Ex-Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg to be sentenced for perjury, faces second stint in jail
NEW YORK — Allen Weisselberg, a former top executive in Donald Trump’s real estate empire, will be sentenced Wednesday for lying under oath in the ex-president’s civil fraud case in New York.
He is expected to be sentenced to five months in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of perjury last month. Weisselberg admitted he lied when he testified that he knew little about how Trump’s Manhattan penthouse was valued on his financial statements at nearly three times its actual size.
This will be the second time that the 76-year-old has ended up behind bars. Last year, he served 100 days in prison for evading taxes on $1.7 million in company benefits, including a rent-free apartment in Manhattan and luxury cars.
Now he is once again trading his life as a retiree in Florida for a stay in the infamous Rikers Island prison complex in New York City.
The two cases underscore Weisselberg’s unwavering loyalty to Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Trump’s family employed Weisselberg for nearly 50 years and then gave him a $2 million severance package when taxes prompted him to retire. The company continues to pay its legal bills.
Weisselberg testified twice in trials that ended badly for Trump, but each time took pains to suggest his boss had committed no serious wrongdoing. His plea deal does not require him to testify at Trump’s hush-money criminal trial, which begins Monday with jury selection.
In agreeing to a five-month prison sentence, prosecutors cited Weisselberg’s age and willingness to admit wrongdoing. In New York, perjury is a crime punishable by up to seven years in prison. Prosecutors vowed not to prosecute Weisselberg for other crimes he may have committed in connection with his employment with the Trump Organization.
Weisselberg’s expected sentence would mirror his previous case in which he served five months in prison but was eligible for release after just over three months with good behavior. He previously had no criminal record.
Trump’s lawyers disagreed with prosecuting Weisselberg for perjury and accused the Manhattan district attorney’s office of deploying “unethical, strong-arm tactics against an innocent man in his late 70s” while ” turning a blind eye” to the perjury allegations against Michael Cohen, the former Trump. attorney who is now a key prosecution witness in the hush money case.
A message seeking comment was left for Weisselberg’s attorney Seth Rosenberg.
Weisselberg pleaded guilty on March 4. He admitted to lying under oath three times while testifying in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against Trump: in depositions in July 2020 and May 2023 and on the witness stand during the trial last October. To avoid violating probation on his tax case, he agreed to plead guilty only to the charges related to his 2020 testimony.
The size of Trump’s penthouse was a key issue in the civil fraud case.
Trump valued the apartment on his financial statements from at least 2012 to 2016 as if it were 2,800 square feet. A former Trump real estate manager testified that Weisselberg provided the figure. The former director said that when Weisselberg asked about the size of the apartment in 2012, he replied: “It’s quite big. I think it’s about 30,000 square feet.”
State attorneys noted, however, that early that same year, Weisselberg received an email with a 1994 document that pegged Trump’s apartment at 1,022 square feet. Weisselberg testified that he remembered the email, but not the attachment, and that he did not “walk around knowing the size” of the apartment.
After Forbes magazine published an article in 2017 disputing the size of Trump’s penthouse, the estimated value on his financial statement was lowered from $327 million to about $117 million.
As Weisselberg testified last October, Forbes published an article headlined “Trump’s Longtime CFO Lied Under Oath About Trump Tower Penthouse.”
The civil fraud trial ended when Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that Trump and some of his executives schemed to defraud banks, insurers and others by lying about his wealth on financial statements used to close deals and secure loans. The judge fined Trump $455 million and sentenced Weisselberg to $1 million. They are both attractive.
In his decision, Engoron said he found Weisselberg’s testimony “deliberately evasive” and “highly unreliable.”
Weisselberg will likely play a role in Trump’s hush money trial — even if he is in jail and not on the witness stand while it takes place.
Trump is accused of falsifying his company’s records to cover up payments during his 2016 campaign to bury stories of marital infidelity. It is the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies wrongdoing.
Cohen has said Weisselberg played a role in orchestrating the payments. Weisselberg has not been charged in that case and neither prosecutors nor Trump’s lawyers have indicated they will call him as a witness.