Attorney General for Washington D.C. Karl Racine called Ivanka Trump’s public comments on her deposition “highly misleading” after she released a statement on Thursday.
Ivanka sat for a deposition with investigators from Racine’s office on Tuesday, as part of a lawsuit against the Trump Organization and Presidential inaugural committee alleging the misuse of inaugural funds during the transition.
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On Thursday, Ivanka Trump confirmed that she was deposed:
“This week I spent 5+ hours in a deposition with the Democrat D.C. AG’s office where they questioned the rates charged by the Trump Hotel at the inauguration. I shared with them an email from 4 years ago where I sent instructions to the hotel to charge ‘a fair market rate. This ‘inquiry’ is another politically motivated demonstration of vindictiveness & waste of taxpayer dollars,” Ivanka said in a statement.
Attached to her statement was a screenshot of an email dated Dec. 14, 2016, in which she instructed Mickael Damelincourt, the managing director at Trump International Hotel in Washington, to “call and negotiate. It should be a fair market rate.”
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But, A.G. Racine told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that Ivanka’s comments on the deposition were misleading and not the full story.
“With all due respect to Ivanka Trump, what she put out today was highly misleading, and at best, part of the story.”
Racine told Maddow that Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, Melania Trump’s former adviser, who was a member of the inaugural committee at that time, was concerned about how much they were charging the inauguration committee.
She advised against the transaction because the charges were at least twice the market rate. But, the committee accepted the contract anyway.
Racine shared the email on Twitter, dated Dec. 17, 2016 where Wolkoff suggested price caps for rental fee, food and reception. It was much lower than the $175,000/ day for four days charged to the inaugural committee.
