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Ivanka Trump will no longer have to face a fraud claim brought by the New York attorney-general against her father Donald Trump, two of her siblings and the family’s real estate businesses, an appeals court ruled on Tuesday.
The 41-year old was originally named as a defendant in the civil lawsuit that alleged a scheme in which Trump entities lied about the value of properties to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in loans on favourable terms.
The case from New York attorney-general Letitia James claimed that Ivanka Trump, a Wharton graduate who was an executive vice-president at the Trump Organization until January 2017, had “knowingly participated” in the attempt to grossly exaggerate Donald Trump’s personal fortune by billions of dollars and convey “false and misleading impressions to financial counterparties”.
Lawyers for Ivanka Trump, who left the company when she joined her father’s administration in Washington, argued she had no involvement in “creating or disseminating” statements made to Deutsche Bank by the company, and that the event in question occurred too long ago for her to be held liable.
A three-judge panel in New York agreed, ruling that “all claims against [Ivanka Trump] should have been dismissed as untimely”, even though she continued to receive an income from the Trump Organization following her departure.
The claims against Donald Trump, sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr, and the family’s businesses were allowed to proceed to trial, which is scheduled to take place in Manhattan in October.
As well as seeking $250mn in damages, the New York attorney-general’s lawsuit is attempting to bar the remaining Trump defendants from ever acting as an officer or director of a corporation in the state again.
Ivanka Trump’s successful extrication from the attorney-general’s case comes after she and her husband Jared Kushner, also a former presidential adviser to Donald Trump, seemingly declined to play an active role in his re-election campaign.
In an Instagram post soon after Donald Trump announced he would run for the Republican nomination last year, Ivanka Trump wrote she was “choosing to prioritise” her young children and did not “plan to be involved in politics”.
Soon after her father was charged by the Manhattan district attorney over hush money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels in March, Ivanka Trump wrote that she was “pained” for both her father and country, and that she appreciated “the voices across the political spectrum expressing support and concern”.
A lawyer for Ivanka Trump did not respond to a request for comment.
Chris Kise, a lawyer who has represented Donald Trump in a separate federal criminal case over the alleged mishandling of classified documents, said the appellate division’s decision “represents the first step towards ending a case that should have never been filed”.
“We remain confident that once all the real facts are known, there will be no doubt President Trump has built an extraordinarily successful business empire and has simply done nothing other than generate tremendous profits for those financial institutions involved in the transactions at issue in the litigation.”
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