Senior presidential adviser Ivanka Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to assert that she was entangled in a "politically motivated demonstration of vindictiveness & waste of taxpayer dollars."
"This week I spent 5+ hours in deposition with the Democrat D.C. AG's office where they questioned the rates charged by the Trump Hotel at the inauguration," she tweeted.
"I shared with them an email from 4 years ago where I sent them instruction to the hotel to charge 'a fair market rate' (see below) which the hotel then did."
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) December 3, 2020
The Washington DC attorney general, Karl Racine, appeared on MSNBC host Rachel Maddow's show later that day and slammed the claims made by the president's daughter as a mischaracterization of events.
"With all due respect to Ivanka Trump, what she put out today was highly misleading and, at best, only a part of the story," he told Maddow.
Racine noted that "days after" Ivanka Trump's referenced email, dated December 14, "there was clearly an attempt to pay a lot more than the market price."
Racine highlighted that Wolkoff, who published “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady" and had formerly worked as a White House aide, sounded the alarm and issued emails to Ivanka Trump and other presidential employees concerning "the prices that the Trump Hotel was seeking to charge the inauguration committee."
"Interestingly, [Ivanka] Trump does not cite any email after Mrs. Wolkoff's red alarm email," he said.
According to Racine, the committee "was charged at extraordinarily high levels" and, on one day, "paid $175,000 for full use of the hotel's event space, including use of a large ballroom for half of a day." A second non-profit booked the ballroom for the other half of the day and allegedly only paid $5,000 for use of the room.
"Doesn't sound like market rate to me," he noted.
