The Trump Organizatio<\/a>n could face up to $1.61 million in fines when judgment is handed down in mid-January. Now, the company is not at risk of being dismantled because there is no mechanism under New York law to dissolve the company. However, a felony conviction could affect your ability to do business or obtain loans or contracts.<\/p>\nThe guilty verdict comes as Trump faces scrutiny from federal and state prosecutors over his handling of classified documents, the effort to overturn the 2020 election results and the accuracy of the Trump Organization’s business records and financial statements. He also faces a $250 million civil lawsuit from the New York attorney general accusing him and his adult children of being involved in a decade-long fraud. The attorney general seeks to permanently bar them from serving as officers or directors of a company in the state of New York, among other sanctions.<\/p>\n
“This was a case of greed and cheating,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. “Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corporation got away with a scheme that gave high-level executives lavish benefits and compensation while intentionally concealed profits from tax authorities to avoid paying taxes.Today’s verdict holds these Trump companies accountable for their long-running criminal scheme.\u201d<\/p>\n
CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig said Bragg’s approach was vindicated.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, this is a setback for the Trump Organization, a huge setback for the Trump Organization. Now they have been found guilty of criminal conduct, tax fraud,” Honig told CNN’s Victor Blackwell on “Newsroom.”<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s also kind of a victory for the Manhattan district attorney,\u201d Honig said. \u201cHis theory of his, now, that part of the income of employees, including Allen Weisselberg, was paid through fringe benefits to avoid tax liability, that theory has been vindicated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told jurors in closing arguments that Trump “explicitly sanctioned” the tax fraud and urged them to reject the defense’s argument that former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg was a rogue employee motivated by his own personal greed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis whole narrative that Donald Trump was blissfully ignoring it is just not true,\u201d Steinglass said.<\/p>\n
The jury heard that Trump agreed on a whim to pay Weisselberg’s grandchildren’s private school tuition and signed a lease on a Manhattan apartment to reduce commuting for the executive. Trump personally signed his employees’ Christmas bonus checks and initialed him on a memo cutting the pay of other top executives, which prosecutors say suggested he knew about the scheme all along. fraudulent.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors alleged that for years top executives reduced their reported salaries by the amount of fringe benefits the company issued to avoid paying required taxes.<\/p>\n
The conviction, after the week-long trial, represents a victory for the Manhattan district attorney’s office led by Alvin Bragg, who based his case on the Trump Corporation’s general ledger, tax records and Weisselberg’s testimony.<\/p>\n
Weisselberg, que est\u00e1 en una licencia remunerada de la empresa, pas\u00f3 tres d\u00edas en el estrado de los testigos. Se declar\u00f3 culpable de 15 delitos graves por no pagar impuestos sobre US$ 1,76 millones en ingresos. Como parte de su acuerdo de culpabilidad, ser\u00e1 sentenciado a cinco meses de c\u00e1rcel si el juez determina que testific\u00f3 con sinceridad.<\/p>\n
En su testimonio, Weisselberg admiti\u00f3 que deber\u00eda haber pagado impuestos sobre la compensaci\u00f3n, por un total de aproximadamente US$ 200.000 en un a\u00f1o, que inclu\u00edan un apartamento de lujo en Manhattan con vista al r\u00edo Hudson, dos autos Mercedes Benz, estacionamiento, servicios p\u00fablicos, muebles y matr\u00edcula de escuela privada para sus nietos. Tambi\u00e9n testific\u00f3 que se pag\u00f3 a s\u00ed mismo y a otros ejecutivos como si fueran consultores independientes, lo que permiti\u00f3 a las empresas de Trump evadir el pago de impuestos.<\/p>\n
Weisselberg testific\u00f3 que logr\u00f3 el esquema con la ayuda de su subordinado, el interventor de la Organizaci\u00f3n Trump, Jeffrey McConney. McConney, quien recibi\u00f3 inmunidad por testificar ante un jurado investigador, admiti\u00f3 parte de la conducta il\u00edcita en su testimonio.<\/p>\n
