Ivanka Trump is Deposed in Inauguration Lawsuit Against Trump Hotel & Presidential Inaugural Committee
Ivanka Trump was deposed Tuesday in the Washington, DC attorney general’s lawsuit late Tuesday concerning her father’s inauguration.
President Trump’s daughter, who is also said to be under consideration by the president for a preemptive pardon, sat for her deposition in the offices of the attorney general.
The lawsuit concerns stem from a January court suit filed by a DC attorney for the alleged misuse of inaugural funds for a “nonprofit enforcement matter."
The Trump Organization and the nonprofit 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) were jointly sued by the DC Attorney General’s Office in January, with allegations that both organizations misappropriated more than $1 million that had been raised by the nonprofit.
It is alleged the nonprofit “grossly overpaid” for the event in Trump’s own Trump Hotel in Washington for the 2017 inauguration events.
The court filing documents allege “the waste of nonprofit PIC” that included “more than $1 million in improper payments by PIC to defendant Trump Hotel for event space during the week of the 2017 inauguration.”
Witness Stephanie Winston Wolkoff is now under a protective order and will be deposed on December 9 with a specific request for a 1 1/2 hour deposition. The protective order issued by the court provided that “the court may, for good cause, issue an order to protect a party or person from annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden.”
Wolkoff has been sharply criticized by President Trump and his allies in the press for many months.
The allocation of the time Wolkoff will be deposed has ignited a heated argument between the Office of the Attorney General and the Trump defendants, with the attorneys for the defendants arguing Wolkoff’s testimony would butt into their own time for the deposition.
However, since Wolkoff is not a party but instead a third-party witness, the defendants cannot reduce her time with the attorney general’s office for her deposition.
As an event planner, Wolkoff was a key contractor for the inaugural events at Trump Hotel. Wolkoff expressed deep concerns about PIC holding the event at the then president-elect’s own Trump Hotel, and she was also upset over the excessive charges by the hotel for the event.
Court documents show Wolkoff “expressed the concerns to president-elect Donald Trump; Ivanka Trump and PICs deputy chairman, Rick Gates, among others.” She also simultaneously backed up her complaints with an email to both Gates and Ivanka Trump in December 2016.
In her strongly-worded email, Wolkoff asked both Ivanka Trump and Gates to “please take into consideration that when this is audited it will become public knowledge that locations were also gifted and costs underwritten to lower rental fees.”
In response to her subpoena, Wolkoff shared over 18,950 pages of documents to the Office of the Attorney General in DC.
Wolkoff is also the author of a book about planning the inauguration event and working with First Lady Melania Trump. In October 2020, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice sued Wolkoff for allegedly “violating a non-disclosure agreement,” which is unusual according to the lawsuit files since the book did not disclose classified information.
Tom Barrack, chairman of the inaugural committee, was deposed on November 17, according to the court filing.
