Ivanka Trump, daughter and adviser to the president of the United States, has testified before the Attorney General’s Office in Washington D.C. in the framework of an investigation into an alleged embezzlement at the inauguration ceremony of the US president in January 2017, according to CNN.
Ivanka Trump testified for about five hours Tuesday to prosecutors handling the case in Washington, DC, who are investigating whether the Trump Organization and the Presidential Inauguration Committee improperly spent more than $ 1 million from donations paying an “extremely excessive price.” “for the use of the Trump Hotel space in the US capital during the inauguration ceremony on January 20.
As part of the investigations, the prosecutors have called the president of the Presidential Inauguration Committee, Tom Barrack, who appeared on November 17, to testify, according to the documents of the process. The Attorney General’s Office has requested documents from Barrack, Ivanka Trump, the first lady, Melania Trump, and Rick Gates, who was the vice chairman of the Presidential Inauguration Committee.
After knowing the statement of Ivanka Trump before the prosecutors in the US capital, the daughter of the US president has denounced from her Twitter account that the investigation is “yet another example of resentment for political reasons” and the “waste of US dollars. taxpayers “.
In addition, she has released on her Twitter account an email message that she sent in December 2016 and in which she asked the Hotel Trump to charge “a fair market price” for its use in the inauguration of the president.
The general counsel of the Trump Organization, Alan Garten, has assured CNN that Ivanka Trump’s “only implication” was to “connect the parties and instruct the hotel to charge a fair market rate.”
According to the lawsuit, Gates “personally managed” the discussions with the Trump Hotel for the payment of the space that would be used in the inauguration. In December 2016, Gates wrote to Ivanka Trump to comment that he was concerned about the image that could result from the Presidential Inauguration Committee paying “a high price” for the use of the Trump Hotel space and the possibility that the media “made big news about it.”
According to the content of the prosecution’s lawsuit, Gates agreed with the hotel’s managing director and members of the Trump family that $ 175,000 per day would be paid to reserve that space for four days.
The event organizer of the Presidential Inauguration Committee, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, was then against the payment agreed with the hotel and informed the committee that those prices were at least double those set by the market.
Washington D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine maintains that Wolkoff even showed “his displeasure” with the offer during an in-person meeting with then-President-elect Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump. “The Inaugural Committee accepted the contract anyway,” the lawsuit says. Wolkoff will have to give a statement to the Prosecutor’s Office next week, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
