To avoid letting their personal feelings toward Donald Trump cloud their judgment, jurors for the criminal tax fraud case against the Trump Organization had a novel strategy: They referred to the former president as “Joe Smith.”
“I constantly fought my knee-jerk belief that of course anything with the name Trump on it is crooked,” one juror told The Daily Beast this week. “I shocked myself in mid-November when I realized that I wasn’t sure I could find the Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corporation guilty. We talked in the jury room about having to put on blinders and look just at these two companies. One of the guys started calling Trump ‘Joe Smith.’ From there on we referred to ‘Mr. Smith’s company.’”
After a six-week trial, it took the jury just two days last week to come back with guilty verdicts on all nine counts issued against a pair of Trump Organization affiliate companies. Jurors were convinced the companies had blatantly committed fraud, but they still felt compelled to carefully consider each criminal charge to be absolutely sure the facts lined up with legal definitions, according to this juror who exclusively spoke to The Daily Beast.
ADVERTISEMENT
New Yorkers on the jury that convicted the Trump Organization of tax fraud and other related crimes last week were deeply offended at the way those two Trump firms cheated everyday people, this juror said.
“Do you want the potholes fixed sooner? That’s where this money comes from,” this person recalled hearing in the jury deliberation room.
“And the total Medicare tax they dodged was maybe $25,000. We were supposed to consider it a pittance. It might be a pittance for you, but it wasn’t a pittance for any of us. I want my Medicare funded,” the juror told The Daily Beast.
Manhattan District Attorney prosecutors successfully convinced jurors that former Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg acted “in behalf of” the Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corporation when taxes were dodged and business records were faked. But until now, no one knew how jurors came to that decision.
The juror, whose identity we have confirmed, asked to remain anonymous to avoid threats from angry MAGA loyalists. This person carefully detailed the way the 12 jurors examined the evidence, wrestled over the various criminal charges, and reacted to the lawyers’ presentations during the two days of deliberations in a room at the Manhattan criminal courthouse.
The juror said it was easy to follow the guidance Justice Juan Merchan kept repeating—that Trump himself wasn’t on trial. But the bigger challenge was separating their personal animus toward the twice-impeached former president who tried to cling to power and keeps attacking American democracy.
“I was very clear—as was every juror—that DJT was not a party to this lawsuit, but I couldn’t help but remember the 2016 debate with [Hillary] Clinton when she showed he hadn’t paid federal taxes and he proudly remarked that was because he was ‘smart.’ That was his opinion of taxes and this was his company. Taxpayers are losers, in Trumpland,” this juror said.
Fellow jurors were apparently annoyed at the way corporate defense lawyer Michael van der Veen tried adopting his own defense catchphrase à la O.J. Simpson trial: “Weisselberg did it for Weisselberg.”
Trump Organization Attorney Michael van der Veen returns to the courtroom after a short recess during the Trump Organization tax fraud trial at the New York Supreme Court on December 05, 2022 in New York City.
Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesTrump’s defense lawyers argued that the companies couldn’t possibly be to blame for the way several executives rearranged their pay to dodge taxes. They tried to convince the jury that the most egregious example—Weisselberg—did it all on his own, and not to benefit the Trump Organization.
“Everyone hated ‘Weisselberg did it for Weisselberg.’ We found it demeaning. How stupid do you think we are? At least Johnnie Cochran [who famously insisted ‘If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit’] had a viable point.” the juror said, recalling that, at one point during deliberations one of the jurors blurted out, “Does he really think this is going to influence us?”
This person also said jurors were insulted at the way van der Veen ridiculed the soft-spoken Donald Bender, the Trump Organization’s longtime contracted accountant at Mazars USA who testified that he knew nothing of the company’s fraud scheme.
“Michael van der Veen did nothing to help himself by imitating Donald Bender's voice and speech impediment… impugning his manhood because the guy spoke with a high voice. People really, really didn’t like that,” this person said, noting that one juror commented: “How small-minded and unnecessary.”
