New York Court Orders Poor Harried Simple Mom Ivanka Trump To Get Her Ass Up To Family Fraud Trial

Liz is mean about a thing.

For four years, Ivanka Trump was her father’s righthand lackey in the White House, routinely jetting off to Europe to LARP as a foreign policy expert. Your Wonkette will never get over the humiliation of that godawful woman sitting in for her daddy at the G20 meeting in Hamburg back in 2017.

And now after years of playacting as a person we should all take very seriously, Ivanka Trump has the unmitigated gall to insist she’s just a simple housewife from Florida being cruelly yanked away from her beloved children by vicious prosecutors to testify in big, scary New York City. And on a school night, too! However will her babies eat if mommy isn’t there to pack their lunches in the morning and greet them with warm cookies and carrot sticks at 3 p.m.?

This is literally the posture Ivanka’s lawyers took with the appellate court in New York in her last ditch effort to avoid testifying at the civil fraud trial against her family and the Trump Organization.

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.

Girl, please. We all saw those financial disclosures with you making hundreds of millions of dollars every year you were in the White House. We all saw you jetting off to party on that yacht in Croatia with Wendi Deng Murdoch. Did you think anyone was going to buy your “stay-at-home mom” act and let you out of icky court stuff?

PFFFT.

That block quote above is from a motion demanding an emergency stay of the trial court’s order for her to testify next week. The First Judicial Department (which is what they call the appellate court because … NEW YORK) already dismissed Ivanka from this case in June. It’s a bit technical, but long story short, the Trump Org dicked the Attorney General’s Office around so long during the investigative phase that the company agreed in 2021 to toll (i.e. pause) the statute of limitations rather than get sanctioned all to hell. But unlike her dipshit brothers, Ivanka had left the company by then to go play Government Minister Barbie, so she couldn’t be bound by the tolling agreement, so the First Department bounced her from the case.

Trump and Vanky have taken the position that this dismissal means she can’t be called as a witness at trial. And if you pretend that the only witnesses who ever testify in court are defendants, that makes perfect sense. But here on planet earth, THAT’S NOT A THING.

Ivanka’s lawyers made some additional non-insane arguments — that is, arguments that were wrong, but by a normal amount. Chiefly, they claim that, as a Florida resident, their client is outside the jurisdiction of New York courts. Which would perhaps make sense if Ivanka didn’t own multiple properties and companies in New York and remain financially entangled with her family’s business. Or as the AG’s office put it last week:

[S]he does not seem to be averse to her involvement in the family business when it comes to owning and collecting proceeds from the [Old Post Office Building] sale, the Trump Organization purchasing insurance for her and her companies, managing her household staff and credit card bills, renting her apartment or even paying her legal fees in this action.  It is only when she is tasked with answering for that involvement that she disclaims any connection.

Mean! And also … persuasive.

“Ms. Trump has clearly availed herself of the privilege of doing business in New York,” Justice Engoron ruled from the bench last week. He even agreed to put Vanky’s testimony off until Wednesday, Nov. 8, to give her time to seek a stay from the First Department.

But sadly it was not to be.

“Application for interim stay pending decision on the motion is denied,” the appellate court said in its one sentence brushoff. So Vanky can get on her private plane and fly to New York next week and do her best to clean up after her father testifies Monday and Tuesday. That will probably take a while, but luckily she has two apartments in the City if she has to stay overnight. Hopefully her babies will survive her absence. Their father has $2 billion in Saudi cash jangling around his pocket, so presumably he can pay a babysitter if he’s unequal to the task of watching his own children.

Catch Liz Dye on Opening Arguments podcast.

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