President Trump’s former chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of perjury at the Manhattan criminal court on Monday. He admitted he lied under oath about his lack of knowledge regarding the size of Mr. Trump’s penthouse at Trump Tower, and how the value of the apartment was inflated for years based on exaggerated square footage. 

Mr. Weisselberg, 76, who has steadfastly refused to flip and testify against his former boss, has paid dearly for his loyalty. He has already served 99 days on New York’s notorious Rikers Island, and will now be returning there.

“Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?” a Manhattan criminal court judge, Laurie Peterson, asked Weisselberg, who had been led into the courtroom in handcuffs, and wore a dark blue suit and a surgical mask.   

“Yes,” Weisselberg answered. 

Weisselberg had been negotiating a plea deal with the Manhattan district attorney’s office for the last several weeks for lying both during his sworn depositions and on the witness stand at the recent, highly publicized civil fraud trial brought against the Trump Organization by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James.  

Ms. James had sued Mr. Trump, his two eldest sons, a former Trump Organization controller, Jeff McConney, and Weisselberg for engaging in a decades-long scheme of falsifying financial statements to gain favorable bank loans and insurance deals. On February 16, the presiding judge, Arthur Engoron, awarded more than $454 million in damages to the state of New York.

He found all defendants liable for all six counts of business fraud and the conspiracy to that fraud, but he only held Weisselberg accountable for the alleged insurance fraud. Weisselberg was ordered to pay $1 million in damages and was permanently banned from holding a financial position at any company registered in New York. The Trumps have denied all wrongdoing and are currently appealing the verdict.     

At the heart of the case are the financial statements that the Trump Organization issued annually. Ms. James claimed that the Trumps misrepresented the value of their assets and Mr. Trump’s personal net worth so they could pay lower taxes, or get lower interest rates on loans, or improve their insurance coverage. In 2014, for example, Ms. James alleged that Mr. Trump inflated his net worth by as much as $2.2 billion.

The defense has argued that there were no victims, that all banks and insurance companies were paid in full, and that the case is politically motivated and suffused with anti-Trump bias.     

On his social media platform, Truth Social, on Monday, Mr. Trump roundly denounced Ms. James and Judge Engoron. “The widespread, radical attack against me, my family, and my supporters has now devolved to new, un-American depths, at the hands of a DERANGED New York State Judge, doing the bidding of a completely biased and corrupt ‘Prosecutor,’ Letitia James, who ran for office based on a ‘GET TRUMP’ platform, before even knowing anything about me,” he wrote.

On Monday, Weisselberg admitted that he lied to investigators in his 2020 sworn deposition, when he told them he didn’t hear Mr. Trump misrepresent the size of his Trump Tower triplex apartment on a tour of the penthouse given to a reporter from Forbes magazine in September 2015. Weisselberg now conceded that he was, in fact, present during that interview.

Two years later, in 2017, Forbes published an article titled, “Donald Trump Has Been Lying About The Size Of His Penthouse.” Citing records Forbes disclosed that the square footage of the triplex was not 33,000, but “10,996 square feet of prime Manhattan real estate—a massive residence, no doubt, but much smaller than what Trump claims to own.” The inflated square footage resulted in a $200 million overstatement of the apartment’s value.

Contrary to previous testimony, Weisselberg was aware that the value of the penthouse had been inflated for years in an attempt to get better loans, insurance rates, and “other economic benefits,” as the attorney, Gary Fishman, phrased it. Mr. Fishman represented the perjury case on behalf of the Manhattan district attorney’s office. 

Weisselberg also lied to state attorneys during his deposition in May 2023, when he said, “I didn’t delve into the numbers,” and claimed that he used and trusted the valuations former controller, Mr. McConney, handed him.

“These statements were false as Weisselberg was significantly involved in determining what methodology and numbers were used to value properties in the [statements of financial condition],” the perjury complaint reads.

In total Weisselberg was charged with five counts of perjury, but his plea agreement with the Manhattan district attorney’s office only requested that he plead guilty to two. 

The career Trump Organization employee, who worked for Mr. Trump for nearly 50 years, admitted to lying about the penthouse issues on the witness stand during the civil fraud trial in October 2023. Thanks to the plea deal, Weisselberg did not have to plead guilty to that charge, and will thus receive a milder sentence.  

Mr. Fishman told the judge that considering Weisselberg’s age, he does not recommend more than five months in prison, though he did press that time behind bars was needed in light of the severity of the crime. Perjury, Mr. Fishman said on Monday, “tears at the very fabric of the justice system.” 

Judge Peterson told the court that Weisselberg will be sentenced to five months on April 10. He was released on his own recognizance. One of his attorneys, Seth Rosenberg, did not make a comment after the hearing. Instead his firm issued a statement, saying that its client “looks forward to putting this situation behind him.”  

This is the second criminal conviction for Weisselberg, who is still on probation, and the second time he will spend time behind bars. In a previous case from 2022, the district attorney charged him with evading taxes on nearly $2 million in compensation from the Trump Organization. He allegedly received “lavish perks,” such as an apartment, a luxury car, payment of his grandchildren’s private school tuition, and other “compensation,” which he “intentionally” concealed from tax authorities. He was sentenced to five months in prison, but only served 99 days at New York’s notorious Rikers Island jail. He will now be returning to Rikers this spring.

Mr. Trump’s campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, condemned Mr. Bragg for bringing the charges. Mr. Bragg, he said, “has been on a crusade of vindictive and oppressive pressure leading, today, to a forced plea by Allen H. Weisselberg.” Mr. Cheung added that “innocent Americans cannot continue to be harassed, and we have to save our Country,” and that these are “corrupt, election interference persecution tactics ripped from the playbook of Joseph Stalin, which cannot be allowed in America.”

A spokesman for the Manhattan DA’s office said, “It is a crime to lie in depositions and at trial — plain and simple,” and that Weisselberg is “pleading guilty to this felony and being held responsible for his conduct.”

According to various press sources, Weisselberg will not testify during Mr. Bragg’s upcoming criminal trial against Mr. Trump related to alleged hush-money payments to a porn star, Stormy Daniels. The defense has called this case the “zombie” case. 

As the Sun reported, Mr. Trump will be the first former president in U.S. history to face a criminal trial. 

Mr. Trump is being charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in an attempt to cover up hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, who claims she had an extramarital affair with Mr. Trump. He denies it. 

By themselves, these allegations would only amount to misdemeanor charges, but Mr. Bragg is pursuing a novel legal strategy by further accusing Mr. Trump of trying to hide “damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.” The intent to commit or conceal another crime, including breaking “state and federal election laws,” raises the charge to a felony, punishable by up to four years in prison, under New York law. Legal experts say, though, that if found guilty, it’s highly unlikely that Mr. Trump will be punished with prison time.  

Weisselberg’s guilty plea may help Mr. Bragg with his case, because the perjury admission can discredit Weisselberg’s previous testimony, during which he disagreed with evidence provided by the prosecution alleging that Mr. Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid the porn star $130,000 to keep her from publicizing the affair.  

The criminal trial is scheduled to begin with jury selection on March 25.