NEW YORK CITY (TIP): Former President Donald Trump‘s business was convicted of tax fraud Tuesday, December 6, in a high-profile trial in Manhattan. Jurors rendered a guilty verdict on their second day of deliberations over whether the Trump Organization was complicit in a scheme by top executives to avoid taxes. Trump executives reaped job perks such as rent-free apartments and luxury cars without paying personal income taxes, prosecutors argued. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office prosecuted the case, noted the verdict’s historic nature. “For the first time in our lifetime, a jury has convicted a former President’s company of criminal charges,” he tweeted. Trump himself wasn’t on trial, but prosecutors accused him of knowing “exactly what was going on” within his company. The former U.S. President had yet to respond to the verdict on Truth Social, his social media platform from which he recently called to terminate parts of the Constitution, as of Tuesday afternoon.
But Trump has previously attacked Bragg, including on Tuesday, for waging what he called a “political Witch Hunt.”
Another target of Trump’s ire — New York Attorney General Letitia James — commended Bragg for securing the verdict. “Today’s guilty verdict against the Trump Organization shows that we will hold individuals and organizations accountable when they violate our laws to line their pockets,” James tweeted. The Manhattan case against Trump’s company was only one of many legal threats to the former president. James herself is pursuing an even higher stakes civil case against Trump and most of his adult children, whom she has all accused of long-standing fraud, that could permanently bar his company from doing business in New York.
By comparison, the verdict in the Manhattan case is small potatoes. The Trump Organization can only be fined up to $1.6 million as punishment, although the reputation hit could affect the business.
Bragg’s case against the Trump Organization centered around the company’s former finance chief, Allen Weisselberg, who previously pleaded guilty to charges that he manipulated the company’s books and his own compensation package to illegally reduce his taxes. Weisselberg testified in the trial in exchange for a promised five-month jail sentence. Trump Organization lawyers repeated “Weisselberg did it for Weisselberg” throughout the monthlong trial and argued he had betrayed the company’s trust.
“It was my own personal greed that led to this,” Weisselberg himself said in emotional testimony. But prosecutors argued Trump himself knew about the scheme. One prosecutor showed jurors a lease Trump signed for Weisselberg’s apartment and another document, initialed by the former president, that gave the go-ahead on a pay cut for an executive who got perks. “Mr. Trump is explicitly sanctioning tax fraud,” the prosecutor said. Bragg also has a related “active and ongoing” investigation of Trump that began under former District Attorney Cyrus Vance.
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