Former Trump Organization chief financial officer (CFO) Allen Weisselberg was released Wednesday from New York’s Riker’s Island prison after serving 99 days of a five-month sentence after pleading guilty for tax fraud.
Weisselberg pleaded guilty under a deal with prosecutors, admitting that he took millions of dollars in off-the-books benefits while working for Donald Trump’s business empire. But he refused to testify against Trump.
As Breitbart News reported in 2022:
Weisselberg and the Trump Organization pleaded not guilty last year when indicted by the Manhattan district attorney in a joint local and state investigation that accused them of not reporting tax liabilities for employee fringe benefits for several years.
The relatively minor allegations were anticlimactic, given the public determination of elected Democratic prosecutors to pursue Trump for whatever crime they could find. Trump himself was not accused of breaking the law, but prosecutors hoped to turn Weisselberg against Trump by pressuring him to testify against his former boss in other investigations.
That effort appears to have failed, with Weisselberg refusing to cooperate, and prosecutors reportedly considering a plea deal that could see the septuagenarian executive sentenced to as little as five months in jail, and eligible for early release after about 100 days.
The New York Times observed at the time: “Prosecutors have long hoped that they could persuade Mr. Weisselberg to testify against Mr. Trump, given his decades in the employ of the Trump family and his vast knowledge of the company and its business practices. But Mr. Weisselberg has refused to meet with them even as his lawyers negotiated a potential deal, the people with knowledge of the matter said.”
Weisselberg is one of several Trump associates who have gone to prison on tax charges but have refused to turn on the former president. Another was former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was imprisoned in solitary confinement on federal tax charges that had previously been investigated without prosecution — before he worked for Trump, briefly, in 2016. Others, like former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, turned against him.
The New York Post noted that Weisselberg did agree to testify against the Trump Organization, which was convicted on criminal charges of tax fraud last December and fined $1.6 million.
Hunter Biden, the president’s son, has not been charged with tax violations, though he admitted in 2020 (after the election) that he has been under investigation. Hunter and other members of the Biden family have been tied to influence-peddling schemes.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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