaving very quickly,” Stone said through gritted teeth. “Very quickly.”

His anger rising rapidly, Stone segued into a threat of violence, warning, “He has 100 security guards. I will have 5,000 security guards. You want to fight. Let’s fight. Fuck you.”

The political “dirty trickster” ended his tirade with a jab at Ivanka Trump, saying, “Fuck you and your abortionist bitch daughter!”


The Beast noted it was unclear who Stone was speaking to on the phone, but the film crew’s boss, Christoffer Guldbrandsen, confirmed to the publication there was “no doubt” it was Ivanka that Stone had called an “abortionist bitch.”

Why Stone would refer to Ivanka — who, according to the HuffPost, “staunchly declared herself in a 2020 interview ‘pro-life, and unapologetically so.’ — is not yet clear; however, Guldbrandsen told the Beast that Stone blamed Kushner for his failed bid for a second pardon.

“Aside from Donald Trump, he also held Jared Kushner responsible as being the guy who was the point man on the pardon,” Guldbrandsen said, noting that the beleaguered agitator’s vulgar rant had taken place in Fort Lauderdale on January 20, 2021.

Stone, a self-proclaimed pro-life advocate, has had no misgivings in discussing violence, a trait prominent amongst the right-wing militias he’s allegedly affiliated with, most notably the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. (His first wife Elizabeth "Bitsy" Stone operated a "pro-choice Republican" nonprofit and PAC for many years in Washington, which he supported.)

“I say fuck the voting. Let’s get right to the violence. We'll have to start smashing pumpkins, if you know what I mean," Stone said in a video clip released by the House Select Committee on Thursday.

“Shoot to kill. See an Antifa? Shoot to kill. Fuck ’em. Done with this bullshit,” Stone said in a video clip CNN obtained from the film crew last month.

Previous reporting by the Washington Post showed that vowing violence against Kushner is something Stone has done more than once.

“In two weeks [Kushner’s] moving to Miami,” Stone told a staffer on Inauguration Day, the Post reported in March, citing over 20 hours of Stone documentary footage it had reviewed. “He’s going to get a beating. He needs to have a beating. And needs to be told, ‘This time we’re just beating you. Next time we’re killing you.’”

Moments later, Stone rejected the staffer’s urging to pass his threat off as a joke, saying, “No, no, it isn’t joking. Not joking. It’s not a joke.”

In a car with the filmmakers that same day, the Post noted, Stone continued outlining plans for Kushner’s demise; this time, on the phone with a friend named Tom.

“Stone said Kushner needed to be “punished in the most brutal possible way” and would be “brain dead when I get finished with him,” the Post wrote in its report.

Stone accused the Post of attacking him using “a clever blend of ‘guilt by association,’ insinuations, half truths, anonymous claims, falsehoods and out of context trick questions.”

Representatives for Ivanka and Kushner didn’t return the Beast’s request for comment.

Stone has levied personal attacks against Guldbrandsen and threatened to file a $25 million lawsuit against the filmmaker.