„If they lie about something material to an issue in dispute that’s the magic language for charge of perjury.“
The stakes are high for former President Donald Trump and three of his adult children as Eric, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. are slated to take the stand in his civil fraud trial in New York this week.
One of the most anticipated testimonies of the week is that of Ivanka Trump, whom an appeals court ruled should be dropped as a defendant in the case earlier this year over concerns about the statute of limitations. Brothers Eric and Don Jr., while testifying as witnesses, are still defendants in the suit and, along with their father and other Trump Organization executives, were found liable of committing fraud in exaggerating property values on financial statements by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron late last month ahead of the trial’s start.
Former Trump White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews predicted that Ivanka Trump may seek to distance herself from her family’s business dealings on the stand.
„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,“ Matthews told MSNBC host Alex Witt on Sunday. „So I think that she is going to be careful with her words and try to protect her family. But, at the end of the day, something I knew very well from working with Jared [Kushner] and Ivanka in the White House was that they were always concerned with their own reputations first.
„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,'“ she added. „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.
