The Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, surrendered to authorities early Thursday ahead of an expected court appearance on the first criminal indictment in a two-year investigation into business practices at Donald Trump’s company.
Weisselberg was photographed walking into the the complex that houses criminal courts and the Manhattan district attorney’s office at around 6:20 a.m. with his lawyer.
New York prosecutors were expected to announce an indictment Thursday accusing Weisselberg and Trump’s namesake company of tax crimes related to fringe benefits for employees.
The case against Weisselberg — a loyal lieutenant to Trump and his real estate-developer father, Fred — could give prosecutors the means to pressure the executive into cooperating and telling them what he knows about Trump’s business dealings.
The Trump Organization issued a statement defending Weisselberg, saying the 48-year employee is being used by the Manhattan district attorney’s office as “a pawn in a scorched-earth attempt to harm the former president.” It said neither the IRS nor any other district attorney would ever think of bringing such charges over employee benefits. “This is not justice; this is politics,” the organization said.
The charges against the Trump Organization and Weisselberg remained sealed but were to be unveiled ahead of an afternoon arraignment at a state court in Manhattan, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The people were not authorized to speak about an ongoing investigation and did so on condition of anonymity.
There was no indication Trump himself would be charged at this stage of the investigation, jointly pursued by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both Democrats.
Trump did not respond to reporters’ shouted questions about the New York case as he visited Texas on Wednesday, but earlier in the week, the Republican had blasted the New York prosecutors as “rude, nasty, and totally biased” and said his company’s actions were “standard practice throughout the U.S. business community, and in no way a crime.”
The planned charges were said to be linked to benefits the company gave to top executives, like the use of apartments, cars and school tuition, the people familiar with the matter told the AP.
Weisselberg’s lawyer, Mary Mulligan, declined to comment. The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment.
Vance, who leaves office at the end of the year, has been conducting a wide-ranging investigation into a variety of matters involving Trump and the Trump Organization.
His office has looked into hush-money payments paid to women on Trump’s behalf and truthfulness in the company’s property valuations and tax assessments, among other matters.
Vance fought a long battle to get Trump’s tax records and has been subpoenaing documents and interviewing company executives and other Trump insiders.
James assigned two lawyers from her office to work with Vance’s team after her office found evidence of possible criminal wrongdoing while conducting a separate civil investigation of Trump.
Weisselberg, 73, had come under scrutiny, in part, because of questions about his son’s use of a Trump apartment at little or no cost.
Barry Weisselberg, who managed a Trump-operated ice rink in Central Park, testified in a 2018 divorce deposition that Trump Parc East apartment was a “corporate apartment, so we didn’t have rent.”
Barry’s ex-wife, Jen Weisselberg, has been cooperating with both inquiries and given investigators reams of tax records and other documents.
The Trump Organization is the business entity through which the former president manages his many entrepreneurial affairs, including his investments in office towers, hotels and golf courses, his many marketing deals and his television pursuits. Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric have been in charge of the company’s day-to-day operations since he became president.
Although Trump isn’t expected to be charged Thursday, allegations against the company bearing his name raise questions about his knowledge of — or involvement in — business that practices prosecutors suspect were illegal.
James Repetti, a tax lawyer and professor at Boston College Law School, said a company like the Trump Organization would generally have a responsibility to withhold taxes not just on salary, but other forms of compensation — like the use of an apartment or automobile.
Such perks wouldn’t be considered taxable income if they were required as a condition of employment, Repetti said, such as providing an apartment for the convenience of an employee who is required to be at the office or worksite at odd or frequent hours, or allowing the use of a car for business purposes.
Another prominent New York City real estate figure, the late Leona Helmsley, was convicted of tax fraud in a federal case that arose from her company paying to remodel her home without her reporting that as income.
The Trump Organization case involves possible violations of New York state tax laws.
