Court denies Ivanka Trump’s bid to pause testimony after she claimed ‘undue hardship’ if made to appear during school week
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By Jeremy Herb, CNN
(CNN) — A higher court on Thursday denied Ivanka Trump’s request to postpone her upcoming testimony in her father’s civil fraud trial, shortly after she claimed she’d suffer “undue hardship” if forced to appear during a school week.
“Ms. Trump, who resides in Florida with her three minor children, will suffer undue hardship if a stay is denied and she is required to testify at trial in New York in the middle of a school week, in a case she has already been dismissed from, before her appeal is heard,” her attorney argued in part in an appeal filed Thursday.
With the appeal, Trump sought to block New York Judge Arthur Engoron’s previous order for her to testify until an appeal could be heard by the New York appellate court. The appeal also asked the court to pause the entire fraud trial against former President Donald Trump, two of his adult sons and his company until her appeal could be heard.
The motion for a stay was swiftly denied in a filing Thursday night.
Ivanka Trump’s two adult brothers – Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who both helped run the Trump Organization while their father was in the White House – made back-to-back appearances in court earlier Thursday. Former Donald Trump is expected to testify on Monday.
Engoron last week ordered Ivanka Trump to testify Wednesday in the trial, denying a motion from her attorney to quash a subpoena. At the end of the Thursday night filing, Ivanka Trump’s attorney asked the appeals court to stay the ruling requiring her testimony as well as a “stay of the trial.”
Her attorney has argued that the New York civil court has no jurisdiction to compel her testimony because she has not lived or worked in New York since 2017 and she is no longer a co-defendant in the case.
In June, a New York appeals court dismissed Ivanka Trump as a co-defendant, finding the claims against her were too old, because she was not part of an August 2021 agreement between New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office and the Trump Organization to toll the statute of limitations.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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