Key executive in Trump business pleads guilty to perjury charges
Allen Weisselberg, former President Donald Trump's longtime financial gatekeeper, pleaded guilty to felony perjury charges in a Manhattan courtroom Monday, the latest twist in a tortured legal odyssey.
Yet Weisselberg, who for years has remained steadfastly loyal to Trump in the face of intense prosecutorial pressure, did not implicate his former boss. That unbroken streak of loyalty has frustrated prosecutors and now, at age 76, will cost Weisselberg his freedom a second time.
The plea agreement with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg comes weeks before the former president will stand trial on unrelated criminal charges. That case, also brought by Bragg, stems from a hushmoney payment made on Trump's behalf to a porn actor during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Weisselberg, who was led into the courtroom in handcuffs wearing a blue surgical mask and a dark suit, conceded that in recent years he had lied under oath to the New York attorney general's office when it was investigating Trump for fraud. Attorney General Letitia James sued Trump in 2022, accusing him of wildly inflating his net worth to obtain favorable loans and other benefits.
That civil case recently ended with a judge imposing a huge financial penalty on the former president — more than $450 million with interest. Weisselberg, who was also a defendant in the case, was penalized $1 million plus interest and permanently barred from serving in a financial position at any New York company.
Although Weisselberg neither committed violence nor orchestrated an elaborate scheme, Bragg's prosecutors argued that perjury undermines the broader
ends of justice and cannot be ignored.
Gary Fishman, one of the prosecutors, on Monday underscored the harm caused by perjury, which he said “tears at the very fabric of our justice system.”
Prosecutors sought a fivemonth sentence for Weisselberg, acknowledging his age in coming to their recommendation. His sentencing before Judge Laurie Peterson is scheduled for April 10.
Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty to two counts of perjury related to his testimony in a July 2020 deposition with James' office, stood placidly Monday as he answered the judge's questions about his plea, often with one-word responses.
He also admitted to lying at the civil fraud trial but did not plead guilty to that, a move that will spare him a steeper sentence.
“Allen Weisselberg looks forward to putting this situation behind him,” one of Weisselberg's lawyers, Seth Rosenberg, said in a statement released by his firm, Clayman Rosenberg Kirshner & Linder.
Weisselberg has often been caught in the middle of Trump's legal travails, facing pressure from several law enforcement agencies in both civil and criminal
cases. As the long-serving chief financial officer for Trump's family business — his trusted moneyman — Weisselberg was considered a linchpin in efforts to implicate him.
Weisselberg has been rewarded for his loyalty to the family he served for nearly a half century: When he left the company, the Trump Organization, last year, he was awarded a $2 million severance package that required him not to cooperate with any law enforcement investigation unless legally required.
He also paid a price. In 2022, Weisselberg pleaded guilty in a tax fraud case in which he admitted to awarding himself off-the-books perks, including a luxury apartment and a MercedesBenz. Although he did not implicate Trump, he agreed to testify against the Trump Organization at its trial on the same charges.
The company was convicted, and Weisselberg received a five-month sentence. With good behavior, he served nearly 100 days behind bars at the notorious Rikers Island jail complex.
Weisselberg now faces another stint at Rikers, a steep fall for a man who spent years embedded in the Trump family business
as its financial whiz and bulldog negotiator.
He lived in a Trump building. He helped assemble tax returns for Trump. And he helped run Trump's company after he was elected president.
Weisselberg did not respond to questions from reporters Monday as he left the courthouse after entering his plea. He piled into the back seat of a black Cadillac Escalade parked outside, surrounded by a phalanx of news photographers and television camera crews.
For his part, Trump has lashed out at Bragg, a Democrat, accusing him of persecuting Weisselberg. Trump's allies have lamented that Weisselberg will have to again serve time behind bars well into his 70s. They have also disputed that he lied in the civil fraud case brought by James, another Democrat.
“This plea was no doubt extorted by threatening an elderly and innocent man with immediate and lengthy incarceration,” Christopher Kise, one of Trump's lawyers, said in a statement. “Such alarming, shameful and oppressive tactics have no place in our justice system and expose the citizens of New York to irreparable and life-altering harm.”