(Headline USA) In the latest affront to justice stemming from New York Attorney General Letitia James’s lawfare attack on former President Donald Trump, the longtime chief financial officer for the Trump Organization received hard time for not recalling the precise measurements of Trump’s Manhattan penthouse.
Allen Weisselberg, a retired executive in Donald Trump’s real estate empire, was sentenced on Wednesday to five months in jail for lying under oath during his testimony in James’s civil lawsuit.
Weisselberg, 76, pleaded guilty last month to two counts of perjury in connection with the suit. He admitted lying when he testified he had little knowledge of how the penthouse came to be valued on his financial statements at nearly three times its actual size.
Weisselberg, wearing a black windbreaker and a surgical face mask, declined to address the court during the brief sentencing, which lasted less than five minutes. He was swiftly escorted from the courtroom in handcuffs following the proceeding to begin serving his sentence.
It will be Weisselberg’s second time behind bars. The former CFO served 100 days last year for dodging taxes on $1.7 million in company perks, including a rent-free Manhattan apartment and luxury cars.
Now, he’s again trading life as a Florida retiree for a stay at New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex.
The two cases highlight Weisselberg’s unflinching loyalty to Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Trump’s family employed Weisselberg for nearly 50 years, then gave him a $2 million severance deal when the tax charges prompted him to retire. The company continues to pay his legal bills.
Weisselberg testified twice in trials that went badly for Trump, but each time he took pains to suggest that his boss hadn’t committed any serious wrongdoing. His plea agreement does not require him to testify at Trump’s upcoming Manhattan criminal trial, which is scheduled to start with jury selection Monday.
In agreeing to a five-month sentence, prosecutors cited Weisselberg’s age and willingness to admit wrongdoing. In New York, perjury is a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison. Prosecutors promised not to prosecute Weisselberg for other crimes he might have committed in connection with his Trump Organization employment.
Weisselberg’s sentence mirrors his previous case, in which he was ordered to serve five months in jail but was eligible for release after little more than three months with good behavior. Prior to that, he had no criminal record.
Trump’s lawyers took issue with Weisselberg’s perjury prosecution, denouning the “unethical, strong-armed tactics against an innocent man in his late 70s” while turning “a blind eye” to perjury allegations against Michael Cohen, the former Trump lawyer who is now a key prosecution witness in the upcoming criminal case being waged by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
The George Soros-backed Bragg was also responsible for prosecuting the perjury charges against Weisselberg.
Weisselberg pleaded guilty March 4. He admitted lying under oath on three occasions while testifying in James’s case against Trump: in depositions in July 2020 and May 2023 and on the witness stand at the trial last October.
To avoid violating his tax case probation, however, he agreed to plead guilty only to charges related to his 2020 deposition testimony.
The size of Trump’s penthouse was a key issue in the civil case, in which Judge Arthur Engoron arbitrarily and unilaterally assessed the value of Trump’s real-estate holdings ti determine guilt while discounting the actual market value of the prime properties that boast a direct link to U.S. history.
Trump valued the apartment on his financial statements from at least 2012 to 2016 as though it measured 30,000 square feet. A former Trump real-estate executive testified that Weisselberg provided the figure. The former executive said that when he asked for the apartment’s size in 2012, Weisselberg replied: “It’s quite large. I think it’s around 30,000 square feet.”
However, state lawyers noted, Weisselberg got an email early in that year with a 1994 document attached that pegged Trump’s apartment at 10,996 square feet. Weisselberg testified that he remembered the email but not the attachment and that he didn’t “walk around knowing the size” of the apartment.
After Forbes magazine published an article in 2017 disputing the size of Trump’s penthouse, its estimated value on his financial statement was cut from $327 million to about $117 million.
As Weisselberg was testifying last October, Forbes published an article with the headline “Trump’s Longtime CFO Lied, Under Oath, About Trump Tower Penthouse.”
The trial ended with Engoron ruling that Trump and some of his executives had schemed to deceive banks, insurers and others by lying about his wealth on financial statements used to make deals and secure loans.
The judge penalized Trump $455 million and ordered Weisselberg to pay $1 million. They are both appealing.
In his decision, Engoron opined that he found Weisselberg’s testimony “intentionally evasive” and “highly unreliable.”
Weisselberg is likely to factor into Trump’s upcoming trial—even if he’s in jail and not on the witness stand while it’s happening.
Trump is accused of falsifying his company’s records to cover up payments during his 2016 campaign to bury stories of marital infidelity involving porn actress Stormy Daniels. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies wrongdoing.
Cohen has said Weisselberg had a role in orchestrating the payments. Weisselberg, who lives in Boynton Beach, Florida, has not been charged in that case, and neither prosecutors nor Trump’s lawyers have indicated they will call him as a witness.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
