Isn’t that law that protects spouses from testifying against their spouses like it would Ivana from testifying against Trump?

1. What the law governing spousal testimony actually is

The central legal precedent at the federal level is the Supreme Court’s decision in Trammel v. United States, which transformed an older doctrine that had broadly disqualified spouses from testifying into a more limited “testimonial privilege” that can be invoked only by the witness‑spouse and is not an absolute bar to adverse testimony ^[1]. That ruling means a criminal defendant cannot automatically prevent his or her spouse from testifying; if the spouse chooses to testify, courts have allowed that testimony even where promises of leniency or immunity are involved ^[1].

2. How that plays out in Trump family litigation and reporting

Defense teams sometimes invoke spousal privilege claims in attempts to block questioning—recently, lawyers argued that Ivanka Trump could not be compelled to discuss emails with Jared Kushner under spousal privilege, a claim a judge rejected before she testified in New York litigation ^[4]. Reporting about earlier family disputes—such as accounts of Ivana Trump’s deposition and allegations from the late 1980s—provoked renewed attention to these legal concepts, but those episodes involved civil divorce negotiations, deposition tactics and private settlement terms as much as criminal evidentiary rules ^{[5] [6]}.

3. Criminal exceptions, historical context and related crimes

The interplay of marital privilege and criminal law has been shaped by broader shifts in criminal jurisprudence: for example, state laws once protected spouses from prosecution for marital rape in some jurisdictions, but those marital‑rape exemptions were largely dismantled by the early 1990s after reform efforts and court rulings; commentators note that by the 1990s the legal landscape had changed substantially from the earlier era when such defenses were more common ^{[5] [7]}. Importantly, Trammel’s limitation on blanket immunity for spouses means that where a crime is at issue, courts will not treat marriage as an impenetrable evidentiary shield in federal proceedings ^[1].

4. Private contracts and confidentiality agreements versus testimonial privilege

High‑profile divorces and settlements sometimes rely on nondisclosure or confidentiality covenants that condition financial benefits on silence; Donald Trump’s divorce agreement with Ivana included such a confidentiality clause, and courts have seen disputes over whether those private contracts can forestall speech or testimony—an enforcement mechanism distinct from evidentiary privilege in court ^{[2] [3]}. Such agreements may create civil remedies for breach, but they do not create a constitutional evidentiary right exempting a spouse from being called to testify where a court rules the privilege unavailable.

5. What this means in practice—courtroom reality versus popular shorthand

Popular summaries that suggest a universal “spousal immunity” preventing someone like Ivana from testifying against Donald oversimplify two separate threads: the evidentiary privilege that courts interpret and limit under cases like Trammel, and private settlement or nondisclosure agreements that can create civil obligations of silence but are not the same as a legal shield against compelled testimony ^{[1] [2]}. Reporting has highlighted both strands—judicial rulings rejecting spousal privilege claims in recent Trump‑related proceedings and the existence of confidentiality clauses in prior divorce settlements—but the law does not support a categorical rule that spouses can never be required to testify ^{[4] [2]}.