December 4th – U.S. prosecutors have recently investigated the case of Trump’s misuse of funds at the 2017 inauguration ceremony and subpoenaed Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
On the 3rd local time, Ivanka responded, saying that he had spent more than five hours testifying and calling the investigation “politically motivated”.
According to several foreign media such as the The Hill, on the 3rd local time, Ivanka issued a statement on social media, saying: “This week, I spent more than five hours testifying at the Democratic Party’s office in Washington, D.C., and they questioned the room fees charged by Trump Hotel at the inauguration ceremony. I shared an email with them 4 years ago.
In the mail, I instructed the hotel to charge a ‘fair market price’.” Ivanka also believes that the investigation is “another politically motivated revenge and a waste of taxpayers’ money”.
U.S. media noted that Ivanka also attached a screenshot of the email on December 14, 2016, in which she asked Michael Damerancott, the general manager of Trump International Hotel in Washington, to “call and discuss” and set a “fair market price”.
According to an earlier report by CNN, a court document showed that Ivanka gave testimony to investigators of the Washington, D.C. Attorney General’s Office on the 1st. As part of the lawsuit, Tom Barak, chairman of the Presidential Inauguration Committee, also testified on November 17. Investigators also summoned the first lady of the United States Melania and former vice chairman Rick Gates of the inaugural committee.
The document shows that Gates “personally arranged” the event venue at the Trump Hotel. In December 2016, Gates wrote to Ivanka, saying that he was “worried that the high payment of fees to the Trump Tower by the Presidential Inaugural Committee would cause a sensation and that the media would make a big deal of it.”
After that, Gates agreed with the hotel’s general manager and members of the Trump family to pay $175,000 to reserve a four-day room for the committee. Stephanie Winston Volkov, the committee’s event planner, opposed the deal and accused the price of at least twice the market price.
U.S. prosecutors began to investigate Trump’s inauguration funds as early as February 2019. In January this year, the Washington, D.C. Attorney General’s Office sued the Trump Organization and the Presidential Inauguration Committee, saying that they misused more than $1 million to “overpay” the venue fees for the 2017 presidential inauguration. In the past few weeks, investigators have called a number of witnesses one after another,
