Donald Trumps company sentenced for 15-year tax fraud | WKZO | All of Kalamazoo

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By Karen Freifeld and Jonathan Stamp

NEW YORK (Reuters) Donald Trump will learn on Friday how the company bearing the names of former US presidents will be punished after being found guilty of a 15-year scheme to defraud tax authorities.

A New York state judge will impose the sentence after a Manhattan jury found two Trump Organization affiliates guilty of 17 criminal charges last month.

The sentence came three days after Manhattan criminal court Justice Juan Merchan ordered Allen Weisselberg, who worked for the Trumps for half a century and was the company’s former chief financial officer, to serve five months in prison after he testified as star witness of the prosecution. .

Trumps company faces only a maximum $1.6 million penalty, but it has said it plans to appeal. No one else has been charged or faces jail time in the case.

The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Braggs, who brought the case, is still conducting a criminal investigation into the Trumps’ business practices.

Bill Black, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law who specializes in white-collar crime, called the expected punishment a rounding error that offers zero deterrence to others, including Trump.

It was a farce, he said. No one will stop committing these types of crimes because of this sentence.

The case has long been a thorn in the side of the former Republican president, who has called it part of a witch hunt by Democrats who dislike him and his politics.

Trump also faces a $250 million civil lawsuit by state Attorney General Letitia James that accuses him and his adult children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump of inflating his net worth and the value of his company assets to save money on loans and insurance.

Bragg and James were Democrats, as was Braggs predecessor Cyrus Vance, who brought the criminal case. Trump is seeking the presidency in 2024, after losing his re-election bid in 2020.

During a four-week trial, prosecutors offered evidence that Trumps company covered personal expenses such as rent and car leases for executives without reporting them as income, and pretended that the Christmas bonuses are non-employee compensation.

Trump himself signed the bonus checks, prosecutors said, as well as the rent on the Weisselbergs’ luxury Manhattan apartment and private school tuition for the CFO’s grandchildren.

The whole narrative that Donald Trump is clueless is false, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass told jurors in his closing argument.

Weisselbergs’ testimony helped convict the company, even though he said Trump was not part of the fraud scheme. He also refused to help Bragg in his broader investigation of Trump.

The Trump Organization placed Weisselberg on paid leave until their relationship was severed this week. His lawyer said the split, announced Tuesday, was amicable.

Weisselberg, 75, is serving his sentence at New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail.

State law limits the penalties Justice Merchan can impose on the Trumps’ company. A corporation can be fined up to $250,000 for each tax-related count and $10,000 for each non-tax count.

Trump faces several other legal problems, including investigations related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House, and effort to reverse his 2020 election loss in Georgia.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld and Jonathan Stempel; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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