Ivanka Trump sat for a deposition on Tuesday in the D.C. attorney general’s investigation of financial improprieties at President Trump’s 2017 inaugural celebration, a court filing shows.
The document — filed in D.C. superior court on Wednesday by lawyers for the D.C. attorney general — also reveals that longtime Trump confidant and inaugural committee chair Tom Barrack sat for questioning on Nov. 17.
Ivanka commented on the deposition in a tweet in which she said that she told the Trump D.C. hotel to charge the inaugural committee “a fair market rate.”
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) December 3, 2020
Rick Gates, a top inaugural official who has currently embarked on a desperate bid for a pity pardon from President Trump, received a subpoena from the D.C. attorney general in the probe on Oct. 5. The document does not indicate that he has been deposed yet.
An attorney for Gates did not immediately return a request for comment.
D.C. investigators also issued a subpoena to First Lady Melania Trump. The filing also does not indicate whether the first lady has responded.
The outgoing President broke records with his inaugural in typically Trumpian fashion: it was all buck and no bang, taking in and spending millions more than any other inauguration in history, but with fewer events than presidential celebrations which cost half the $106 million of the Trump inaugural.
That huge price tag triggered astonishment, scrutiny, revelations of mismanagement, and investigations at the federal and state levels.
Pressure over the scandal fractured the gilded circles that planned the event. Gates, who pleaded guilty to separate crimes in 2018, reportedly cooperated with Manhattan federal prosecutors in their probe of the event. At the trial of his former paymaster Paul Manafort, Gates copped to siphoning inaugural cash off to himself.
But the probes have also caused drama in more inner sancta of Trumpworld, notably between Melania and her ex-best friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff.
Wolkoff, a Manhattan socialite, ran a vendor that received $26 million in payments from the inauguration committee. Wolkoff claimed in a recent tell-all that Melania threw her under the bus for mismanagement at the inaugural.
Wolkoff has also said that she’s spoken with Manhattan federal prosecutors.
Investigators wrote in the filing that they have also deposed Mickael Damelincourt, managing director of the Trump International Hotel at the D.C. post office.
Read the filing here:
