Ivanka Hands Letitia James A Gift, Paints Herself Into A Factual Corner

Daddy’s “Aryan trophy” as biographer Tim O’Brien referred to Ivanka Trump as (while Joy Reid smiled and tried not to burst into laughter) has a characteristic in common with Daddy: she’s too used to getting her own way and so she makes stupid mistakes. She made a yuge misstep in changing the time for her witness testimony in the New York Trump Organization fraud trial. Originally, Ivanka was scheduled to testify this Friday, November 3 and Daddy was scheduled for the following Monday, November 6.

Ivanka claimed she had a “scheduling conflict” and moved her testimony to November 8, making her the last member of the family to testify. That was a stupid move. Whatever she had scheduled for November 3, unless it was open heart surgery, she should have rescheduled it and not the court appearance. In doing so, she just handed Letitia James a gift. The bottom line is that simply, Ivanka was going to be followed by Daddy. First Junior, then Eric, then her, then Daddy. Now, she’s going to be the last to testify and anything that they screw up in testimony, she will be asked about. Letitia James is going to paint her into a factual corner she can’t get out of. And Ivanka was a key player in Trump world, make no mistake. That’s why Trump came unglued when Ivanka lost her appeal and the court ruled she had to testify. Insider:

She played a key role in the Trump Organization’s effort to win a ground lease from the US government for the Old Post Office property in Washington, the historic building Trump converted into a luxury hotel.

When the federal General Services Administration began seeking requests for proposals for the property’s development, Ivanka Trump was the one who presented the Trump Organization’s bid, the AG alleges. […]

Ivanka Trump can also expect to be asked about the apartment she and her husband, Jared Kushner, rented more than a decade ago in her father’s Trump Park Avenue property in Manhattan.

The couple paid a rent that was a mere fraction of that of other penthouses in the building, the AG alleges. […]

Someone Ivanka Trump’s testimony won’t damage — other than, perhaps, reputationally — is herself. She was originally a defendant for her alleged complicity in using the fraudulent statements to win loans. But she was cut from the case on statute of limitation grounds in an appellate decision over the summer.

And Ivanka does not want to be damaged reputationally. It’s speculated that the reason she’s trying to stall is because she knows that she will look bad and this all comes at a time when she’s getting back on the high society social register. She was invited to Kim Kardashian’s birthday bash, which is a step in the direction she desperately wants to go. Talk about a whiplash effect, from a high profile Hollywood soiree to the witness stand of a New York fraud trial.

Ivanka has wanted to move on from all this drama, explicitly announcing she won’t be joining her father’s 2024 campaign. In the “billionaire bunker,” she now calls home—a 300-acre gated community on an island near Miami called Indian Creek Village—Ivanka’s friends have reportedly been supportive of her bid to write a new chapter. According to the New York Times, “Ms. Trump now generally minds her own business and people close to her think it is time she is allowed to move on with her new life.”

Still, the Kardashian invite must have felt like a genuine turning point, as she was welcomed back into a cloistered elite circle that also included Jeff Bezos’s partner Lauren Sanchez. “So blessed to have hit the jackpot of friends!” Kardashian gushed on an Instagram gallery post featuring Ivanka. But even in this bubble, there were pesky reminders of her father’s alleged mob behavior. According to the Times, one photographer yelled at Ivanka on the way to Kim’s party, asking if she was “afraid to testify” at the trial. She didn’t answer.

No one, in my estimation, has chronicled Ivanka Trump’s intricate theatrics more adeptly than my colleague Inae Oh. She has highlighted Ivanka’s hypocrisy concerning women; how the media often helps to launder Ivanka’s image; and pointed out her “piss poor” relationship with the truth, especially when supporting her father’s Big Lie. Inae even compiled a list of events that form “one of the most enduring storylines of the Trump era,” revolving around Ivanka’s efforts to improve her public image, even as her father’s administration descended into chaos: “Things are going off the rails, but never fear—Ivanka is diligently working behind the scenes to be the least problematic member of the administration, details of which conveniently find their way to the media.”

We’ll closely follow Ivanka’s high-wire act on the stand and provide updates.

That’s from Mother Jones. Ivanka is trying to be different things to different people and generally speaking, that’s a recipe for disaster. But she’s stuck. She’s got competing interests. On the one hand, she wants nothing more to do with the travesty that her father’s four years in office and its inglorious, riotous (literally) ending was. She’s done everything she can to distance herself.

But once a Trump always a Trump and she was a key figure in the Trump Organization. She may have played her cards right and covered her tracks to this point, but she can’t keep pulling rabbits out of hats forever. She’s going to have to face the music sometime.

It’s anticipated that Ivanka may try to reschedule yet another time, but the court will probably not be so indulgent, minus something incredibly compelling, like the medical emergency that Michael Cohen had.

Speaking of Cohen, he’s already spoken in the past about how Ivanka held great sway in the Trump Organization because her father was so dazzled by her.

“The father, Donald, used to turn around when she would leave, he’d be like, ‘She is just lucky that she is so good-looking, that all women want to be her, and all men want to sleep with her,'” Cohen said on his podcast Mea Culpa.

“That is why he would send her on certain deals because there would be a banker there, a guy, and so on.”

Trump has a long record of speaking about his eldest daughter’s attractiveness, once famously stating that if she weren’t his daughter, “perhaps I’d be dating her.” […]

Cohen said he believed that Donald Jr. “innately is the brightest of the three children” but that he is a “fuck-up.”

That is pretty profound, if it’s true. It’s generally thought that Junior sold himself out for the family money and power. Perhaps he is smart and could have made something of himself but simply gave up. His cousin Mary Trump says he never developed or realized himself, but just went along with the family business and did what he was told to do.

Meanwhile, “Ivanka is by far the most prepared of all of them,” he [Cohen] said. “She won’t go on an interview unless she knows every single question. She will script out the blowing of her hair.”

There’s no question about that. I remember watching a documentary about the Trump family, Unprecedented, and Ivanka controlled everything she could, camera angles, lights, what she wore. But the Centre Street courthouse is not a movie set and the she’s not the director of the trial. Judge Arthur Engoron is.

Ivanka is like Daddy. She’s never had to be accountable — until now. And now she is going to have to be. And she’ll have to tell the truth, like she did about her father losing the election, but it’s not only not going to endear her to Daddy, and her brothers, the truth may incriminate them.

So, it has been thought, maybe she will plead the 5th Amendment, and not incriminate herself. The only problem with that, always, is bad optics. If she’s lily white and has nothing to hide, why invoke the 5th?

These are the questions rattling around in Billionaire Bunker right now. And there are no easy answers. And November 8 will be here before you know it.