- Longtime Trump CFO is expected to got a five month sentence
- Worked for firm for 50 years including under Trump’s father, Fred Trump
- Return to prison follows perjury guilty plea
A judge sentenced the Trump Organization’s longtime Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg to a five month sentence for his second stint on Riker Islands on Wednesday.
The latest blow for Wiesselberg, 76, comes after he pleaded guilty to Perjury over statements related to Trump’s New York fraud trial.
The loyal Trump executive who worked for the family for 50 years was last month found guilty of lying under oath during those proceedings.
He told the court he didn’t know how Trump’s Manhattan penthouse ended up being listed as three times its actual size in the company’s financial statements.
The Trump Organization’s longtime Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg is set to be sentenced to his second stint on Riker Islands on Wednesday. He is pictured in court last month when he pleaded guilty
The penthouse was a key piece of evidence in the case. Trump valued the penthouse apartment on financial statements as being 30,000 square feet. But internal documents put its actual footage at 10,996 square feet. When Forbes published an article taking on the size of the apartment, Trump’s financial statements dropped the value from $327 million to $117 million.
The Florida retiree will go through his second stint behind bars, but could be eligible for release in three months for good behavior.
He served 100 days last year for dodging taxes on $1.7 million in company perks, including a rent-free Manhattan apartment and luxury cars.
Prosecutors agreed to the lighter sentence because of Weisselberg’s age and willingness to admit wrongdoing.
In New York, perjury is a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison.
His deal with prosecutors also means he won’t be charged with any other crimes he may have committed while working for the Trump Organization.
Weisselberg has remained steadfastly loyal to him throughout his legal troubles that ended in a more than $300million fine for Trump, and insisted his boss didn’t do anything wrong.
An appeals court knocked the court judgment down to $175 million while Trump appeals Judge Arthur Engoron’s decision.
Weisselberg also won’t be forced to testify in the Stormy Daniels hush money trial, which begins on Monday in the historic first criminal trial for a former president.
Trump’s lawyers took issue with Weisselberg’s perjury prosecution, accusing the Manhattan district attorney’s office of deploying ‘unethical, strong-armed tactics against an innocent man in his late 70s’ while turning ‘a blind eye’ to perjury allegations against Michael Cohen, the former Trump lawyer who is now a key prosecution witness in the hush money case.
Weisselberg pleaded guilty March 4.
The Florida retiree will go through his second stint behind bars, but could be eligible for release in three months for good behavior
The Trump executive who worked for the family for 50 years was found guilty of lying under oath during the former president’s New York fraud trial
He told the court he didn’t know how Trump’s Manhattan penthouse ended up being listed as three times its actual size in the company’s financial statements
He admitted lying under oath on three occasions while testifying in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against Trump: in depositions in July 2020 and May 2023 and on the witness stand at the trial last October.
To avoid violating his tax case probation, however, he agreed to plead guilty only to charges related to his 2020 deposition testimony.
The size of Trump’s penthouse was a key issue in the civil fraud case.
Trump valued the apartment on his financial statements from at least 2012 to 2016 as though it measured 30,000 square feet (2,800 square meters).
A former Trump real estate executive testified that Weisselberg provided the figure. The former executive said that when he asked for the apartment’s size in 2012, Weisselberg replied: ‘It’s quite large. I think it’s around 30,000 square feet.’
However, state lawyers noted, Weisselberg got an email early in that year with a 1994 document attached that pegged Trump’s apartment at 10,996 square feet (1,022 square meters).
Weisselberg testified that he remembered the email but not the attachment and that he didn’t ‘walk around knowing the size’ of the apartment.
After Forbes magazine published an article in 2017 disputing the size of Trump’s penthouse, its estimated value on his financial statement was cut 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.’
The civil fraud trial ended with Judge Arthur Engoron ruling that Trump and some of his executives had schemed to deceive banks, insurers and others by lying about his wealth on financial statements used to make deals and secure loans.
The judge penalized Trump $455 million and ordered Weisselberg to pay $1 million. They are both appealing.
Weisselberg served 100 days on Rikers Island (above) last year for dodging taxes on $1.7 million in company perks, including a rent-free Manhattan apartment and luxury cars
In his decision, Engoron said he found Weisselberg’s testimony ‘intentionally evasive’ and ‘highly unreliable.’
Weisselberg is likely to factor into Trump’s hush money trial — even if he’s in jail and not on the witness stand while it’s happening.
Trump is accused of falsifying his company’s records to cover up payments during his 2016 campaign to bury stories of marital infidelity.
It is the first of Trump’s four criminal cases scheduled to go to trial. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies wrongdoing.
Cohen has said Weisselberg had a role in orchestrating the payments. Weisselberg, who lives in Boynton Beach, Florida, has not been charged in that case, and neither prosecutors nor Trump’s lawyers have indicated they will call him as a witness.