Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg Sentenced to Five Months in New York Tax Case – Update

TO UPDATE: Allen Weisselberg, longtime CFO of the Trump Organization, was sentenced to five months in prison on Tuesday.

A New York state judge made the ruling after Weisselberg entered a guilty plea last summer to 15 counts of tax fraud and evasion. It was part of a deal in which he agreed to testify against the Trump Organization.

Last month, a New York jury convicted the Trump Organization of tax fraud and other charges. The company’s guilty plea with fines of up to $1.6 million is scheduled for Friday.

According to the AP, Judge Juan Manuel Merchan said he would have imposed a sentence of “much more than” five months if he hadn’t already agreed to the plea deal.

So far, August 18: Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, pleaded guilty Thursday to 15 counts of tax fraud and evasion.

Weisselberg’s plea requires him, unlike Donald Trump himself, to testify at an upcoming trial against the Trump Organization.

Weisselberg faces a sentence of five months at Rikers Island and five years of probation, as well as paying nearly $2 million in taxes, penalties and interest.

Last year, New York prosecutors sued Weisselberg and the Trump Organization over an alleged scheme to evade more than $1.7 million in taxes.

Weisselberg initially pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Prosecutors described a 15-year tax scheme and said the charges included 15 crimes, including fraud, conspiracy, grand theft and falsifying business records. They said they had digital discs of grand jury testimony, accounting records, tax returns, statements from potential witnesses. The allegations were that the company gave perks to employees, including the CFO, including free rent, utilities, car leases, college tuition, cash and other gifts that were not reported as income.

New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement: “This plea agreement directly implicates the Trump Organization in a variety of criminal activities and requires Weisselberg to provide invaluable testimony against the company in the upcoming trial.” The trial begins on October 24.

Trump himself was not charged, and Weisselberg’s plea deal suggests that Manhattan prosecutors ultimately failed to get the CFO to testify against the former president himself. Bragg said investigations into Trump and the Trump Organization are ongoing.

The pending trial is just a related case faced by the former president or those who were in his employ. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was part of the investigation by the Manhattan attorney’s office, also conducted a civil investigation into the business practices of Trump’s companies. The former president pleaded for an explanation last week, but invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination.

Later Thursday, a federal judge will hear arguments on the closure of an affidavit used as the basis of an FBI investigation into Trump’s Mar-A-Lago estate. Last week, federal agents recovered 11 sets of equipment classified as illegal, according to an inventory. The material was brought to Mar-A-Lago after Trump left office, but the National Archives claimed it had custody of the documents.