If Donald Trump is running for president just to slither away from his pressing legal problems—as some have speculated—he better get moving before the gendarmes are at the door, because his circle of trust is starting to look like a parallelogram of perfidy. Turns out even Trump’s most loyal soldiers, like longtime—and now former—Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, have decided their loyalty ends at the jail cell door.
On Tuesday, Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty in August to a 15-count indictment connected to a series of untaxed benefits he received from the Trump Organization, stated that at least some of those payments were authorized by Trump himself, not by whoever Trump was planning to pin it on and then brutally murder in a Taco Bell Express parking lot. (Allegedly!)
“The rent was authorized by Donald Trump,” Weisselberg said of a New York apartment he’d occupied for free, courtesy of Trump’s company. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office is prosecuting the Trump Organization for tax fraud, partly in relation to the gratis fringe benefits Weisselberg reportedly received from the company.
According to prosecutors, Weisselberg received approximately $1.7 million in untaxed benefits from the company. And while the Trump Organization, and not Trump himself, is currently on trial, Trump’s vanishingly small yet conspicuously unctuous fingerprints appear to be all over this scheme.
Rolling Stone:
Although Trump is not on trial, prosecutors have closely linked this alleged illegal activity to him. During opening statements on October 31, prosecutors said that from 2005 to 2017, “when most of the criminal conduct occurred,” these companies were “owned by Donald Trump.”
[...]
“The evidence will show that when Donald Trump was elected president at the end of 2016, these companies finally had to clean up these fraudulent tax practices,” [Assistant District Attorney Susan] Hoffinger argued. “There was concern about extra scrutiny of these companies because of Donald Trump’s election.”
The trial is rooted in the 2021 indictment of several Trump businesses, including The Trump Organization, for a purported 15-year-long tax fraud plot. The supposed financial misdeeds related to untaxed perks to Weisselberg in a “sweeping and audacious illegal payments scheme,” prosecutors have said.
Of course, this isn’t Weisselberg’s first eye-opening admission. In August, when asked if he’d schemed with the Trump Organization “to defraud federal, New York state, and New York city tax authorities,” he replied, “Yes, your honor.”
Weisselberg also noted that either he or Trump would sign the rent checks for the apartment he occupied. He allegedly received as much as $200,000 each year in untaxed benefits during the period in question, which continued from 2005 to 2017. Weisselberg also testified that if he’d simply asked for a raise, the company would have likely had to pay double the cost of the benefits to cover the tax bill. In addition, he acknowledged that he hid information about his income from the company’s accounting firm, Mazars USA. which later cut ties with the Trump Organization, saying it could no longer vouch for the financial statements it had prepared for the company.
So, yeah, that guy who refused to participate in the peaceful transfer of power, incited a violent insurrection, stole top secret nuclear documents, wanted to sic the military on American citizens, and loves dictators so much, he wants to be one when he grows up, also (allegedly) runs a crooked company.
By all means, let’s put that guy back in the Oval Office.
Psst, legacy media: It’s okay to state the obvious. From now on, whenever you write about Trump in relation to the 2024 election—assuming you even want to cover his latest lurid fail-a-thon—you should refer to him as “disgraced former president, insurrectionist, and semi-ambulant ketchup trebuchet” Donald J. Trump. Or something like that. Use your words! Balanced reporting is for people who didn’t literally get people killed while trying to end American democracy. But that’s just common sense, now isn’t it?
And here you thought the midterms were over. Oh, no. Sen. Raphael Warnock is still defending his Georgia seat. If you can—and if you aren’t too tired of saving America—rush a donation to Warnock now. Let’s finish up strong!
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.