Trump’s former CFO jailed for tax fraud
The former chief financial officer of the Trump Organisation pleaded guilty to tax fraud and agreed to serve 100 days in jail as he refused to “flip” on the former president.
Allen Weisselberg, 75, one of Donald Trump’s closest and most loyal business associates for decades, admitted all 15 of the charges he faced in a deal with prosecutors.
The deal means he will be a witness when the company faces a trial on similar charges later this year.
But he refused to turn on Trump and his family by co-operating with the Manhattan district attorney’s broader investigation into the practices of Trump’s family business.
Weisselberg and the company have been accused of not reporting the real compensation of executives in a long-running scheme.
In a New York court he admitted not paying tax on US$1.76 million ($2.82m) in perks.
The perks included free rent for a Manhattan apartment, lease payments for two Mercedes cars, and school tuition for his grandchildren.
Judge Juan Manuel Merchan agreed to sentence him to five months in prison at New York City’s Rikers Island jail, meaning he would be eligible for release after 100 days.
The judge said he will have to pay nearly US$2 million in taxes, penalties and interest. The deal means Weisselberg will have to give truthful evidence in the Trump Organisation trial in October.
Trump himself is not charged in the case and has accused prosecutors of being politically motivated. Weisselberg’s lawyers have argued that the Democrat-led district attorney’s office has been punishing him because he would not offer them any information that could damage Trump.
The district attorney has also been investigating whether the Trump Organisation misled banks or the government about the value of its properties to obtain loans or reduce tax bills.
Trump has called the investigations by New York prosecutors into his businesses a “political witch hunt”.
He has said his company’s actions were standard practice in the property business.
Meanwhile, a federal judge yesterday ordered the Justice Department to put forward proposed redactions as he committed to making public at least part of the affidavit supporting the search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s estate in Florida.
US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart said that under the law, it is the government’s burden to show why a redacted version should not be released and prosecutors’ arguments yesterday failed to persuade him. He gave them a week to submit a copy of the affidavit proposing the information it wants to keep secret after the FBI seized classified and top secret information during a search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last week.
The hearing was convened after several news organisations sought to unseal additional records tied to last week’s search, including the affidavit.
It is likely to contain key details about the Justice Department’s investigation examining whether Trump retained and mishandled classified and sensitive government records.
The Justice Department has adamantly opposed making any portion of the affidavit public, arguing that doing so would compromise its ongoing investigation, would expose the identities of witnesses and could prevent others from coming forward and co-operating with the government.
The attorneys for the news organisations, however, argued that the unprecedented nature of the Justice Department’s investigation warrants public disclosure.
“You can’t trust what you can’t see,” said Chuck Tobin, a lawyer representing the AP and several other news outlets.
In addition to ordering the redactions, the judge agreed to make public other documents, including the warrant’s cover sheet, the Justice Department’s motion to seal the documents and the judge’s order requiring them to be sealed.
Those documents showed the FBI was specifically investigating the “wilful retention of national defence information”, the concealment or removal of government records and obstruction of a federal investigation.