“She threw him under the bus”: Legal expert says Ivanka’s testimony may backfire on Trump

Ivanka Trump’s testimony in her father and brothers’ New York civil fraud trial hurt her family members far more than it helped them, according to CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen. “She threw him under the bus,” he told host Wolf Blitzer Wednesday evening. “She did not defend these financial statements. She said she didn’t prepare them. She didn’t review them and approve them. So if he was looking to her for help, he didn’t get it. Or a lot of ‘I don’t knows’ and ‘I don’t remembers’ to protect herself.” Eisen also highlighted the “one Perry Mason moment” he spotted in the New York Attorney General team’s questioning: “Because this proceeding has been about dishonesty and New York confronted Ivanka with a personal guarantee. Her father was supposed to make a personal guarantee. They confronted her with evidence that the father turned around and demanded that his kids guarantee him for the guarantee. So it was neither personal nor guarantee.” 

Evidence introduced as Trump testified Wednesday showed that her father struck a deal with Deutsche Bank that required him, in exchange for very low interest rates, to sign a personal guarantee that he’d cover all principal, annual and operating income, and attest that he had a minimum net worth of $2.5 billion. Trump and an organization executive acknowledged in an email exchange that the latter requirement posed a problem for her father, but the former president went on to inform the bank that he had over $4 billion in net worth.