Despu\u00e9s de que a Trump lo eligieran presidente, testific\u00f3 Weisselberg, hubo una \u201climpieza\u201d y muchas de las pr\u00e1cticas ilegales cesaron.<\/p>\n
Revel\u00f3 conversaciones que tuvo con Trump, Eric Trump y Donald Trump Jr., pero ante el jurado se\u00f1al\u00f3 que \u00e9l no plane\u00f3 ni conspir\u00f3 con nadie en la familia Trump, cuando los abogados del expresidente lo interrogaron.<\/p>\n
Weisselberg se mostr\u00f3 emotivo en algunas ocasiones y le dijo al jurado que estaba \u201cavergonzado\u201d por su conducta y que \u201ctraicion\u00f3\u201d a la familia Trump, quien ha sido su empleador durante 49 a\u00f1os.<\/p>\n
Los fiscales y los abogados defensores apuntaron a las lealtades divididas de Weisselberg: querer respetar su acuerdo de culpabilidad y cumplir una sentencia de c\u00e1rcel m\u00e1s baja, as\u00ed como su lealtad a la familia Trump, que podr\u00eda pagarle US$ 1 mill\u00f3n en compensaci\u00f3n este a\u00f1o.<\/p>\n
To prove the company’s guilt, prosecutors had to show that Weisselberg or McConney was a “senior management agent” who committed the crimes in the scope of their employment and “on behalf of” the company.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors and defense attorneys argued in circles about what “on behalf of” meant.<\/h3>\n
Judge Juan Merchan also had a hard time explaining the phrase to the jury and turned to two legal treatises to come up with a definition.<\/p>\n
The judge explained this to the jury and said: \u201cUnder the definition of ‘in the name of’ it is not necessary that the criminal acts actually benefit the corporation. But the acts of an agent are not “on behalf of” a corporation if they were carried out solely to further the agents’ own interest. Put another way, if the agent’s acts were taken simply for personal gain, they were not ‘on behalf of’ the corporation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weisselberg walked a fine line in his testimony, telling jurors that he never wanted to affect the company, that he was driven by greed and primarily wanted to pay less in taxes. But, he also said, he knew at the time that the company would benefit to some degree from his schemes.<\/p>\n
In testimony from him, Weisselberg said: “It was a benefit for the company, but it was mainly due to my greed.” He told jurors that the company saved money by paying less tax on its off-books compensation and acknowledged when asked by prosecutor Susan Hoffinger whether, while his primary goal was to avoid tax, he also created a benefit for the company. .<\/p>\n
\u201cTo some extent, yes,\u201d Weisselberg testified.<\/h3>\n
Weisselberg said he and McConney knew at the time that the company would pay less payroll tax through the scheme, though he said they never explicitly discussed it.<\/p>\n
Trump’s lawyers repeatedly argued before the jury that “Weisselberg did it for Weisselberg” to emphasize that he was motivated solely by his personal greed.<\/p>\n
On cross-examination, Weisselberg agreed that the decision not to pay taxes was his and made solely for his own benefit.<\/p>\n
“That was my intent,” Weisselberg said when asked by Trump’s lawyers, “to benefit myself.”<\/p>\n
Lawyers for the Trump entities called only one fact witness, longtime real estate accountant Donald Bender of Mazars USA, who dropped Trump as a client earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Trump’s lawyers said Bender knew about the off-the-record kickoff or should have discovered the tax fraud and accused him of lying on the stand.<\/p>\n
When he was questioned by prosecutors, Bender testified that he trusted and depended on Weisselberg, who testified that he covered up the illegal plan.<\/p>\n
Steinglass, the prosecutor, told the jury that Trump’s companies were guilty, and that the illegal scheme was concocted \u201cso that employees can get a higher take-home pay while costing Trump Corporation less. It’s a win-win situation, unless it’s the tax authorities.”<\/p>\n
Liz Cheney: Trump Enemy of the Constitution<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former US President Donald Trump’s real estate company has been found guilty of tax fraud in a lawsuit in New York. After about two days of deliberations, a jury found the company guilty on all 17 counts, according to Manhattan Attorney Alvin Bragg. The sentence is to be announced on January 13, 2023. Ex-President Trump …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":75096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[77263,79054,79055,2057,6022],"class_list":["post-75095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-donald-trump","tag-the-trump-organization","tag-trump-payroll-corporation","tag-usa","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}