NEW YORK (AP) – Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of Donald Trump's company, pleaded guilty Monday to lying under oath during the former president's testimony in New York. civil fraud case. His plea deal sends him back to prison but does not require him to testify in Trump's hush-money criminal trial.
Mr. Weisselberg, 76, pleaded guilty in state court in Manhattan to two counts of perjury and is scheduled to be sentenced to five months in prison in April. It will be his second stint in prison after he served 100 days last year for evading taxes on company benefits.
In pleading guilty, Mr. Weisselberg once again found himself torn between the law and his loyalty to Mr. Trump. Trump's family employed him for nearly 50 years and forced him to retire with a $2 million severance package. His plea to perjury is further evidence that he intended to spend most of his golden years in prison again rather than testifying his truth in a way that could hurt his former boss.
“Lying in a deposition or at trial is, plain and simple, a crime,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office said in a statement.
Weisselberg's plea agreement does not require him to cooperate or testify in court. hush trialProsecutors have promised not to charge him with any other crimes he may have committed in connection with his employment at the Trump Organization.
In court on Monday, Mr. Weisselberg spoke out during testimony in a lawsuit brought against Mr. Trump by New York Attorney General Letitia James, during depositions from July 2020 and May 2023, and from October of last year. On the witness stand at trial, he admitted to lying under oath three times.
However, to avoid violating his probation in the tax case, he agreed to plead guilty only to charges related to his 2020 testimony.
“Allen Weisselberg looks forward to moving beyond this situation,” attorney Seth Rosenberg said in a statement.
Weisselberg surrendered to the prosecutor's office on Monday morning and appeared in court in handcuffs and a mask. that he lied when he testified that he had little knowledge or awareness of how President Trump's Manhattan penthouse came to be valued on financial statements at three times its actual size; acknowledged.
“Did you know that that testimony was false?” Judge Laurie Petersen asked Weisselberg on Monday.
“Yes,” Weisselberg answered.
Weisselberg will be formally sentenced on April 10th. 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.
With Mr. Weisselberg pleading guilty on Monday, the Supreme Court Trump restores voting rights in Colorado after the state removed him for his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election.
A judge in the civil fraud case ruled last month that Trump, Weisselberg and others conspired to defraud banks, insurance companies and others by lying about Trump's assets in financial statements used to secure deals and loans. was lowered.
Judge Arthur Engoron fined Mr. Trump $455 million and ordered him to pay Mr. Weisselberg $1 million in severance pay, the equivalent of his previous severance pay. They are fascinating.
Engoron said in his ruling that he felt Weisselberg's testimony had “a large gap of 'I don't remember', which he deliberately avoided.”
The judge said Weisselberg's severance agreement prohibits him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement, “making his testimony highly unreliable.”
“The Trump Organization's short leash on Mr. Weisselberg shows that,” Engoron wrote.
President Trump's Manhattan penthouse was valued as if it were 30,000 square feet (2,800 square meters), at least in financial statements from 2012 to 2016. almost 3 times the actual size.
Weisselberg said at the October hearing that he “didn't walk around with an idea” of the size of the apartment.
Kevin Sneddon, former managing director of President Trump's real estate brokerage division, testified that Weisselberg provided a higher number. Sneddon recalled that in 2012, Weisselberg asked him to calculate the value of the triplex. When Weisselberg asked him how big it was, he replied: I think it's about 30,000 square feet. ”
Weisselberg claimed that he only learned of the discrepancies after a Forbes reporter pointed them out to him in February 2017, and testified that he initially disputed the magazine's findings. A few weeks later, he signed again using inflated numbers from that year's financial statements.
The Trump Organization only scaled back months later after Forbes published its findings. In the following year's financial report, the estimated value of the penthouse was lowered from $327 million to approximately $117 million.
As Weisselberg testified, Forbes publishes article on website The headline read: “Trump's longtime CFO lied under oath about Trump Tower penthouse.”
Jury selection for Trump's hush money lawsuit is scheduled to begin within three weeks. The first of four indictments against Trump to go to trial, it includes accusations that Trump falsified corporate records. hide payments It was created during a 2016 campaign to dispel allegations of extramarital sexual relations. Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate, has maintained his innocence and denied any wrongdoing.
Trump's former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, said Weisselberg played a role in coordinating the payments. Mr. Weisselberg has not been charged in this case. Neither prosecutors nor Trump's lawyers have indicated they plan to call Weisselberg as a witness.
Prosecutors indicated in court papers that they plan to show jurors a “handwritten note” that Weisselberg says he wrote during a January 2017 meeting with Cohen. Trump's lawyers said the memo was hearsay unless Weisselberg testified.
Mr. Weisselberg was sent to prison last year after pleading guilty to evading taxes on $1.7 million in off-the-books payments from the Trump Organization. He had no previous criminal record.
Under the plea agreement, Mr. Weisselberg was required to testify as a prosecution witness in the trial that convicted the Trump Organization of aiding and abetting executive tax evasion. He acted carefully, explaining the facts of his own involvement, but telling jurors that Mr. Trump did not know of his plans.
He left New York City's infamous Rikers Island in April 2023.
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Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.
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This article has been corrected to show that Weisselberg pled guilty to two counts of perjury instead of five, and that they occurred during a deposition rather than a trial.