Trump’s Chief Financial Officer Sentenced to Five Months in Prison for Lying in Civil Fraud Investigation
Allen Weisselberg has already served jail time for evading taxes.
The former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, will soon report to state prison after he was sentenced on Wednesday to serve five months for lying during the civil fraud case brought by attorney general Letitia James. This is the second time Weisselberg will serve a prison sentence.
At a hearing before a Manhattan judge on Wednesday, Weisselberg said he had nothing to say as the jurist handed down the sentence. The meeting lasted for just two minutes, according to CNBC. Weisselberg also lied on the stand during the trial.
The former executive lied during a deposition as part of Ms. James’ sprawling investigation into Mr. Trump’s businesses. She won a nearly $500 million judgment against the former president, though he is now appealing and only had to post a $175 million bond.
Weisselberg previously served three months of a five-month sentence at Rikers Island after he pleaded guilty to 15 charges related to his own failure to pay taxes and misreporting income to the government. Mr. Trump, while he was a private citizen, helped pay Weisselberg’s grandchildrens’ tuition and gifted him two luxury cars and an apartment.
He admitted to the court that he lied in his deposition and on the stand about when he learned that Mr. Trump had been lying about the size of one of his penthouses. Weisselberg claimed that he found out that Mr. Trump’s apartment was under 11,000 square feet — not the 33,000 square feet the former president had claimed — when an article was published by Forbes in 2017. On March 4, Weisselberg admitted to the court that he was present at the Forbes interview in 2015 where those lies were told.
Mr. Trump’s lie about the size of his apartment led to an overvaluation of $200 million.
The judge in the recent civil fraud case against Mr. Trump and his underlings ordered that Mr. Trump, Weisselberg, and others be barred from serving as corporate executives in New York for three years. Weisselberg was permanently banned from being in “financial control” of a New York company.
