Quash my subpoena, Ivanka Trump tells NY judge, in asking not to testify against her father.

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Quash my subpoena, Ivanka Trump tells NY judge, in asking not to testify against her father.
Ivanka Trump speaks at a campaign event with her father, then-President Donald Trump, in Kenosha, Wis., on Nov. 2, 2020.Morry Gash/AP Photo
  • Ivanka Trump has been subpoenaed to testify in her dad's ongoing civil fraud trial in New York.
  • She is fighting the subpoena, arguing through her lawyers that it is overly broad.
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Ivanka Trump is fighting hard against being forced to testify against her father and brothers in the ongoing Trump civil fraud trial in New York.

On the eve of a Friday deadline, by which she must agree to take the stand as early as later this month, her lawyer made a lengthy objection to her subpoena.

The objection, in court papers filed late Thursday, calls the New York Attorney General's Office subpoena overly broad.

It also accuses the AG's office of botching how it served Ivanka Trump with her subpoena, alleging a technical foul her lawyer says should invalidate her obligation to testify.

The technical foul? Copies of the subpoena was sent to three of her corporate addresses, but not to her personally, said the lawyer, Bennet J. Moskowitz.

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"Each of these three subpoenas listed Ms. Trump's name only in the 'to' line above the LLCs' names and the names and addresses of their registered agents," Moskowitz wrote.

"The body of the Subpoenas requested a 'personal appearance' 'to give testimony' at trial but did not identify any specific employee, officer, or director that the NYAG wanted to appear," he wrote.

The former president's eldest daughter was originally named as a defendant in Attorney General Letitia James' lawsuit, but her name was removed earlier this year.

A state appellate panel noted that she had ceased all Trump Organization responsibilities in early 2017, when she followed her father to Washington, and so the AG's claims against her were barred under statute of limitations grounds.

Still, she is central to the case against Trump and four of the company's longstanding executives, including her brothers Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump. These five remaining defendants and are not barred by the statute of limitations, because the AG alleges they continued a course of fraudulent action during the Trump administration and beyond.

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Ivanka was Trump Org's executive vice president for development and acquisitions through 2016. In that role, she negotiated and secured hundreds of millions of dollars in financing for Trump's properties, including the Old Post Office hotel project in Washington, DC, the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago, and the Trump National Doral golf course in Miami.

James alleges that Trump and his company used fraudulently exaggerated net-worth statements in winning favorable interest rates and other benefits from lenders, particularly Deutsche Bank, for which Ivanka Trump was her father's primary point-woman.

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