Donald Trump’s children have been front and center in his New York civil fraud trial this week, with Ivanka Trump being the latest to be brought into the circus.
Other members of the family—specifically Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump—were named as co-defendants in the case brought by Attorney General Leticia James. Ivanka was originally named a co-defendant but she was removed by an appeals court due to statute of limitations. Donald’s favorite child was an executive vice president for development and acquisitions at the Trump Organization until the beginning of 2017. She then went on to become an unqualified adviser to her dad-boss when he was in the White House.
Ivanka is scheduled to testify in her family’s trial next week and she is trying to delay, delay, delay. Her brothers have already testified. In a major Karen move, Ivanka asked a New York appeals court to stay the ENTIRE trial as she awaits the ruling for her appeal on the judge’s order requiring her to testify.
Ivanka has now claimed that testifying will provide an “undue hardship” in part because she’s being asked to appear in the middle of the school week.
“Ms. Trump, who resides in Florida with her three minor children, will suffer undue hardship if a stay is denied and she is required to testify at trial in New York in the middle of a school week, in a case she has already been dismissed from, before her appeal is heard,” her attorney Bennett Moskowitz wrote in an appeal notice to the court.
Literally no one believes Ivanka Trump doesn’t already have childcare resources in place, or that she couldn’t find some for the single day of her court appearance. Millions of parents without her immense rich/white/famous/etc. level of privilege do it every single day, and she’s done so plenty of times in the past when it suited her.
The fact that Ivanka and her legal team thought this could be seen as a serious argument shows that they are detached from reality, desperate, or both.
In her response filing to the court, Attorney General James called these arguments “utterly meritless.” She noted that Ivanka has property in New York and does transactions in the state. She reiterated how important the knowledge Ivanka possesses is to the ongoing trial, writing that she has “firsthand knowledge of issues that are central to the ongoing trial.”
James also added, “Ms. Trump’s mere need to attend trial for a single day to testify truthfully is not itself a serious harm that warrants emergency relief.”
Included in the people who didn’t take this argument seriously was the judge in the case, who denied her appeal, meaning she has to travel to New York next week to testify.
(featured image: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
