Ivanka Trump's Actions at Heart of New York Fraud Lawsuit

The actions of Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, are taking on increasing significance in New York Attorney General Letitia James' tax fraud lawsuit against the family business.

James is suing the former president, along with three of his children, Ivanka, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and two senior executives at The Trump Organization for $250 million over allegations the real estate company inflated or undervalued the value of a number of assets for financial benefit.

While the former president is understandably the main focus of the civil proceedings, it is his eldest daughter who has also come under scrutiny as part of the case, including being singled out by James' office for her apparent failure to comply with proceedings.

In April, James' office wrote to New York Judge Arthur Engoron to intervene, saying the defendants in the Trump Organization hadn't handed over the necessary information and documents as part of the discovery process in a "timely and transparent fashion."

James' office told Engoron that among the "more significant issues" in the Trump family's insufficient response to the discovery process was an explanation in the "unexplained drop-off" in emails for Ivanka Trump between 2014 and 2017.

According to James' office, in the first nine months of 2014, Ivanka's volume of emails was an average of 1,218 emails per month. This figure fell to 299 emails in October 2014, with an average of 242 emails through December 2015. In 2016, Ivanka averaged just 37 emails per month, according to James' office.

"Not only have defendants failed to offer any substantive response to this inquiry, but there have been no documents produced by Ms. Trump," the attorney general's office told Judge Engoron in the April 25 letter.

In response, Engoron set the Trump family a deadline of May 12 to hand over all outstanding requested documents and communications as part of the discovery process, and a further May 15 deadline to submit a compliance affidavit to confirm under oath that they have complied with their legal obligations to hand over the requested information.

Ivanka Trump's legal team and James' office have been contacted for comment.

Ivanka Trump has become a key focus of James' lawsuit after the former president's eldest daughter took steps to distance herself from the rest of her family in the case. She also replaced the attorneys representing her in the suit.

In March, Ivanka asked for a delay in the civil trial in order to organize her defense separately, while arguing she was not involved in the allegations that form the crux of the case.

In court filings, Ivanka's lawyers argued that James' fraud suit "does not contain a single allegation that Ms. Trump directly or indirectly created, prepared, reviewed, or certified any of her father's financial statements," adding that "other individuals were responsible for those tasks."

The filings appear to suggest that it was her father and brothers who were the ones who allegedly signed off on the fraudulent financial statements.

Attorney and legal political analyst Andrew Lieb suggested it was a "smart" move for Ivanka—who left The Trump Organization in 2017 to join her father's White House administration—to distance herself from the rest of her family in the $250 million lawsuit.

"Ivanka arguing that she has a unique defense to the fraud case against her family because the lawsuit doesn't even accuse her of lying about the company's finances, as she had left the company back in 2017, is not a sign that she is going to throw her family under the bus. Instead, it's a sign that whether the bus crashes or not, she isn't getting aboard," Lieb previously told Newsweek.

"It's the smart and correct strategy for Ivanka to take and it demonstrates that [her husband Jared] Kushner's lawyers know what they are doing in the courtroom."

Change of Attorney

There were further signs that Ivanka is preparing to offer a different defense to her family during the upcoming civil trial after she split with the lawyers she once shared with her brothers, Clifford Robert and Michael Farina, and replaced them to assign Bennet Moskowitz as her sole attorney on the case.

Lara Trump, the wife of Eric Trump, recently denied that there was rift between the Trump siblings after Ivanka hired her own lawyers as part of James' suit.

"I think people are trying to make that a bigger deal than it really is," Lara Trump told the Daily Mail. "It's not common to have to go through all this stuff that my husband and his siblings go through."

The move arrived after Ivanka Trump confirmed that she and her husband will not be part of her father's 2024 presidential campaign, nor return to the administration if Trump re-enters the White House.