A court decided Friday morning that Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter, must testify in her father’s civil fraud trial in New York.
Letitia James (D), the attorney general of New York, filed a comprehensive fraud case against Trump, the Trump Organization, his adult sons, and a number of executives, alleging decades of fraud and falsely inflating and deflating the value of their assets to obtain better insurance coverage and reduced taxes.
Trump and his sons have referred to the investigation as a “witch hunt” and denied any wrongdoing.
Ivanka Trump was originally a party to the lawsuit, but she was removed from it by a New York appeals court in June after it was decided that the state’s statute of limitations limited the charges made against her.
Judge Arthur Engoron of the New York Supreme Court, however, determined on Friday that she must still take the stand despite the attorney general’s office’s subpoena.
The trial judge decided not to schedule her testimony before November 1st in order to give her attorneys time to file an appeal.
Later in the trial, which started earlier this month, Trump and his two adult sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., are anticipated to give testimony.
On Wednesday, the former president briefly stood in front of the media to defend remarks he had made to them, which the judge determined to have violated a valid gag order.
In court records, Ivanka Trump’s attorneys contended that the attorney general’s office in New York has the authority to compel the former president’s daughter to testify.
They further suggested that the office is making an effort to “push her back into this case” even though she was dismissed from it.
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