Ivanka Appeals Court Order To Testify, Running Won’t Make It Better

This was predicted. Ivanka Trump, for reasons known only to her and perhaps her lawyers, is playing a futile stalling game. She filed a Notice Of Appeal November 1, in order to avoid testifying on November 8. This only makes her look bad and surely for somebody as image conscious as she is, she can figure that out.

Ivanka was originally supposed to testify this Friday, then that got moved to November 8 due to an alleged “scheduling conflict.” That was a mistake. By putting herself as the Trump that testifies last, she painted herself into a factual corner. Now, she’s once again attempting to avoid appearing in court and she has zero grounds to do so.

Her lawyers will exhaust every procedural remedy in the book. She has the right to have them do that and since she has plenty of money to waste, she’s not constrained from making stupid litigation choices like most people are, who aren’t filthy rich.

All of the Trumps stall, but none more so than Ivanka.

Back in April Leticia James wrote a letter to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, citing the Trumps’ “failure to preserve, collect, and produce documents and materials in a timely and transparent fashion,” and asked Engoron to step in.

Of specific interest to James’ team is “an unexplained drop-off in emails for Ivanka Trump between 2014 and 2017,” the letter states, noting that at the beginning of 2014, Trump’s oldest daughter turned over about 1,200 emails per month; that number soon dropped to less than 300 per month, and by 2017, Ivanka Trump was averaging “just 37 emails per month.” “The time to meet-and-confer on these issues has long since passed,” the letter notes. “Defendants have either ignored the inquiries, provided non-substantive responses, or passed the buck to counsel no longer engaged in the case.”

Forbes notes that Ivanka Trump recently obtained new legal counsel, dumping the attorneys that her brothers Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are using. In response to the AG office’s letter, Engoron on Monday set a deadline of May 12 for the Trumps to hand in any missing materials, and ordered them to submit affidavits going over how they’ve complied during the discovery process. The former president himself was questioned under oath last month in the case, spending about eight hours at James’ office in lower Manhattan, per the New York Times.

This is Ivanka’s MO, apparently. Stall and delay and obfuscate, rinse and repeat. What good she thinks it does is a wonder to all who observe this behavior. Nobody can fathom it.

Maybe it’s just plain fear. Maybe it’s as simple as that. It’s like the kid who fakes illness so as to not have to go to school the next day after the bully has threatened to beat him up after school.

Or, maybe Ivanka is more like her father than we know and some part of her actually believes that she’s going to be able to find a way, find a lawyer, find a legal theory that will get her what she wants. She won’t. This is a very simple issue. She’s a fact witness. She can legally be compelled to testify and she has been ordered to do so. This is just Mickey Mousing around.

But I guess if you’re a spoiled rich princess, that’s what you do.