But jurors also had strong feelings about Weisselberg’s right-hand man, company controller Jeffrey McConney.
The accountant was rewarded immunity from criminal charges by the Manhattan prosecutors in exchange for admitting to his role in the scheme and ratting out his coworkers. But on the stand at trial, McConney played dumb with prosecutors while actively helping the defense. The juror who spoke to The Daily Beast said fellow jurors seemed bothered by the bumbling act he put on.
“Nobody believed McConney. Everybody got that he was stonewalling the prosecution and just could not say enough for the defense,” the juror said. “[His testimony] seemed to be incompetent lying. He tried to obfuscate but ended up sounding stupid.”
The trial lasted more than a month, because it was constantly interrupted by fall holidays and a COVID outbreak that sickened a witness—as well as the judge. When jurors finally started talking to each other about the case last Monday morning during deliberations, they quickly found that they were all in agreement that the fraud at these firms was rampant, this person told The Daily Beast.
They first contemplated whether to judge one corporation then the other, but instead they decided to examine the nine criminal counts in numerical order, the juror said. The jury foreperson—a woman in the health-care field who kept a calm and reassuring demeanor—paused constantly to ask if anyone had any questions or needed to review evidence. But reviewing the evidence was messy, because none of the documents were clearly marked, the juror recalled.
They first considered whether the Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corporation engaged in a scheme to defraud.
“Does anyone think it’s ‘guilty?’” the foreperson asked. When everyone quickly raised their hands, it became comically apparent that it would be more efficient to do the opposite, the juror speaking to The Daily Beast recalled.
“From now on, I’ll ask if anyone thinks they're not guilty,” the foreperson said, according to the juror.
The juror recalled that when some questioned Weisselberg and McConney’s roles at the company, a man who’s a mid-level manager at a corporation told his fellow jurors that both undoubtedly met the standard for “high managerial agents.”
People walk by New York City Criminal Court after the Trump Organization was convicted on all charges in a criminal tax fraud scheme on December 06, 2022 in New York City.
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesAccording to the tell-all juror, one surprising detail was that they did not stumble on what was expected to be the biggest hurdle of the trial: whether or not Weisselberg and McConney acted “in behalf of” the corporations.
The judge had given them a fairly complex instruction of this legal standard. “It is not necessary that the criminal acts actually benefit the corporation,” the judge instructed the jury at one point. “But an agent’s acts are not ‘in behalf of' the corporation if they were undertaken solely to advance the agent’s own interests. Put another way, if the agent’s acts were taken merely for personal gain, they were not ‘in behalf of’ the corporation.”
The jury quickly grasped that this was different from saying “on behalf of,” which would be like acting as an agent for someone’s interests. Instead, they likened it to a doctor giving a medical opinion “in behalf of” a patient, essentially doing it to help.
On that point, all the jurors quickly agreed: Weisselberg had clearly helped his employer dodge taxes by lowering his own salary to cover the luxury cars, apartment, and other benefits he and his wife received.
The juror told The Daily Beast they “loved” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass’ explanation that the Trump Organization benefited handsomely by directly giving Weisselberg a car, because it would have had to pay him far more than that to account for taxes.
And it was even more obvious that Weisselberg wanted to help out the company, because the expensive tuition checks he got for his grandchildren from Donald Trump weren’t paid back to the man—they were directed to the Trump Organization.
But nothing seemed to piss off jurors more than the way the company enriched its executives by paying them part of their salary as “independent contractors,” which allowed several of them—even ones who weren’t indicted—to dodge even more taxes.
“Everybody was disgusted to some degree that they were making good salaries and yet they still had to get more,” the juror said.
As for Trump, this juror looks forward to an eventual indictment of the former president. But they’re not surprised that DA Alvin Bragg Jr. hasn’t pulled the trigger yet.
“You’ve gotta know you’re gonna win,” this juror said. “You can’t waste the money. You can’t take Trump to court and lose because then, he’s not ‘not guilty.’ He’s ‘innocent.’ That’s how he’d interpret it.”