“The IRS routinely looks for abuse of fringe benefits when auditing closely held businesses,” Repetti said. “The temptation for the business is that it claims a tax deduction for the expense, while the recipient does not report it in income.
THE TRAGEDY OF AMERICA IS THAT WE ENDED UP WITH THIS POS BECAUSE VOTERS WERE VOTING AGAINST HILLARY CLINTON WHOM THEY KNEW TO BE EVEN MORE RUTHLESS, CORRUPT AND DISHONEST THAN DONALD TRUMP.
EXCLUSIVE: Mary Trump's insider interview on 'most dangerous' President | 60 Minutes Australia
EXCLUSIVE: Melania Trump's former friend reveals White House secrets | 60 Minutes Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNNLt38HE64
Michael Cohen: Does Donald Trump have a 'secret' pardon? | 60 Minutes Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8o2og-tLj8
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEQBHeZqDIo&list=WL&index=1
Michael Cohen: Manhattan Prosecutors Already Have Enough Evidence to Charge Trump
Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen predicted Thursday on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” that Manhattan prosecutors investigating the Trump Organization have enough evidence to file criminal charges.
Discussing the Manhattan probe, Kimmel said, “Is this going to be the one? I know you said you expect in the next 30 to 60 days, something will happen that Trump will be charged with something. You went to jail. Rudy might go to jail. His lawyers all seemed to get a punishment. How is this guy able to dodge it?”
Cohen said, “When it comes to the Department of Justice, and I’ve said this in many many tweets, the wheels of justice turn slowly, but eventually they do turn full circle. Understand you are not just fighting anybody. You are fighting somebody that has money behind him and the former power of the president of the United States. He will fight like the dog that he is. He is hiring lawyers. I am not impressed with any of the lawyers he hired.”
He added, “He’s in trouble, Allen Weisselberg’s in trouble, Weisselberg’s kids, Matt Calamari, Rudy Giuliani, they’re all in trouble. Why? Because there’s documentary evidence that’s in their possession. They don’t really need Weisselberg or Calamari. One of them will flip to save themselves. And once you get Calamari, you don’t need Weisselberg. When you get Weisselberg, you don’t need Calamari. But the truth is, they don’t need either of them because they have the documents to prove exactly the illegalities done by Trump.”
New Details Suggest Senior Trump Aides Knew Jan. 6 Rally Could Get Chaotic
Text messages and interviews show that Stop the Steal leaders fooled the Capitol police and welcomed racists to increase their crowd sizes, while White House officials worked to both contain and appease them.
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On Dec. 19, President Donald Trump blasted out a tweet to his 88 million followers, inviting supporters to Washington for a “wild” protest.
Earlier that week, one of his senior advisers had released a 36-page report alleging significant evidence of election fraud that could reverse Joe Biden’s victory. “A great report,” Trump wrote. “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
The tweet worked like a starter’s pistol, with two pro-Trump factions competing to take control of the “big protest.”
On one side stood Women for America First, led by Amy Kremer, a Republican operative who helped found the tea party movement. The group initially wanted to hold a kind of extended oral argument, with multiple speakers making their case for how the election had been stolen.
On the other was Stop the Steal, a new, more radical group that had recruited avowed racists to swell its ranks and wanted the President to share the podium with Alex Jones, the radio host banned from the world’s major social media platforms for hate speech, misinformation and glorifying violence. Stop the Steal organizers say their plan was to march on the Capitol and demand that lawmakers give Trump a second term.
ProPublica has obtained new details about the Trump White House’s knowledge of the gathering storm, after interviewing more than 50 people involved in the events of Jan. 6 and reviewing months of private correspondence. Taken together, these accounts suggest that senior Trump aides had been warned the Jan. 6 events could turn chaotic, with tens of thousands of people potentially overwhelming ill-prepared law enforcement officials.
Rather than trying to halt the march, Trump and his allies accommodated its leaders, according to text messages and interviews with Republican operatives and officials.
