Ivanka,
Donald and Donald Jr. Trump with Allen Weisselberg at a press
conference at Trump Tower. (photo: Timothy A. Clary/Getty)
02 July 21
Which is something one should probably avoid if one is hoping to avoid prison time.
n
life, a good rule of thumb is to not engage in the sort of behavior
that could result in being charged with numerous felonies; in other
words, don‘t do crimes. But if you’re going to ignore that rule, and you
don’t want to spend years in prison, another piece of advice is to not
leave such an obvious paper trail of said crimes that you might as well
have stuck a Post-it note on a stack of files that reads, “Hey,
everybody, come check out all the laws I’ve been breaking! It’s all
right here! Get the handcuffs ready!” Which, based on the indictment
unsealed in a Manhattan courtroom today, is basically what the Trump
Organization and its longtime CFO did, for more than a decade. Whoops!
Yes, in a turn of events perhaps unsurprising given Donald Trump‘s frequent pronouncements that he‘s “like, really smart,” it appears that not only did the Trump Organization and Allen Weisselberg engage in so many scams that they were hit with a whopping 15 criminal charges—including conspiracy, grand larceny, and multiple counts of tax fraud and falsifying records—but they were really, really stupid about it. Despite the fact that Weisselberg and the company were very effective at (allegedly) hiding all sorts of income from the Internal Revenue Service—largely through fringe benefits like apartments, cars, and private school tuition the Trump Org paid for that were never declared as income—they apparently never envisioned a scenario in which they would be investigated, hence the decision to keep meticulous records of all the taxes they were allegedly dodging. (In total, Weisselberg was accused of dodging taxes on $1.7 million worth of perks.)
As one delightful section of the indictment reads:
Weisselberg caused the Trump Corporation to issue corporate checks made payable to a Trump Organization employee who cashed the checks and received cash. The cash was given to Weisselberg for his personal use. The Trump Corporation booked this cash as “Holiday Entertainment,” but maintained internal spreadsheets showing the cash to be part of Weisselberg’s employee compensation.
Oops! Great work, dummies! Here’s another fun example:
For certain years, the Trump Organization maintained internal spreadsheets that tracked the amounts it paid for Weisselberg’s rent, utility, and garage expenses. Simultaneously, the Trump Organization reduced the amount of direct compensation that Weisselberg received in the form of checks or direct deposits to account for the indirect compensation that he received in the form of payments of rent, utility bills, and garage expenses. The indirect compensation was not included on Weisselberg’s W-2 forms or otherwise reported to federal, state, or local tax authorities, and no income taxes were withheld by the corporate defendants in connection with the indirect compensation.
Weisselberg, who pleaded not guilty on Thursday alongside the ex-president‘s business, is now facing more than a decade in prison, if convicted on all charges. And while prosecutors are presumably still hoping he’ll flip and testify against Trump, according to former Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen, the government will still be able to make its case without him:
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