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One of Donald Trump’s most trusted executives stood before a judge Thursday and pleaded guilty to 15 felonies, admitting that he conspired with Trump’s company to carry out a scheme to avoid paying taxes on lavish perks — even while refusing to implicate the former president himself.
As part of the plea deal with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, the executive, Allen H. Weisselberg, is required to testify at the company’s trial if prosecutors choose to call on him, and to admit his role in conspiring with Trump’s company to carry out the tax scheme. That testimony could tilt the scales against the company, the Trump Organization, as it prepares for an October trial related to the same accusations.
“Yes, your honor,” Weisselberg said again and again in response to detailed questions from the judge, Juan Merchan, who asked whether he and the Trump Organization committed the criminal conduct underlying each of the 15 counts.
Under the terms of the plea deal, if Weisselberg testifies truthfully at the upcoming trial, he will receive a five-month sentence. Weisselberg, who was facing up to 15 years in prison, must also pay nearly $2 million in taxes, penalties and interest.
The plea deal does not require Weisselberg to cooperate with the district attorney’s broader criminal investigation of Trump, and his admissions will not implicate the former president. His willingness to accept jail time rather than turn on Trump underscores the extent of his loyalty to a family he has served for nearly a half-century, and it helped stymie the larger effort to indict Trump.
Weisselberg was indicted alongside Trump’s family business last year and accused of participating in a scheme in which some employees were compensated with special off-the-books perks and benefits. Weisselberg, prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office said, avoided paying taxes on $1.76 million of his income over the last 15 years.
In refusing to cooperate against Trump, Weisselberg fended off intense pressure from prosecutors. They saw Weisselberg as the ideal cooperator in their wider investigation focused on the former president and his business practices: He entered the Trump orbit in the early 1970s as a junior bookkeeper for Trump’s father and climbed the ranks at the Trump Organization in the decades that followed, developing an encyclopedic knowledge of its finances.
