Trump Org CFO Takes The Fall, En Route To Rikers

This week, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is trying the Trump Organization for a longstanding scheme to pay its executives in perks, thereby reducing their salaries and allowing them to stiff the IRS and the New York Department of Finance and Taxation of their rightful take. Team Trump has decided on a clever defense strategy: Blame the bookkeeper who is so loyal to Trump that he’s willing to spend time in Rikers to protect him.

The bookkeeper is of course Allen Weisselberg, the 75-year-old who spent his entire career making the numbers work for the Trump family and the white whale for anyone hoping to flip a Trump consigliere and put Trump away for good. Along the way, he rose to be CFO of the Trump Organization, where he admits that he participated in a regular effort to shift as much of his compensation off the books as possible. Weisselberg’s $940,000 salary remained level between 2011 and 2018, but his paycheck fluctuated because the Trump Organization was taking great chunks off the top and paying for his rent, cars, parking, and even his grandchildren’s private school tuition. And, yes, of course these fucking idiots kept an internal set of books documenting the tally.

The advantage for Weisselberg was that every dollar went twice as far when he didn’t have to pay half of it in taxes. And the advantage for the Trump Organization was that it didn’t have to give Weisselberg (or any of the other execs participating in this type of scheme) a raise — it could just direct more and more of their compensation to perks, effectively allowing the IRS to pick up the tab. Keep that last bit in mind, since, as Vice reports, the Trump Organization has already telegraphed that it plans to defend itself by claiming that it was a victim of this scheme, not a beneficiary.

“Once he was arrested, he realized he was in danger of losing all of it and being sentenced to jail for years,” Trump Org attorney Susan Necheles hinted darkly. “So Allen Weisselberg made a deal with the prosecutors.”

In point of fact, Allen Weisselberg is still on the Trump Organization payroll, as was the fist witness, Jeff McConney, who admitted on the stand that the company is also paying his lawyers.

McConney secured immunity after testifying before a grand jury, but Weisselberg pled guilty this summer to all 15 counts of fraud he is alleged to have committed with the Trump Organization. He refused to flip on Trump personally, though — a very hard needle to thread, since Trump and his business have been effectively one and the same for decades. In theory, the bookkeeper will be a witness for the prosecution this week. In reality, he’s the Trump Org’s star witness, since their whole case rests on pretending that Weisselberg committed the fraud on the Trump Organization, rather than with it.

“This case is about greed and cheating — cheating on taxes,” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger told the jury in yesterday’s opening statements, as reported by Vice. “The Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corporation paid their already highly-paid executives even more by helping them cheat on taxes.”

“Allen Weisselberg is a man who has fallen to his greed!” Trump Org attorney Michael Van Der Veen yelled, reprising his impeachment role as the weird, shout-y guy willing to say any damn fool thing in defense of Donald Trump.

“Greed made him cheat on his taxes, hide his deeds from his employer, and betray a trust built over nearly 50 years!” he railed against Weisselberg, seeking to preemptively discredit him.

Bizarrely, since Trump and his kids aren’t on trial, lawyers for the defense seem intent on clearing his name.

“Donald Trump didn’t know that Allen Weisselberg was cheating on Allen Weisselberg’s personal tax returns,” Necheles insisted. “The evidence will be crystal clear on that.”

It all makes perfect sense, if you pretend that Trump didn’t personally sign the tuition checks for Weisselberg’s grandchildren. There’s also the minor matter that multiple senior executives and/or their family members were participating in the same scam. And not for nothing, but this defense rests on the premise that Donald Trump and his three eldest children who ran the company with him were goddamn idiots who had no idea what was going on — which is honestly kinda believable. Or it might be if we hadn’t seen Trump and Don Jr. bury the Stormy Daniels hush money payoff in the Trump Org books as a business expense. (Please, oh, please let them bring that in as impeachment evidence if these fuckers pretend they had no idea what was going on.)

Anyway, we’ve already given Alvin Bragg shit for dropping the case against Trump himself. We all know what happens here at the end of the day. The company pays a fine and goes about its business, the patsy goes to jail — third verse same as the first, little bit louder little bit worse.

[Vice]

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