Trump aide Weisselberg gets jail time in perjury case
A New York judge sentenced Allen Weisselberg, former chief financial officer for the Trump Organization, to five months in jail for perjury Wednesday for lying during former President Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial.
It is the 76-year-old’s second stint behind bars.
Weisselberg pleaded guilty in March to lying under oath when answering questions in a deposition in May and at the trial in October about allegations that Trump misrepresented his wealth on financial statements. Trump, the probable Republican presidential nominee, was ordered to pay $454 million for exaggerating the value of his real estate for years.
“It is a crime to lie in depositions and at trial – plain and simple,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said in a statement.
New York Judge Laurie Peterson had said when Weisselberg pleaded guilty that she would sentence him to another five months, and on Wednesday he began his second stint at the notorious Rikers Island jail complex.
Weisselberg has already served a jail term for tax fraud and falsification of business records in an unrelated case.
The perjury conviction could serve as a warning to other witnesses as Trump goes to trial on criminal charges of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to an adult film actor.
The trial is set to start Monday. Trump has pleaded not guilty. Weisselberg, who received a $2 million settlement when leaving the Trump Organization, has not cooperated with prosecutors.
Weisselberg testified during Trump’s civil fraud trial that he “never focused” on the square footage of Trump’s penthouse apartment in Trump Tower.
Trump’s financial statements listed the apartment as being nearly three times its actual size of 10,996 square feet, which resulted in a $200 million overstatement of its value.
New York Judge Arthur Engoron wrote in his civil fraud judgment that Weisselberg’s testimony was “intentionally evasive, with large gaps of ‘I don’t remember.’ ”
“The Trump organization keeps Weisselberg on a short leash, and it shows,” Engoron wrote.
Trump’s lawyers in the civil case continued to support Weisselberg.
“To be clear, counsel for Defendants have no ‘knowledge’ that Mr. Weisselberg made false statements during the trial; to the contrary, many believe that Mr. Weisselberg only made such admissions because he was being threatened with life in prison,” the lawyers wrote.
Weisselberg was chief financial officer for the Trump Organization from 2002 to 2022, when he pleaded guilty to 15 criminal counts of tax fraud for failing to disclose $1.7 million in benefits and for falsification of business records.
He was sentenced to five months in jail and released after 100 days. New York Judge Juan Merchan said that after listening to Weisselberg’s civil trial testimony, he regretted agreeing to only five months, and if not for a plea agreement, he “would be imposing a sentence much greater than that.”