Ivanka Trump deposed in lawsuit regarding misuse of her father’s 2017 Inaugural funds
In a lawsuit that’s been in the works for a while now, Donald Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, was deposed on December 1 by the Washington D.C. Attorney General’s Office. In January, Karl Racine, the D.C. Attorney General, sued Donald Trump’s Inaugural Committee claiming the committee, which is registered as a non-profit, “coordinated with Trump family members to overpay for event space in a way that enriched the Trumps,” according to CBS News. Also named in the lawsuit are the businesses overseeing the Trump International Hotel located in Washington D.C.
The overpayments and their misuse were made to that non-profit during Trump’s 2017 inauguration. Ivanka Trump was assigned to her official White House role as “First Daughter and Advisor to the President” on March 29, 2017 – making her an official government employee.
The elder Trump daughter, as a senior adviser to the president, has been intimately involved in the inner-workings of the White House and assisted her father with the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. ~ CBS News
CNN was the first news outlet to report Ivanka’s deposition.
As part of that lawsuit, the D.C. Attorney General also deposed the Chair of the Inaugural Committee, Thomas Barrack Jr., a loyal Trump supporter and close friend of the president’s, according to The Huffington Post. Records associated with the lawsuit’s misuse of funds were subpoenaed from Barrack, Ivanka, first lady Melania Trump, and Rick Gates, the former Inaugural Committee Deputy Chairman.
Trump’s inaugural committee spent more than $1 million to book a ballroom at the Trump International Hotel in the nation’s capital as part of a scheme to “grossly overpay” for party space and enrich the president’s own family in the process, the District of Columbia’s attorney general, Karl Racine, alleges.
He has accused the committee of misusing nonprofit funds and coordinating with the hotel’s management and members of the Trump family to arrange the events.
“District law requires nonprofits to use their funds for their stated public purpose, not to benefit private individuals or companies,” Racine has said. “In this case, we are seeking to recover the nonprofit funds that were improperly funneled directly to the Trump family business.” ~ The Huffington Post
NBC News reported that Trump’s Inaugural Committee raised “$107 million to host events celebrating Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, but its spending has drawn continued scrutiny.” The $107 million raised is reportedly an unprecedented amount of money as far as previous inaugurations are concerned.
“Ms. Trump’s only involvement was connecting the parties and instructing the hotel to charge a ‘fair market rate,’ which the hotel did,” said Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump organization said in a statement.
CNN reported the lawsuit as claiming that Rick Gates, “personally managed” discussions with the Trump hotel about event space. Dating back to 2016, Gates had written to Ivanka saying that he was concerned about the committee paying such a large amount of money, $175,000 per day for four days, and how it might look. Others associated with the committee advised against the transaction due to the charges being approximately twice the market rate and the potential negative optics.
“The Inaugural Committee accepted the contract anyway,” the lawsuit alleges.
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, the committee’s event planner and the individual who advised against going through with the payments from the non-profit to the Trump International Hotel, is scheduled to be deposed next week.
For more on the story about Ivanka Trump being deposed about the misuse of inaugural funds, see the video accompanying this article.
(All images above credited to Ivanka Trump / Instagram)
~ Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today / Connect with Richard on Facebook and Twitter
