What you should know
- Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, was sentenced Wednesday for lying under oath in the former president’s civil fraud case in New York.
- Weisselberg, 76, pleaded guilty last month to two counts of perjury. The former CFO admitted lying when he testified that he had little knowledge of how Trump’s Manhattan penthouse came to be valued on his financial statements at nearly three times its actual size.
- This is his second time behind bars. Last year he served 100 days in prison for evading taxes on $1.7 million in company profits, including a free Manhattan apartment and luxury cars.
NEW YORK — Allen Weisselberg, former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, was sentenced Wednesday for lying under oath in former President Donald Trump’s civil fraud case in New York.
Weisselberg, 76, was sentenced to five months in jail after pleading guilty last month to two counts of perjury. The former CFO admitted lying when he testified that he had little knowledge of how Trump’s Manhattan penthouse came to be valued on his financial statements at nearly three times its actual size.
This is his second time behind bars. Last year he served 100 days in prison for evading taxes on $1.7 million in company profits, including a free Manhattan apartment and luxury cars.
Now, he would once again be exchanging his life as a retiree in Florida for another stay at the famous Rikers Island prison complex in New York City.
The two cases highlight Weisselberg’s unwavering loyalty to Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Trump’s family employed Weisselberg for nearly 50 years and then gave him a $2 million severance package when tax charges led him to retire. The company continues to pay his legal bills.
Weisselberg twice testified in trials that went poorly for Trump, but each time he took pains to suggest that his boss had committed no serious crime. His plea deal does not require him to testify in Trump’s criminal trial over hush money payments, which is scheduled to begin with jury selection on Monday.
In accepting a five-month sentence, prosecutors cited Weisselberg’s age and his willingness to admit wrongdoing. In New York, perjury is a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison. Prosecutors promised not to prosecute Weisselberg for other crimes he may have committed in connection with his employment with the Trump Organization.
The sentence against Weisselberg would be similar to his previous case, in which he was ordered to serve five months in jail but qualified for release after a little more than three months of good behavior. Before that, he had no criminal record.
Trump’s lawyers took issue with Weisselberg’s perjury prosecution, accusing the Manhattan district attorney’s office of deploying “unethical and violent tactics against a not guilty man in his 70s” while turning a “blind eye” to the allegations. perjury allegations against Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer who is now a key prosecution witness in the hush money case.
A message seeking comment was left with Weisselberg’s attorney, Seth Rosenberg.
What is the case about?
Weisselberg pleaded guilty on March 4. He admitted lying under oath on three occasions while testifying in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against Trump: in depositions in July 2020 and May 2023 and on the witness stand at last October’s trial. However, to avoid violating probation in his tax case, he agreed to plead guilty only to charges related to his 2020 deposition testimony.
The size of Trump’s penthouse was a key issue in the civil fraud case.
Trump valued the apartment in his financial statements from at least 2012 to 2016 as measuring 30,000 square feet. A former Trump real estate executive testified that Weisselberg provided the figure. The former executive said that when he asked about the size of the apartment in 2012, Weisselberg responded: “It’s pretty big. “I think it’s about 30,000 square feet.”
However, state attorneys noted, Weisselberg received an email earlier that year with an attachment from 1994 that pegged Trump’s apartment at 10,996 square feet. Weisselberg testified that he remembered the email but not the attachment and that he did not “walk in knowing the size” of the apartment.
After Forbes magazine published an article in 2017 questioning the size of Trump’s apartment, its estimated value on his financial statement dropped from $327 million to approximately $117 million.
While Weisselberg was testifying last October, Forbes published an article with the headline “Trump’s Veteran CFO Lied, Under Oath, About Trump Tower Penthouse.”
The civil fraud trial ended with the Judge Arthur Engoron ruling that Trump and some of his executives had planned to deceive banks, insurers and others by lying about their wealth in financial statements used to do business and obtain loans. The judge sanctioned Trump $455 million and ordered Weisselberg to pay $1 million.
In his decision, Engoron said he found Weisselberg’s testimony “intentionally evasive” and “highly unreliable.”
Weisselberg is likely to influence Trump’s hush-money trial, even if he is in jail and not on the witness stand while it takes place.
Trump is accused of falsifying his company records to cover up payments during his 2016 campaign to bury stories of marital infidelity. It is the first of four Trump criminal cases scheduled to go to trial. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies any wrongdoing.
Cohen has said Weisselberg played a role in orchestrating the payments. Weisselberg, who lives in Boynton Beach, Florida, has not been charged in that case, and neither prosecutors nor Trump’s lawyers have indicated they will call him as a witness.
2024-04-10 15:26:17
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