Ivanka Trump Says She Is Being Harassed!

Stop the presses, Ivanka Trump is feeling attacked.

In a Thursday night tweet, President Trump’s favorite daughter expressed disgust towards a New York Times article implicating her in the New York State fraud investigations into Trump’s businesses. According to the Times, the investigations—one civil, one criminal—have expanded to include “tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees.” Sources claim that some of that money appears to have gone to Ivanka.

“This is harassment pure and simple,” Ivanka tweeted. “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.”

She added that politicians are simply “ruthless” and posted another tweet linking to a 2018 New York Times article about New York State Attorney General Letitia James and her longtime quest to investigate Trump.

“This fishing expedition is very clearly part of a continued political vendetta,” Ivanka wrote.

Here’s what the New York Times had to say about Ivanka’s involvement in this mess (emphasis ours):

Among the revelations was that Mr. Trump reduced his taxable income by deducting about $26 million in fees to unidentified consultants as a business expense on numerous projects between 2010 and 2018.

Some of those fees appear to have been paid to Ms. Trump, The Times found. On a 2017 disclosure she filed when joining the White House as a presidential adviser, she reported receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as taxing deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Hawaii and Vancouver, British Columbia.

The Times went on to note that, “Ms. Trump was an executive officer of the Trump companies that made the payments, meaning she appears to have been treated as a consultant while also working for the company.” The Internal Revenue Service’s guidelines on this practice are vague and wishy-washy, but the IRS can reject attempts to write off consulting fees if it appears that tax evasion is the primary motivator.

According to the Associated Press, as long as Ivanka Trump paid income taxes on the consulting fees, this won’t get her into trouble. But whether the Trump Organization’s tax scheme was acceptable to the IRS is another question.

While this may ultimately be a non-issue for Ivanka personally and more of a blunder on her father’s business, it’s always fun to see the First Daughter take a pause from pretending to care about women in Africa and dolphins and, instead, play daddy’s favorite attack dog. Arf.