NEW YORK (AP) – Allen Weisselberg, a longtime former executive in President Donald Trump’s real estate empire, is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday in New York on charges of lying under oath. civil fraud case.
Weisselberg, 76, is expected to be sentenced to five months in prison after pleading guilty last month to two counts of perjury. The former chief financial officer admitted he lied when he testified that he had little knowledge of how President Trump’s Manhattan penthouse came to be valued in financial statements. almost 3 times the actual size.
This is the second time he has been to prison. He served 100 days in prison last year for evading taxes on $1.7 million in company perks, including a rent-free Manhattan apartment and luxury cars.
Now, he’s once again trading his life as a retiree in Florida for a stint at New York City’s notorious Rikers Island prison.
The two incidents highlight Weisselberg’s unwavering loyalty to Republican presidential nominee Trump.
Mr. Trump’s family employed Mr. Weisselberg for nearly 50 years, then gave him a $2 million severance package when taxes forced him to retire. The company continues to pay his legal fees.
Mr. Weisselberg twice testified against Mr. Trump, but each time he struggled to suggest that his boss committed no serious wrongdoing.His plea deal does not require him to testify. President Trump’s hush money criminal trialis scheduled to begin with jury selection on Monday.
Prosecutors cited Weisselberg’s age and willingness to admit wrongdoing in agreeing to a five-month sentence. In New York state, perjury is a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison. Prosecutors have promised not to charge Mr. Weisselberg with other crimes he may have committed in connection with his employment with the Trump Organization.
Mr. Weisselberg’s expected sentence will mirror previous cases in which he was ordered to serve five months in prison but was eligible for release in just over three months on good behavior. Prior to that, he had no criminal record.
Trump’s lawyers took issue with Weisselberg’s perjury charges, saying that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office was “turning a blind eye” to the perjury charges against former Trump president Michael Cohen and “suspecting an innocent man in his late 70s. They accused the country of deploying “unethical and strong-arm tactics against the United States.” A lawyer who is currently an important prosecution witness in a hush money case.
A message seeking comment was left with Mr. Weisselberg’s attorney, Seth Rosenberg.
Mr. Weisselberg pleaded guilty on March 4. He was sworn in three times: during testimony in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against Trump, in depositions in July 2020 and May 2023, and on the witness stand at a trial last October. I admitted that I had lied. However, to avoid violating his tax case probation, he agreed to only plead guilty to charges related to the 2020 deposition.
The size of President Trump’s penthouse was a key issue in the civil fraud case.
Mr. Trump valued the apartment as if it were 30,000 square feet (2,800 square meters) in financial statements from at least 2012 to 2016. A former real estate executive for President Trump testified that Weisselberg provided the numbers. A former executive said that when asked in 2012 how big the apartment was, Mr. Weisselberg replied: I think it’s about 30,000 square feet. ”
But state attorneys pointed out that Weisselberg received an email earlier that year with a 1994 document setting the size of Trump’s apartment at 10,996 square feet (1,022 square meters). Weisselberg testified that she remembered the email, but not the attachment, and that she “didn’t walk around the apartment to get an idea of its size.”
After Forbes published an article in 2017 disputing the size of President Trump’s penthouse, the estimated value of the penthouse on financial statements was lowered from $327 million to about $117 million.
As Weisselberg was testifying last October, Forbes published an article with the headline, “Trump’s longtime CFO lied under oath about Trump Tower penthouse.”
This is how the civil fraud trial ended. Judge Arthur Engoron The court ruled that President Trump and some of his top executives conspired to defraud banks, insurance companies and others by lying about their assets in financial statements used to secure deals and loans. The judge fined Trump $455 million and ordered Weisselberg to pay $1 million. Both are fascinating.
Engoron said in his decision that he found Weisselberg’s testimony to be “deliberately evasive” and “highly unreliable.”
Mr. Weisselberg is likely to participate in Mr. Trump’s hush money trial — even if he is in prison and not on the witness stand during the trial.
Trump is accused of falsifying his company’s records. hide payments In 2016, during a campaign to bury stories of marital infidelity. This is the first of four criminal cases against President Trump scheduled for trial. Trump has maintained his innocence and denied any wrongdoing on his part.
Cohen said Weisselberg played a role in coordinating the payments. Mr. Weisselberg, who lives in Boynton Beach, Florida, has not been charged in the case, and neither prosecutors nor Mr. Trump’s lawyers have indicated they plan to call him as a witness.
