Ivanka Trump echoed her father's rhetoric on Thursday night after the New York Times broke a new story about the criminal and civil investigations surrounding the family business.
The Times reported:
Two separate New York State fraud investigations into President Trump and his businesses, one criminal and one civil, have expanded to include tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees, some of which appear to have gone to Ivanka Trump, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
"This is harassment pure and simple," Ivanka said in a tweet linking to the story. "This 'inquiry' by NYC democrats is 100% motivated by politics, publicity and rage. They know very well that there's nothing here and that there was no tax benefit whatsoever. These politicians are simply ruthless."
Dismissing any legitimate legal scrutiny as "harassment" is exactly how the president has attacked those who have attempted to hold him accountable, including former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office. But previous reports have found that the family business, the Trump Organization, really has been involved in potentially corrupt and illegal behavior, but they have managed to escape serious consequences. Serious questions have also been raised about the legality of the Trump's taxes, based on reporting and publicly available information. It may be that only now, with the family at the center of the U.S. politics and the media scrutinizing their history, that investigators have become bold enough to actually pursue serious charges.
Ivanka Trump's comments are also highly hypocritical because her father has openly made the case that the Justice Department should pursue charges against his political enemies. He was impeached for pressuring Ukraine to investigate now-President-elect Joe Biden. And the Mueller Report revealed that he directed former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reopen investigations into Hillary Clinton in 2017, which he did.
The Times reported that the Trump Organization probes have advanced recently.
"The inquiries — a criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., and a civil one by the state attorney general, Letitia James — are being conducted independently," the report found. "But both offices issued subpoenas to the Trump Organization in recent weeks for records related to the fees, the people said."
Since the Trumps would be aware of such subpoenas, Ivanka's tweet can be read as confirmation of the report. The report does also note that there's "no indication that his daughter is a focus of either inquiry."
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