Trump Organization, CFO indicted on tax fraud charges
NEW YORK >> Donald Trump’s company and its longtime finance chief were charged Thursday in what a prosecutor called a “sweeping and audacious” tax-fraud scheme that saw the Trump executive allegedly receive more than $1.7 million in off-the-books compensation, including apartment rent, car payments and school tuition.
It is the first criminal case that New York authorities’ two-year investigation into the former president has yielded. According to the indictment filed Wednesday and unveiled Thursday, from 2005 through this year, CFO Allen Weisselberg and the Trump Organization cheated the state and city out of taxes by conspiring to pay senior executives off the books.
Weisselberg and lawyers for the Trump Organization pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutor Carey Dunne alleged there was a 15-year scheme “orchestrated by the most senior executives.”
Trump was not charged. The investigation was jointly pursued by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both Democrats.
Weisselberg, 73, was photographed walking into the building that houses both the criminal courts and the Manhattan district attorney’s office around 6:20 a.m. Thursday. He was led into court in the afternoon with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Weisselberg’s lawyers, Mary Mulligan and Bryan Skarlatos, said in a statement before his appearance that the executive would “fight these charges in court.”
Skarlatos later said Dunne’s remarks were misleading in regard to his client.
Weisselberg was ordered to surrender his passport after prosecutors called him a flight risk with access to private jets for foreign travel. He was released without bail, however, and left the courthouse without commenting to assembled reporters.
A lieutenant to generations of Trumps, Weisselberg has intimate knowledge of the former president’s business dealings, and the case could give prosecutors the means to pressure him into cooperating with an ongoing probe into other aspects of the company’s business.
There is no sign that the man regarded by Trump’s daughter Ivanka as the “fiercely loyal” deputy who has “stood alongside my father and our family” for decades would turn on them.
In its Thursday statement before the charges were unveiled, the Trump Organization defended Weisselberg, saying the 48-year employee was being used by Vance’s office as “a pawn in a scorched-earth attempt to harm the former president.”
Trump, a Republican, did not respond to reporters’ shouted questions about the case as he visited Texas on Wednesday. Earlier in the week, he blasted New York prosecutors as “rude, nasty, and totally biased” and said his company’s actions were “standard practice throughout the U.S. business community, and in no way a crime.”
He issued a press release after the not-guilty pleas, once again excoriating the probe as a “political Witch Hunt.”
Dunne said politics played no role in the decision to bring charges.
“Politics has no role in the jury chamber and I can assure you it had no role here,” Dunne said.
In court, Trump Organization lawyer Alan Futerfas said Dunne’s remarks sounded like a “press release.”
“If the name of the company was something else, these charges would not have been brought,” Futerfas added outside court.
Vance declined to comment on the case as he arrived at the courthouse Thursday. He remained silent as he and James departed in the afternoon. James’ office later released a statement calling the indictment “an important marker in the ongoing criminal investigation” into Trump’s company and its CFO.