Ex-Trump Organization CFO pleads guilty to perjury charges

Source: The Hill | March 4, 2024 | Ella Lee

The former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization on Monday pleaded guilty to perjury charges stemming from his testimony in former President Trump’s civil fraud trial.

Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s longtime financial gatekeeper, pleaded guilty to lying in a 2020 deposition as the New York attorney general’s office built its civil fraud case against the Trump Organization, as well as in his trial testimony.

The ex-Trump Organization executive surrendered Monday morning to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. He entered state court later Monday in handcuffs and wearing a mask. A New York judge said he will be sentenced to 5 months in jail, the amount of time prosecutors requested.

“Allen Weisselberg looks forward to putting this situation behind him,” Seth Rosenberg, Weisselberg’s lawyer, said in a statement.  

Weisselberg was a defendant alongside Trump in New York Attorney General Letitia James’s (D) sweeping civil fraud case against the former president and his business for conspiring to alter Trump’s net worth for tax and insurance benefits.

The top executive was ordered to pay more than $1.1 million, plus interest, and barred for three years from serving in top leadership positions in any New York corporation or business entity. He was also barred for life from serving “in the financial control function” of any New York business.

Weisselberg’s charges stem from his testimony in October during the civil fraud trial, where he testified that he “never focused on” Trump’s Manhattan triplex that was listed on the former president’s financial statements as 30,000 square feet in size — despite actually being less than 11,000 square feet.

But after Weisselberg testified, Forbes published an article accusing him of lying under oath, citing years-old correspondence between the magazine and Trump Organization executive.

“A review of old emails and notes, some of which the attorney general’s office does not possess, show that Weisselberg absolutely thought about Trump’s apartment—and played a key role in trying to convince Forbes over the course of several years that it was worth more than it really was,” Forbes wrote in its Oct. 12 article.

When confronted by state lawyers about the Forbes article, Weisselberg conceded that the triplex in the former president’s 5th Avenue Trump Tower was only 10,996 square feet.

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