Longtime Trump executive sentenced to 5 months in jail for dodging taxes

Allen Weisselberg, a long-time executive for Donald Trump’s real estate empire whose testimony helped convict the former president’s company of tax fraud, was sentenced Tuesday to five months in prison for dodging taxes on $1.7 million US in job benefits.

Weisselberg, 75, was promised the sentence in August when he agreed to plead guilty to 15 tax crimes and testify against the Trump Organization, where he has worked since the mid-1980s. His testimony helped convict the former president’s company, where he was chief financial officer, for tax fraud.

But in handing down the official sentence Tuesday, Judge Juan Manuel Merchan said that after hearing Weisselberg’s testimony during the trial, he regretted that the sentence was not harsher. He said he was shocked when he testified that Weisselberg gave his wife a $6,000 check for a no-show job so she could get Social Security benefits.

If he hadn’t promised to give Weisselberg five months, Merchan said, “I would have imposed a bigger sentence than that.”

“I will not deviate from my promise, although I am sure that the punishment will be more severe, because I have heard the evidence,” he said.

Weisselberg was handcuffed and taken into custody shortly after the sentence was announced and is expected to be taken to New York City’s infamous Rikers Island prison complex. Weisselberg will be eligible for release after a little more than three months if he acts behind bars.

As part of the plea agreement, Judge Juan Manuel Merchan also ordered Weisselberg to pay nearly $2 million US in taxes, fines and interest – which he paid on January 3. In addition, the judge ordered Weisselberg to complete five years of probation afterwards. the prison term is over.

Weisselberg faces the prospect of up to 15 years in prison — the maximum penalty for the grand larceny charge — if he reneges on the deal or if he does not testify properly in the Trump Organization’s trial.

He is the only person charged so far in the Manhattan district attorney’s three-year investigation into Trump and his business practices.

Testimony about the inner workings of the Trump Organization

Weisselberg testified for three days, giving an overview of how Trump’s real estate empire works.

He worked for the Trump family for nearly 50 years, starting as an accountant for his developer father, Fred Trump, in 1973 before joining Donald Trump in 1986 and helping expand the family company’s focus beyond New York City into a global golf and hotel brand.

Weisselberg told the jury that he betrayed the trust of the Trump family by conspiring with subordinates to hide more than ten years of extra income, including a free Manhattan apartment, a luxury car and his grandson’s private school tuition. He said he falsified payroll records and issued false W-2 forms.

A Manhattan jury convicted the Trump Organization in December, finding that Weisselberg had been a “high-level managerial” agent entrusted with acting on behalf of the company and various entities. Weisselberg’s arrangement lowers his personal income tax but also saves the company money because it doesn’t have to pay more to cover the cost of the benefits.

Prosecutors say other Trump Organization executives also received off-the-books compensation. Weisselberg alone is accused of defrauding the federal, state and city governments of more than $900,000 in unpaid taxes and improper tax refunds.

The Trump Organization is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday and fined up to $1.6 million US.

The Trump family remains loyal to him, Weisselberg said

Weisselberg testified that Trump and his family were unaware of the scheme, and choked up as he told jurors: “It was my personal greed that led to this.” But the prosecutor, in the closing question, said Trump “knows exactly what happened” and evidence that, such as the lease signed for Weisselberg’s apartment, made it clear “Mr. Trump has firmly sanctioned tax fraud.”

The Trump Organization’s attorney, Michael van der Veen, said Weisselberg created the scheme without the knowledge of Trump or the Trump family.

Weisselberg said the Trumps remained loyal to him even as the company struggled to end some questionable pay practices after Trump’s 2016 election. He said Trump’s eldest son, who was put in charge of running the company when Trump became president, gave him a $200,000 raise after an audit. internally discovered they had cut salaries and bonuses at the expense of benefits.

Although he is currently on leave, the company continues to pay Weisselberg a salary of US$640,000 and a vacation bonus of US$500,000. It punished him only nominally after his arrest in July 2021, reassigned him as a senior adviser and moved his office.

He even celebrated his 75th birthday at Trump Tower with cake and friends in August, just hours after reaching a plea agreement that led to his transformation from loyal executive to prosecution witness.

Rikers Island, a compound of 10 prisons on the spit of land in the East River, just from the main runway at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, NY, has been plagued in recent years by violence, inmate deaths and staggering staff shortages.

Although only eight kilometers from Trump Tower, it is a veritable world away from the luxury life Weisselberg plans to build – far from the gilded Fifth Avenue office where he hatched the plot and the Hudson River-view apartment he reaped as a reward.