Ivanka Trump‘s comeback era keeps getting derailed.
Despite her repeated efforts to distance herself from her father, the former first daughter is once again being dragged into one of his lawsuits. This time, however, it appears to been entirely coincidental, although no less unfortunate.
Immediately after winning the Iowa caucus on Monday, where he earned 20 of the 1,215 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination for president, Donald Trump flew to New York for Day #1 of Civil Trail #2 against journalist E. Jean Carroll.
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It’s unknown when Ivanka will be called to testify, but her name has already been brought up in testimony from other witnesses.
To make a long story short, Carroll successfully sued Trump last year. A jury awarded her $5 million after finding him liable for sexually abusing her in the mid 1990s in a high-end department store and then defaming her after she went public about it in 2019.
Immediately following the verdict, Trump trashed Carroll to the media, calling her a “whack job” and saying she was telling a “made up story,” even though a jury had literally just determined it to be true. This resulted in Carroll filing another defamation lawsuit against the ex-president.
Which is how we ended up to yesterday, when Trump and Carroll once again came face to face in a New York courtroom for jury selection in the new trail.
Ivanka Trump was partying with Kim Kardashian at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas grand opening.
Now, here’s where Ivanka enters the picture.
As lawyers from both camps vetted the prospective jurors, it was discovered that one of them was actually an ex-employee of the former first daughter, back when she was still designing shoes and handbags for discount department stores.
Awkward!
Journalist Molly Crane-Newman was in the courtroom covering the trial for New York Daily News. She broke the news on social media.
“A woman says she worked for Ivanka Trump’s company doing communications work in 2017/18 and also says it won’t impact her ability to be fair to both sides,” she tweeted.
One man says he’s worked on some pro bono cases at Robbie Kaplan’s firm, but it won’t impact his ability to be fair.
A woman says she worked for Ivanka Trump’s company doing communications work in 2017/18 and also says it won’t impact her ability to be fair to both sides.— Molly Crane-Newman (@molcranenewman) January 16, 2024
The prospective juror’s name and exact position at Ivanka’s company have not been reported. It’s also unclear whether she was ultimately selected to be on the nine-person panel.
Speaking to Newsweek, former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani opined that the potential juror’s past employment under Ivanka likely wouldn’t be enough to have them excused from the courtroom.
“Ivanka isn’t a party to the case, or even a witness, in the case against Donald Trump,” Rahmani said. “If the potential [juror] says she can’t be fair and impartial, that would be grounds for the judge to remove her for cause. But otherwise, the lawyers will have to use one of their limited peremptory strikes to get rid of the juror.”
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who has been overseeing the trial, said it will likely last three to five days. Opening statements were yesterday and testimony began earlier today.
Trump initially tried having the whole thing postponed so he could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral in Florida on Thursday, but Kaplan turned down the request since the 77-year-old ex-president is under no obligation to attend this week’s hearings.
Also, the funeral doesn’t seem to be impacting his campaign schedule in the slightest. He’s still been holding rallies and giving speeches all over the place, while his grieving wife has been left to mourn the loss of her mother alone at Mar-a-Lago.
Just last night, he was on a stage in New Hampshire gleefully accepting the endorsement of transphobic businessman and 9/11 truther Vivek Ramaswamy.
“We’re in the middle of a war in this country,” Ramaswamy told a crowd in Atkinson, New Hampshire. “Right now, we need a commander-in-chief who will lead us to victory in this war. This is a 1776 moment right now!”
Ramaswamy’s final pitch to voters was an attack on transgender people. He finished a distant fourth place.
Since he’s already been found liable for defamation, the jury will decide how much Trump must pay Carroll. She is seeking an additional $10 million to the $5 million she was awarded last year.
As for Ivanka, she hasn’t commented on any of her father’s trails, nor has she remarked on the prospective juror who used to work for her. Instead, she’s been busy posting birthday messages to her husband Jared on Instagram and pretending like they’re not one of the most loathed couples in America.