Katrina Pierson, a former Trump campaign official assigned by the White House to take charge of the rally planning, helped arrange a deal where those organizers deemed too extreme to speak at the Ellipse could do so on the night of Jan. 5. That event ended up including incendiary speeches from Jones and Ali Alexander, the leader of Stop the Steal, who fired up his followers with a chant of “Victory or death!”
The record of what White House officials knew about Jan. 6 and when they knew it remains incomplete. Key officials, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, declined to be interviewed for this story.
The second impeachment of President Trump focused mostly on his public statements, including his Jan. 6 exhortation that the crowd march on the Capitol and “fight like hell.” Trump was acquitted by the Senate, and his lawyers insisted that the attack on the Capitol was both regrettable and unforeseeable.
Rally organizers interviewed by ProPublica said they did not expect Jan. 6 to culminate with the violent sacking of the Capitol. But they acknowledged they were worried about plans by the Stop the Steal movement to organize an unpermitted march that would reach the steps of the building as Congress gathered to certify the election results.
One of the Women for America First organizers told ProPublica he and his group felt they needed to urgently warn the White House of the possible danger.
“A last-minute march, without a permit, without all the metro police that’d usually be there to fortify the perimeter, felt unsafe,” Dustin Stockton said in a recent interview.
“And these people aren’t there for a fucking flower contest,” added Jennifer Lynn Lawrence, Stockton’s fiancee and co-organizer. “They’re there because they’re angry.”
Stockton said he and Kremer initially took their concerns to Pierson. Feeling that they weren’t gaining enough traction, Stockton said, he and Kremer agreed to call Meadows directly.
Kremer, who has a personal relationship with Meadows dating back to his early days in Congress, said she would handle the matter herself. Soon after, Kremer told Stockton “the White House would take care of it,” which he interpreted to mean she had contacted top officials about the march.
Kremer denied that she ever spoke with Meadows or any other White House official about her Jan. 6 concerns. “Also, no one on my team was talking to them that I was aware of,” she said in an email to ProPublica. Meadows declined to comment on whether he’d been contacted.
A Dec. 27 text from Kremer obtained by ProPublica casts doubt on her assertion. Written at a time when her group was pressing to control the upcoming Jan. 6 rally, it refers to Alexander and Cindy Chafian, an activist who worked closely with Alex Jones. “The WH and team Trump are aware of the situation with Ali and Cindy,” Kremer wrote. “I need to be the one to handle both.” Kremer did not answer questions from ProPublica about the text.
So far, congressional and law enforcement reconstructions of Jan. 6 have established failures of preparedness and intelligence sharing by the U.S. Capitol Police, the FBI and the Pentagon, which is responsible for deploying the D.C. National Guard.
But those reports have not addressed the role of White House officials in the unfolding events and whether officials took appropriate action before or during the rally. Legislation that would have authorized an independent commission to investigate further was quashed by Senate Republicans.
Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she would create a select committee to investigate Jan. 6 that would not require Republican support. It’s not certain whether Meadows and other aides would be willing to testify. Internal White House dealings have historically been subject to claims of “executive privilege” by both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Our reporting raises new questions that will not be answered unless Trump insiders tell the story of that day. It remains unclear, for example, precisely what Meadows and other White House officials learned of safety concerns about the march and whether they took those reports seriously.
The former president has a well-established pattern of bolstering far-right groups while he and his aides attempt to maintain some distance. Following the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump at first appeared to tacitly support torch-bearing white supremacists, later backing off. And in one presidential debate, he appeared to offer encouragement to the Proud Boys, a group of street brawlers who claim to protect Trump supporters, his statement triggering a dramatic spike in their recruitment. Trump later disavowed his support.
ProPublica has learned that White House officials worked behind the scenes to prevent the leaders of the march from appearing on stage and embarrassing the president. But Trump then undid those efforts with his speech, urging the crowd to join the march on the Capitol organized by the very people who had been blocked from speaking.
“And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he said.