While Ivanka Trump must testify at her father's New York civil fraud trial, ex-Trump White House official Sarah Matthews revealed on Sunday her predictions on how the former president's daughter will testify.
The trial stems from a lawsuit New York Attorney General Letitia James filed last year, alleging that Trump and top executives at The Trump Organization conspired to increase his net worth by billions of dollars on financial statements provided to banks and insurers to make deals and secure loans. Ivanka Trump, former executive vice president at The Trump Organization, was initially named as a defendant in the fraud case before an appeals court ruled to dismiss her from the lawsuit because the claims against her were outside the statute of limitations. However on Friday, Engoron ruled that she must testify in person. The former president and his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump along with Ivanka, are all set to testify starting later this week, according to the Associated Press.
Trump, who is campaigning for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and is the current frontrunner, has denied any wrongdoing and has called the trial politically motivated.
While speaking with MSNBC, Matthews, Trump's former White House deputy press secretary who resigned from the position after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot revealed her prediction for how Ivanka's testimony will transpire in the courtroom, explaining how valuable it will be in the case against her father.
Matthews explained that while the dynamic within the Trump family is complex, Ivanka is going to be careful with her words, adding that she has a huge influence on her father.
"They are a close-knit family and while they have their issues, I don't know that she is going to want to put them in a bad situation and, obviously, because then it will reflect back on her and will look poorly on her and her father. So I think that she is going to be careful with her words and try to protect her family," Matthews said.
She added by revealing that she believes beyond trying to protect her family, Ivanka will also be very concerned with how her testimony will come across in the media.
"So, they were always trying to make themselves look good in the media and I think that she is going to be very concerned with how she is coming across with her testimony and be very guarded. So that's probably going to be a bigger factor than trying to protect her family," Matthews said.
The former deputy press secretary explained that from her previous experience working in the White House with Ivanka and Jared Kushner, Ivanka's husband and former Trump adviser, that they "were always concerned with their own reputations first."
"At the end of the day, something I knew very well from working with Jared and Ivanka in the White House. We saw this in news stories all the time where, if Trump would enact a policy or tweet something vile out, then in the reporting it would always be, 'Oh, Jared and Ivanka disagreed though or they tried to push back,'" Matthews said.
Meanwhile, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, a legal analyst for NBC and MSNBC and frequent Trump critic, suggested that things are "about to go from bad to worse" for the former president when he and his three children testify in the civil trial.
"Do you really think Don Jr., Eric and Ivanka are going to be able to withstand the rigors of examination and cross-examination? They are hostile witnesses, they will be cross-examined by New York Attorney General Letitia James' team," he said during his online show Justice Matters on Sunday.
Newsweek has reached out to Ivanka Trump via email for further comment.
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