Company of former President Trump found guilty of fraud
On Friday, Donald Trump, the former President of the United States company, was found guilty of scheming to defraud tax authorities for 15 years. The real estate company has been fined $1.6m (£1.31m) by a New York judge
The sentencing comes three days after Justice Juan Merchan of the Manhattan criminal court ordered Allen Weisselberg, who worked for Trump’s family for a half-century and was the company’s former chief financial officer, to jail for five months after he testified as the prosecution’s star witness.
Weisselberg’s testimony helped convict the company, though he said Trump was not part of the fraud scheme. He also refused to help Bragg in his broader investigation into Trump.
The Trump Organization had put Weisselberg on paid leave until they severed ties this week. His lawyer said the split, announced on Tuesday, was amicable. Weisselberg, 75, is serving his sentence in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail.
Trump’s company faces only a maximum $1.6 million penalty but has said it plans to appeal. No one else was charged or faces jail time in the case. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office brought the case and is still conducting a criminal probe into Trump’s business practices.
Bill Black, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law specializing in white-collar crime, called the expected penalty a rounding error that offers zero deterrence to others, including Trump.
“This is a farce. No one will stop committing these crimes because of this sentence,” he stated.
The case has long been a thorn in the side of the Republican former president, who calls it part of a witch hunt by Democrats who dislike him and his politics. Trump also faces a $250 million civil lawsuit by state Attorney Presidentetitia James, accusing him and his adult children, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump, of inflating his net worth and the value of his company’s assets to save money on loans and insurance.
Bragg and James are Democrats, as is Bragg’s predecessor Cyrus Vance, who brought the criminal case. Trump is seeking the presidency in 2024 after losing his re-election bid in 2020.
At a four-week trial, prosecutors offered evidence that Trump’s company covered personal expenses such as rent and car leases for executives without reporting them as income and pretended that Christmas bonuses were non-employee compensation.
Trump himself signed bonus checks; prosecutors said, as well as the lease on Weisselberg’s luxury Manhattan apartment and private school tuition for the CFO’s grandchildren. “The whole narrative that Donald Trump was blissfully ignorant is just not real,” Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass told jurors in his closing argument.
State law limits Justice Merchan’s penalties on Trump’s company. A corporation can be fined up to $250,000 for each tax-related count and $10,000 for each non-tax count. Trump faces several other legal woes, including probes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House, and efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.
A New York state judge will impose the sentence after jurors in Manhattan found two Trump organisation affiliates guilty of 17 criminal charges last month.
Reuters/S.O
