The Trump Organization and its former chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, are headed toward a criminal trial for tax fraud in October, as a New York state judge refused to dismiss the indictment on Friday morning.
New York Justice Juan Merchan shot down nearly every request by Trump’s family company and his finance man to dismiss the case. Merchan was unconvinced that prosecutors mishandled the grand jury indictment—and he tossed aside the claim that the case was politically motivated.
“This trial's gonna take a long time,” prosecutor Joshua Adam Steinglass said in court.
ADVERTISEMENT
The judge scheduled a hearing next month to determine if prosecutors can use potentially incriminating statements that Weisselberg told law enforcement when he was detained briefly last year.
It’s been nearly a year since Weisselberg has appeared in court for this case. The last time, his defense lawyers revealed that prosecutors had discovered a ton of new evidence in some unnamed person’s basement.
Weisselberg and the Trump Organization were indicted June 30, 2021 for tax fraud and falsifying business records. They’re accused of hatching a plot to reward him with untaxed fringe benefits—like a swanky apartment, a luxury car, and expensive private school tuition for his grandkids.
One key witness—whose testimony from a New York prison started this whole Weisselberg investigation—is Michael Cohen, a disbarred lawyer who was once Trump’s former consigliere.
Prosecutors in recent weeks have begun to prepare witnesses to testify at trial, including Jennifer Weisselberg. She is the mother of those grandchildren and has since divorced Weisselberg’s son, Barry (who is also a Trump Organization employee and previously ran the ice rink at Central Park). Her lawyer, Duncan Levin, a former prosecutor at the DA’s office, has helped her assemble financial paperwork that will serve as evidence of Allen Weisselberg’s off-the-books corporate perks.
While the DA’s prosecution of Weisselberg has garnered intense media attention, a parallel fight in New York family court has been playing out mostly in the shadows, where the Weisselberg family has used a custody battle with the divorcée to keep her silent. Even as she prepares to testify at an upcoming trial, a family court judge recently hit her with financial sanctions for speaking publicly about her kids.
The slow-moving prosecution of Trump’s longtime, right-hand finance man has mostly taken place out of sight. In the sparse court documents that have been publicly filed, Weisselberg’s lawyers have sought to dismiss the case by attacking the credibility of the original tipster, Cohen.
Meanwhile, prosecutors have maintained that the case is solid. But their attempts to flip Weisselberg’s deputy, Trump Org controller Jeffrey McConney, seem to have failed when he decided to become a fall guy instead. The accountant has essentially taken the blame for any oddities in Weisselberg’s pay, according to court documents.
Although its unclear what defenses Weisselberg may present, he has defaulted in the past to simply pointing to his own incompetence, like the time he told New York state investigators that he signed documents without reading them and didn’t realize he was listed as a charity’s director.
While the Manhattan DA’s investigation of the Trump Organization and its former CFO continues moving forward, the office’s related criminal investigation into Trump himself seems to have completely unraveled.
DA Alvin Bragg Jr. thought that indicting the former president was too risky because he wasn’t convinced the evidence was strong enough to guarantee a conviction, according to public statements by Mark Pomerantz, one of the prosecutors who led that team but quit in protest when Bragg got cold feet. Multiple sources have told The Daily Beast that office’s effort to criminally charge Trump is essentially dead, as several team members have moved on to other matters.
Friday morning’s court hearing capped Trump’s week from hell. It started with an FBI search of his oceanfront Mar-a-Lago estate in South Florida on Monday. Then it got worse when an appellate court ruled that the Democrat-led Congress can finally examine his tax returns on Tuesday.. He was forced to testify at a deposition with the New York Attorney General herself—where he attracted even more suspicion while pleading the Fifth hundreds of times during a deposition on Wednesday. And the Justice Department started the process of unsealing details about the raid on Thursday.
