Ivanka Trump was mocked online for her failed attempt to argue that she should be spared having to give midweek testimony in her father Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York because she is a busy mother of school-aged children in Florida.
An appeals court curtly denied Ivanka Trump’s request to delay her testimony, which is scheduled for next Wednesday, The Guardian reported. Meanwhile, people online used the “school week” argument to criticize the former White House senior adviser for either thinking she’s above the law or to show that she’s “privileged” and out of touch with the daily challenges of regular people, Newsweek said.
“Ivanka has to find a babysitter,” MSNBC host Katie Phang wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Don’t look now, but someone’s privilege is showing,” Phang added.
“As always, Ivanka has her finger on the pulse of the hardships faced by America’s working men and women,” wrote Ivanka Trump’s cousin Mary Trump, a psychologist who has become an outspoken critic of the rest of her family and Donald Trump’s presidency. “Who among us isn’t reluctant to leave our children with the governess when we have to travel out of town to testify in their grandpa’s fraud trial? She’s such an entitled (expletive),” Mary Trump added on X.
Mary Trump then quipped that Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, was available to babysit — “for $2 billion” — a reference to ethical questions surrounding a $2 billion investment he received from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince, several months after Trump lost the 2020 election and Kushner, like his wife, lost his job as a presidential adviser.
Ivanka Trump was subpoenaed to testify in New York in a civil fraud trial initiated by a $250 million lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. In the lawsuit, James alleges that Trump, his organization and his two adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, knowingly participated in a scheme to inflate the value of the former president’s real estate assets. This was to secure financial benefits such as more-favorable loan and insurance-policy terms.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and accused James of launching a politically-motivated campaign against him, Newsweek said. He is once again running for president and currently is the Republican primary frontrunner.
Ivanka Trump is not a defendant in the case, even though she worked alongside her father and brothers in the Trump Organization from 2005 to 2017. Her reluctance to testify may be due to her not wanting to make things worse for her father and brothers, or because she’s tried to publicly distance herself from the Trump family brand and her father’s politics since her father’s departure from the White House amid allegations that he tried to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election.
In a legal filing, Ivanka Trump’s attorneys wrote: “Ms Trump, who resides in Florida with her three minor children, will suffer undue hardship if a stay is denied and she is required to testify at trial in New York in the middle of a school week, in a case she has already been dismissed from, before her appeal is heard.”
Her lawyers also argued that she had not lived or worked in New York since 2017, and was therefore beyond the jurisdiction of the Manhattan civil court.
But in an expedited ruling on Thursday night, the appeals court offered a curt, 11-word response, The Guardian reported: “Application for interim stay pending decision on the motion is denied.”
The prosecution has said that Ivanka Trump’s testimony is necessary because she was closely involved in three high-profile loans that the Trump Organization received and which are at the center of the case. With the appellate court’s ruling, Ivanka Trump becomes the third child of the former president to testify in the case.
The judge overseeing the case, Arthur Engoron, has already ruled that Donald Trump and his company routinely and repeatedly deceived banks, insurers and others as he built his real estate empire. The trial is to determine what, if any penalties, Trump, his sons and the other defendants will have to pay and whether they will be barred from practicing business in the state.