Thursday, August 18, 2022 – Longtime Trump Organization Chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg is expected to admit to conspiring with the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corporation in a criminal tax fraud scheme while he was head of the company’s finances at a Manhattan court hearing on Thursday, August 18.
According to the New York Daily News, Allen Weisselberg is expected to criminally implicate Trump’s family real estate business when he pleads guilty to felony tax fraud charges.
As part of the CFO’s plea deal for which he’ll serve five months max on Rikers Island, the source said Weisselberg is expected to agree to testify against the Trump companies if they choose to go to trial in October, and the state prosecutors call him as a witness.
Former US President Donald Trump has not been named as a defendant in the Manhattan district attorney’s case, which comes from a probe into his business practices.
Weisselberg’s plea agreement, whose terms were being finalized Wednesday, contains no provision relating to cooperating against Trump nor “anybody with the last name Trump,” the source said.
Weisselberg, 75, who once referred to himself as Donald Trump’s “eyes and ears,” refused to flip on Trump for almost a year as the District Attorney investigated his business practices.
Prosecutors indicted the CFO on felony tax fraud charges after it became clear he wouldn’t cooperate.
The 15-count indictment a grand jury returned against Weisselberg in June 2021 accuses him of dodging income tax on more than $1.7 million in lavish fringe benefits. That included private school tuition for his grandchildren, sleepaway camp fees, luxury car rentals, and a rent-free apartment overlooking Central Park for his son Barry Weisselberg’s young family from 2005 to 2011, prosecutors allege.
Much of the evidence investigators obtained against the Trump accountant came from his estranged daughter-in-law, Jennifer, who provided the DA with a caseload of documents from her divorce by order of grand jury subpoena in April 2021. Her ex-husband, Barry Weisselberg, also worked for the Trump Organization.
If Weisselberg admits to his alleged crimes before state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan on Thursday it could have potentially calamitous implications for the Trump family’s real estate business.
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