This Ivanka Trump Email Could Undo Her Family’s Entire Defense

Ivanka Trump was forced Wednesday, during her family’s New York business fraud trial, to explain an email exchange that could undo their entire defense.

Donald Trump’s oldest daughter took the stand to testify about the Trump Organization’s business practices. Ivanka Trump was presented with an email conversation she had with one of the company’s lawyers.

The lawyer, Jason Greenblatt, was worried about a 2012 deal with Deutsche Bank for the purchase of the Doral golf club in Miami, which required Donald Trump to maintain a minimum net worth of $3 billion. This requirement “would seem to me to be a problem?” he asked Ivanka.

Ivanka replied this was something they “have known from day one. We wanted to get a great rate and the only way to get the proceeds/term and principle where we want them is to guarantee the deal.”

Another email related to the Doral deal makes clear that her father’s financials were a big part of securing the purchase. “My father will also send you his most recent financial statement by hard mail,” she wrote in an email with the subject line “Doral.”

This exchange speaks directly to New York Attorney General Letitia James’s main accusation that Trump and his allies fraudulently inflated the value of their real estate assets to get more favorable terms on bank loans. Greenblatt was concerned that Trump would struggle to prove and maintain a net worth of at least $3 billion. But Ivanka didn’t seem worried.

In the Doral deal, Ivanka eventually got the requirement for Trump’s net worth lowered to $2.5 billion, but that’s still far higher than what James estimates Trump’s net worth actually was at the time of the purchase in 2012.

Trump himself effectively admitted Monday that the organization’s financial statements were made with an eye to encourage favorable loans. The New York attorney general’s office revealed that Trump had signed financial documents intended to look good for banks.

The trial, which is only to set damages, has not been going well for Trump. He has been grasping at straws in an attempt to avoid accountability, using an argument the presiding judge has already deemed “worthless” and incorrectly insisting he was president in 2021.

Judge Arthur Engoron already determined in September that Trump committed fraud. Engoron ordered that all Trump’s New York business certificates be canceled, making it nearly impossible to do business in the state and effectively killing the Trump Organization.

The lawsuit alleges that Trump claimed his Trump Tower apartment in Manhattan was three times its actual size and worth $327 million. No New York City apartment has ever sold for that much. He also valued Mar-a-Lago at $739 million, about 10 times its actual worth.