Monday was so fraught with headlines over Supreme Court rulings and such that a guilty plea entered in Manhattan got somewhat lost in the shuffle. Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg pleaded guilty to perjury in Manhattan for testimony he gave in connection with the civil fraud case brought against Trump by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Weisselberg, 76, pleaded guilty in state court in Manhattan to two counts of perjury and will be sentenced in April to five months in jail — his second stint behind bars after serving 100 days last year for dodging taxes on company perks.
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“It is a crime to lie in depositions and at trial — plain and simple,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said in a statement.
Weisselberg’s plea agreement does not require him to cooperate or testify at the hush-money trial, which is scheduled to begin March 25. Prosecutors promised not to prosecute him for other crimes he might have committed in connection with his employment at the Trump Organization.
In court Monday, Weisselberg admitted lying under oath on three occasions while testifying in a lawsuit brought against Trump by New York Attorney General Letitia James — in deposition testimony in July 2020 and May 2023 and on the witness stand at the trial last October.
However, to avoid violating his probation in the tax case, he agreed to plead guilty only to charges related to his 2020 testimony.
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Hopefully, this doesn't come as a terrible shock, but I agree with the statement from Bragg's office — it is a crime to lie in depositions and at trial. And I'd have less consternation over the prosecution of Weisselberg for having done so if this standard were applied across the board, though all too often, we see that isn't the case.
Todd Blanche, an attorney for Trump, wrote to Bragg's office on Monday in response to the plea to point out this inconsistency and assert prosecutorial misconduct on the part of the D.A.'s office. In an 11-page letter, Blanche set out the disparate treatment accorded Weisselberg versus former Trump attorney Michael Cohen. The letter opens with:
We write regarding ongoing prosecutorial misconduct in connection with the prosecution of President Donald J. Trump—in violation of the federal and state constitutions and your ethical obligations—concerning DANY’s simultaneous (1) decision to turn a blind eye to the admitted and repeated perjury of your star witness, Michael Cohen; and (2) vindictive and oppressive pressure and plea negotiations leading, today, to a forced-upon guilty plea for 2 counts of perjury by Allen H. Weisselberg. This conduct by DANY was obviously part of an effort to impact the outcome of the flawed proceedings in People by James v. Trump and/or Mr. Weisselberg’s role at trial in People v. Trump, although he does not as of now appear on any witness list. DANY’s conscious choice to ignore obvious and admitted criminal conduct by Cohen and to instead deploy unethical, strong-armed tactics against an innocent man in his late 70s underscores the irresponsibility of your conduct in office. Indeed, while you waste public resources in a desperate attempt to impede President Trump’s ongoing ascent to the White House, in violation of applicable prosecutorial guidelines prohibiting such election interference, you regularly and repeatedly allow those guilty of brutal attacks on law enforcement and murderers to roam free. This dereliction of duty renders you fully unfit to serve as District Attorney, and exposes innocent citizens, like Mr. Weisselberg, to irreparable and life-altering harm.
I'll confess that I hadn't followed the issue of Weisselberg's testimony and alleged perjury particularly closely, so I wasn't entirely clear on what it was he'd said that had gotten him in hot water. Here's a summary of the testimony in question:
Weisselberg was on the stand as part of a $250 million lawsuit that the New York attorney general is waging against Trump and his associates, including Weisselberg, accusing them of lying about Trump’s net worth to financial institutions. To arrive at inflated figures, the Trump Organization used demonstrably incorrect facts, such as valuing Trump’s penthouse as if it contained 30,000 square feet, when it in fact consisted of 10,996.
Under questioning, Weisselberg acknowledged that the 30,000-square-foot figure was wrong. He tried to suggest, however, that he had little to do with the bogus calculation, batting away a series of questions about the financial documents and discussions with Forbes, which has been valuing Trump’s fortune since 1982. “I never focused on the triplex, to be honest with you,” Weisselberg said. “It was almost de minimis relative to his net worth, so I really didn’t focus on it.”
He repeated similar lines as his testimony continued. “I never focused on the apartment Mr. Trump owned,” he said at one point. At another: “I didn’t correlate the square footage of Donald’s apartment. I never focused on it. It was always in my mind a de minimis asset of the overall of Donald J. Trump’s statement of financial condition. That was never a concern of mine. I never even thought about the apartment. It was de minimis in my mind.”
The Forbes article goes on to lay out in detail previous conversations and communications Weisselberg had over the years with their reporters regarding the size and valuation of the penthouse apartment. The bottom line is that Weisselberg clearly had thought about the apartment, its size, and its valuation. So, yes, it does appear that he committed perjury (and on more than one occasion, though the plea is purely as to the 2020 deposition).
Still, it is difficult to square the prosecution of Weisselberg (and the push for additional jail time) against the backdrop of other charging decisions by Bragg's office. It's almost as if there's an agenda (beyond justice) afoot...
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