MANHATTAN (CN) — Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka will not have to face the New York attorney general’s civil claims against the Trump family regarding its business dealings, a state appellate court ruled Tuesday.
Overturning a decision from the Manhattan Supreme Court, the Appellate Division was unanimous that the claims against Ivanka Trump are time-barred and that the lower court must now consider whether to limit the case against the other defendants.
Speaking on behalf of Ivanka Trump’s legal team, attorney Chris Kise called the ruling a first step in “ending a case that should have never been filed.”
“Going forward,” Kise said in an email, “we remain confident that once all the real facts are known, there will be no doubt President Trump has built an extraordinarily successful business empire and has simply done nothing other than generate tremendous profits for those financial institutions involved in the transactions at issue in the litigation.”
The 5-page order notes simply that the claims against Ivanka accrued before February 6, 2016, putting them beyond the statute of limitations.
“We leave the Supreme Court to determine, if necessary, the full range of defendants bound by the tolling agreement. The record before us, however, indicates that defendant Ivanka Trump was no longer within the agreement’s definition of ‘Trump Organization’ by the date the tolling agreement was executed,” the judges wrote. “Thus, all claims against her should have been dismissed as untimely.”
Representatives for Attorney General Letitia James did not return a request for comment. She brought the lawsuit in September 2022 after a yearslong investigation into financial practices at the Trump Organization. Donald Trump is accused of falsely inflating his net worth by billions of dollars and beefing up property values to get more favorable loan terms.
He was named as a defendant alongside his three eldest children, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump, along with longtime executives Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney.
Separate from this civil action, meanwhile, Weisselberg was brought up on criminal charges related to his receipt of more than $1.7 million in off-the-books compensation from the Trump Organization to cover the cost of his housing and cars, as well as school tuition for members of his family. The longtime Trump Organization finance chief pleaded guilty in August 2022 to tax charges and was sentenced to five months in prison. He must repay nearly $2 million in taxes.
When the Trump Organization went on trial for its part in the conduct, Weisselberg was the government's star witness. Those proceedings ended with a guilty verdict and $1.6 million in fines.
Trial in the civil case against the Trumps is set for October, with Justice Arthur F. Engoron presiding in Manhattan Supreme Court.
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