Compelled to testify against her father and brothers, Ivanka Trump's voice is clear, quiet, and cautious

• Ivanka Trump took the stand Wednesday in her father and brothers' civil fraud trial in New York.
• She was her father's top loan negotiator.

Ivanka Trump took the stand as New York's final direct-case witness against her father and brothers Wednesday, sticking to the company line by testifying she had only a dim memory of — and a hands-off relationship to — the net-worth statements at the center of the fraud trial.

New York Attorney General Letitia James alleges that over the course of a decade, Donald Trump's annual net-worth statements — 30-page estimates used to win favorable terms on loans and insurance — inflated his actual worth by as much as $3.6 billion in a single year.

But in key morning testimony, Ivanka Trump repeatedly denied having any role in or recollection of the statements, even though they were crucial to the securing and maintaining of hundreds of millions of dollars in loans that she herself negotiated.

"Not that I am aware of, no," Ivanka Trump answered quietly, when asked if she had any role in preparing the statements.

"I don't recall that, no" she said, her voice still soft, when asked if she reviewed the statements before they were finalized.

She also tried — but ultimately failed — to distance herself from a 2011 celebratory email she sent other Trump Organization executives when Deutsche Bank offered a low-interest rate on a $12 million loan for her father's Miami golf course.

The low rate, James alleges, was secured through fraud.

"And you say, quote, 'It doesn't get better than this, let's discuss asap,'" Louis Solomon, an assistant attorney general, asks Trump, showing her the email in hard copy and on an overhead screen.

"No," she said at first.

There was then a brief, unsuccessful objection by defense lawyers, who complained that the email in question was in a chain that included another mail that was never sent.

The objection was denied, and Trump was asked again about her celebratory email.

"Does this refresh your recollection on whether you thought this was a good proposal for the Trump Organization?" Solomon asked.

"I think what we ended up doing was slightly different," she answered. "But yes, I thought generally the deal was positive."

"That could have been a simple yes or no," the judge cut in before moving testimony along.

At another point, Ivanka Trump was asked to identify her father's signature on several documents from 2016, in which he guaranteed the truth of his net-worth statements to Deutsche Bank.

"No," she said, when asked if she recalled the so-called "net-worth covenant" on the overhead screen.

"I do, yes," she said of recognizing her father's signature on the document.

The day began with high fashion and strained levity.

"Who's she?" the presiding judge, state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, quipped to thin laughter in the courtroom, when Solomon called her to the stand.

Trump entered the courtroom in a trim black suit, walking carefully on black stilletos of at least six-inch height.

She testified in a clear, calm, quiet voice – so quiet that the judge early on asked her to move her microphone closer.

Solomon began by taking her through a series of questions concerning her role as the Trump Organization's top loan negotiator. In the five years before she left to join her father's administration in Washington, D.C., in 2017, she secured more than $400 million in low-interest loans for Trump Organization development projects from Deutsche Bank.

"I haven't thought about GAAP since college," she said with a smile, echoing the earlier testimony of her brothers concerning the generally accepted accounting principles her father's annual net-worth statements promised to adhere to.

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