MANHATTAN (CN) — Former Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg was sentenced on Wednesday to five months in jail for perjury, pursuant to his plea agreement.
After a brief hearing on Wednesday, Weisselberg was whisked off to New York City’s infamous Rikers Island jail complex.
“Mr. Weisselberg, is there anything you'd like to say?" Judge Laurie Peterson asked.
"No, your honor," Weisselberg replied, before being led out of the courtroom in cuffs.
Last month, Weisselberg pleaded guilty to perjuring himself in former President Donald Trump’s civil fraud case. He admitted to lying during his deposition about his knowledge of Trump’s Manhattan triplex size, which was a third as big as Trump was reporting on financial papers.
“Well, we didn’t find out about the error until the Forbes article came out,” Weisselberg told investigators, according to court documents, referencing a 2017 Forbes story that exposed the true size of the triplex.
That was a lie, Weisselberg admitted in March. He was actually made aware well before 2017, but continued to list the apartment at its enhanced size on subsequent financial statements.
The Manhattan district attorney originally charged Weisselberg with five perjury counts. Despite only pleading guilty to two, prosecutors say that Weisselberg effectively admits to the substance of all five initial counts — including two during his October testimony at Trump’s civil fraud trial.
This is Weisselberg’s second stint in jail. In 2022, he pleaded guilty to tax fraud and testified against the Trump Organization. For that, he spent about 100 days at Rikers Island.
In February, the 76-year-old was found liable for fraud alongside Trump, following a lengthy 10-week trial under New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron. Engoron ordered Trump to pay around $355 million, compounded by an ever-growing $100 million in pre-trial interest, for shorting banks and insurers by lying about his net worth on yearly financial statements.
Weisselberg, who helped Trump in the scheme, is on the hook for $1 million.
Trump is appealing the ruling, and put up a reduced bond to stay the enforcement of Engoron's judgment until the process plays out.
But since Weisselberg’s guilty plea, New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the fraud case against Trump in 2022, is asking the court to look into the potential consequences of his perjury.
In a letter dated April 4, James writes that the Manhattan district attorney’s office found emails from Weisselberg that confirm he knew the true size of the apartment all along. James claims that her office should have been given access to those records during the discovery process in her case, and she wants a court-appointed monitor to investigate why that didn’t happen.
“We have already raised multiple times the prospect that defendants have withheld relevant and responsive information from OAG,” James said. “We therefore ask that the monitor be tasked with reviewing the electronic files collected by defendants … to determine if the documents referenced in the criminal complaint were in the possession of the Trump Organization and if they were produced in either the underlying investigation or in the discovery in this action.”
If they weren’t produced, James wants the monitor to find out why.
“We would further ask that the monitor be authorized to conduct this investigation and report back to the court and OAG within two weeks,” James added.
The judge has yet to authorize such action from the court-appointed monitor, who was originally named to keep tabs on Trump Organization finances during the trial. But lawyers for Trump and Weisselberg have since pushed back on the attorney general’s request, calling it a “violation of the constitutional principle of separation of powers.”
“The Court of Appeals has long recognized that the New York Constitution and the separation of powers doctrine prevent a justice of the Supreme Court from being charged with the duties of a prosecutor in aid of the executive,” they claim in a letter of their own.
It remains to be seen whether Weisselberg’s perjury will significantly affect the fraud judgment or lead to any further consequences for Trump. But as it stands, Weisselberg will be spending more of his golden years behind bars.
Seth Rosenberg, Weisselberg’s lawyer for the perjury charges, didn’t reply to questions from reporters when leaving the courtroom Wednesday. His law firm, Clayman Rosenberg Kirshner & Linder, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Follow @Uebey
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
Hunter Biden appeals April 12, 2024 -
