Donald Trump biographer Tim O’Brien on Monday predicted prosecutors will paint Ivanka Trump “into a corner factually” when she finally testifies at her father’s civil fraud trial in New York next week.
The former president’s daughter had attempted to get out of taking the stand, arguing she’d already been dismissed from the case. But Judge Arthur Engoron prevailed and she’ll now follow her father and brothers, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, in giving evidence.
MSNBC’s Joy Reid asked O’Brien how Ivanka Trump’s testimony may destabilise her father in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against him, sons Don Jr and Eric and the Trump Organisation. They are accused of overstating the value of assets to obtain loans and complete deals.
Trump “prizes Ivanka” as an “Aryan trope he can parade around,” O’Brien replied. Trump had been “embarrassed by his boys to a certain extent” with them acting as “fenceposts,” while Ivanka Trump “made sure to stay in his good graces, while not going completely off the reservation in any way,” he added.
Ivanka Trump, though, has “never been as robustly in his corner and as completely MAGA as the boys are,” said O’Brien.
With her testimony, “it won’t really matter what her allegiances are or how she wants to play her father’s graces,” he continued.
“She’s going to have to figure out whether or not she wants to perjure herself in a courtroom and whether or not the fact pattern is just completely damning in her own role that Donald Trump and his sons and she have all played,” O’Brien added. “Which is to routinely and artificially inflate the value of Trump’s holding or to deflate them in order to cheat the tax man or goad banks into lending him money, depending on what their preferences are.”