Top Trump Executive Sentenced to Five Months in Tax Fraud Case

Longtime CFO Allen Weisselberg cooperated with prosecutors in their case against the former president’s businesses.

Allen Weisselberg

Allen Weisselberg arrives to court, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023, in New York.John Minchillo/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

A Manhattan judge has sentenced longtime Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg to five months in jail for his role in helping the former president’s businesses evade taxes for much of the last decade. Following the sentencing on Tuesday afternoon, Weisselberg, 75, was taken into custody and transported to New York City’s Rikers Island jail to begin serving his time. Weisselberg was also given five years probation and ordered to pay $2 million in restitution. 

Weisselberg could have faced as much as 25 years in state prison based on the initial charges against him, but last summer he pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against his former employer—the Trump Organization. However, he did not agree to testify against his former boss, Trump. Last month a jury found two Trump-owned corporations guilty on nine counts of tax fraud; Trump was not charged personally in the case. The companies will be sentenced later this week, although they have appealed the conviction.

The case centers around a scheme under which Trump’s companies would pay top executives, like Weisselberg, less money in salary, but make up the difference by giving them fancy perks like Mercedes-Benzes, apartments, and even tuition for Weisselberg’s grandchildren. Employees ended up paying lower taxes for the same overall level of take-home compensation. At the trial for the Trump companies, defense attorneys argued that this scheme only benefitted Weisselberg and other executives who received the perks. But prosecutors contended that it actually provided a huge benefit for the Trump Organization, too, because it allowed the companies to boost executives’ pay for about half the cost of a taxable salary increase.

After Weisselberg pleaded guilty to participating in the scheme, Trump kept him on the company payroll—and in fact offered him a large bonus to be paid out following the trial. For much of the run-up to the Trump Organization trial, attorneys on both sides studiously tried to avoid making the case about Trump personally. But almost immediately upon the start of the trial, defense attorneys began referencing Trump—specifically praising him for being generous to Weisselberg even after his guilty plea. This gave prosecutors an opportunity to go after Trump, and they painted a picture of the Trump Organization as a workplace subsumed by a “culture of fraud.”

At one point, prosecutors showed jurors paperwork signed by Trump indicating that he had approved of a request by one employee to reduce that employee’s salary by $75,000—the exact amount of rent the employee would have owed for a Trump-owned apartment he was living in rent-free. 

“Mr. Trump explicitly sanctioning tax fraud! That’s what this document shows!” Manhattan assistant district attorney Joshua Steinglass told the jury.

On Tuesday, as expected, prosecutors endorsed the five-month jail sentence they had negotiated with Weisselberg in exchange for his helpful testimony. Following the formal sentencing by New York judge Juan Merchan, Weisselberg was handcuffed and led away. 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate