Ex-Trump company exec Weisselberg sentenced to five months for perjury

— A longtime executive at Donald Trump’s company was sentenced to five months in jail on Wednesday after pleading guilty to lying under oath in the New York attorney general’s civil investigation into business practices at the Trump Organization.

Allen Weisselberg, who worked for the Trump family for a half-century before retiring recently, was taken into custody after a brief proceeding in New York Supreme Court and is expected to serve his sentence at Rikers Island, the city’s sprawling jail complex near LaGuardia Airport.

It was not clear whether Weisselberg will be called as a witness at Trump’s criminal trial scheduled to begin Monday in New York.

Weisselberg’s lawyer, Seth L. Rosenberg, said in a statement Wednesday, “Allen Weisselberg accepted responsibility for his conduct and now looks forward to the end of this life-altering experience and to returning to his family and his retirement.”

Weisselberg, 76, now a Florida resident, pleaded guilty on March 4 to several counts of perjury for lying in sworn testimony both before and during the Trump Organization civil fraud trial brought last year by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

He has been embroiled in Trump’s legal issues for years because he was a key figure at the former president’s namesake company for decades.

In 2023, Weisselberg served about three months of a fivemonth sentence related to a separate criminal tax fraud case involving the company. The Trump Organization was convicted at that trial and fined $1.6 million, the maximum allowed by law.

Weisselberg pleaded guilty to more than a dozen felonies, including criminal tax fraud and grand larceny.

In that trial, Weisselberg blamed himself and another executive, Jeffrey McConney, for orchestrating a 15-year tax evasion scheme that sought to compensate company executives, including Weisselberg, with unreported benefits such as free cars, apartments and other paid personal expenses.