Donald Trump’s company and his former CFO were indicted Thursday in what a prosecutor called a “sweeping and audacious” tax fraud scheme that saw the Trump executive allegedly receive more than $ 1.7 million in off-the-books compensation, including apartment rent, car payments, and school tuition.
It is the first criminal case that the New York authorities’ two-year investigation of the former president has thrown up.
According to the indictment filed Wednesday and released Thursday, from 2005 to this year, Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg and the Trump Organization misled the state and city on tax matters by conspiring to pay top executives off the books.
Both Weisselberg and lawyers for the Trump Organization have pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutor Carey Dunne described a 15-year scheme “orchestrated by the highest executives.”
Trump himself was not charged at this phase of the investigation, jointly pursued by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both Democrats. Dunne claimed that politics played no role in the decision to press charges.
“Politics has no role in the jury room and I can assure you that it had no role here,” Dunne said.
The indictment says Weisselberg, 73, concealed that he was a resident of New York to avoid the city’s income tax.
The executive was photographed entering a building that houses both the criminal courts and the Manhattan district attorney’s office around 6:20 a.m. Thursday. He was taken to court in the afternoon with his hands handcuffed behind his back.
Weisselberg’s attorneys, Mary Mulligan and Bryan Skarlatos, said in a statement before their appearance that the executive “would fight these charges in court.” Skarlatos later said that Dunne’s statements were misleading regarding his client.
Weisselberg was ordered to surrender his passport after prosecutors deemed him a flight risk with access to private jets to travel abroad. However, he was released without bail and left the court without commenting to the assembled journalists.
A lieutenant for generations of Trump, Weisselberg has an intimate knowledge of the former president’s business and the case could give prosecutors the means to pressure him to cooperate with an ongoing investigation into other aspects of the company’s business.
So far, however, there is no sign that the man regarded by Trump’s daughter Ivanka as a “fiercely loyal” deputy who “has stood by my father and our family’s side” for decades will suddenly turn against them. .
In a statement Thursday, the Trump Organization defended Weisselberg, saying the 48-year-old employee was being used by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office as “a pawn in a scorched earth attempt to harm the former President.”
“This is not justice; it is politics,” the Trump Organization said, arguing that neither the IRS nor any other district attorney would ever think of filing such charges for employee benefits.
Trump did not respond to shouting questions from reporters about the case while visiting Texas on Wednesday. Earlier in the week, he lashed out at New York prosecutors as “rude, disgusting, and totally biased” and said his company’s actions were “standard practice throughout the United States business community, and by no means a crime.”
In court, Trump Organization attorney Alan Futerfas said Dunne’s remarks sounded like a “press release,” but had no further comment.
Vance declined to comment on the case when he arrived in court Thursday, saying only “See you at 2:15”, referring to the scheduled time for Weisselberg’s appearance.
Vance, who will step down from office at the end of the year, has been conducting extensive research on various issues related to Trump and the Trump Organization, such as the silent money payments paid to women on Trump’s behalf and the veracity of valuations. property and tax assessments, among other matters.
Vance fought a long battle to get Trump’s tax records and has been subpoenaing documents and interviewing company executives and other insiders about Trump.
James assigned two attorneys from his office to work with Vance’s team on the criminal investigation as he continues his own civil investigation.
Weisselberg, an intensely private man who lived for years in a modest house on Long Island, came under the scrutiny of Vance investigators, in part, because of questions about his son’s use of a Trump apartment at low or no cost. any cost.
Barry Weisselberg, who ran a Trump-operated ice rink in Central Park, testified in a 2018 divorce filing that the Trump Parc East apartment was a “corporate apartment, so we had no rent.”
Barry’s ex-wife, Jen Weisselberg, has cooperated with both investigations and provided investigators with reams of tax records and other documents. In March, he told The New Yorker that some Trump Organization executive compensation came in the form of apartments and other items and that “only a small portion of his salary is reported.”
The Trump Organization is the business entity through which the former president manages his many business affairs, including his investments in office towers, hotels and golf courses, his many marketing agreements and his television activities. Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric have been in charge of the day-to-day operations of the company since he became president.
Michael Cohen, the former Trump attorney who has been cooperating with the Vance investigation, wrote in his book “Unfair,” that Trump and Weisselberg were “heavy masters at allocating expenses related to non-business matters and finding a way to classify them so that they were not commercial. “
Weisselberg began working for Trump’s father, Fred, after responding to a newspaper ad for a plant accountant in 1973, and worked his way up.
Keeping a low profile, aside from an appearance in 2004 as a guest judge on Trump’s reality TV show “The Apprentice,” Weisselberg was barely mentioned in news articles before Trump began running for president and questions arose about finances and charity of the boss.
Cohen said Weisselberg was the one who decided how to secretly refund a $ 130,000 payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels. The finance chief made headlines again when it was revealed that his signature appeared on one of the refund checks.
Barbara Res, who oversaw the construction of Manhattan’s Trump Tower, says she was surprised to learn of the seemingly important role Weisselberg has played in Trump’s business. She remembers him years ago just collecting rent, paying bills, and doing Trump’s taxes.
“He was the chief accountant, but he wasn’t in the inner circle. He’d come in with his head down, ‘Yes, Mr. Trump. No, Mr. Trump,’ ”Res said.“ He’s the only person I knew who would call him Mr. Trump. Now he’s a big shot. ”
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