(New York) The Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, went to the Manhattan attorney general on Thursday to inform him of the indictment, which the former US president’s company denounced as “political.”
Weiselberg, 73, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump and his family, showed up to the Manhattan attorney general’s office shortly before 6:30 a.m., according to the The New York Times Who posted a picture of him at the judge’s residence.
His attorney, Mary Mulligan, confirmed the lawsuits. “He intends to advance his innocence and fight these charges,” she said in a statement sent to AFP, without giving details of the charges against him.
The Trump Organization immediately accused Democratic Attorney General Cyrus Vance, who has been investigating possible wrongdoing within the Trump Organization for more than two years, with politically motivated prosecutions.
“The attorney general in Manhattan is launching lawsuits related to employee benefits that neither the tax authorities nor any other attorney general would consider launching,” a spokesperson for the family business, based in Trump Tower, said on the famous 5.e the way.
Allen Weisselberg “Used as a pawn by Manhattan District Attorney […] for trying to harm the former president,” Donald Trump added. It’s not justice, it’s politics. ”
The indictment against Mr Weisselberg is expected to be announced on Thursday afternoon, after the seventy-year-old is presented to a judge.
According to anonymous sources quoted by US media, the person who began working for Donald Trump’s father in 1973 was indicted by a grand jury with tax offenses related to benefits in kind that were seen as a financial manager and were not declared to the tax authorities. As free rented apartments, family school fees payment, luxury cars, etc.
The sources said the Trump Organization itself – an unlisted company that combines golf clubs, luxury hotels and other real estate – should also incur fees.
Trump survived for the time being
It can be accused of intentionally understating or overstating its assets depending on the situation, which can constitute offenses of tax evasion or insurance fraud.
These indictments will mark the first fruits of an investigation launched more than two years ago by Cyrus Vance that also includes New York State Attorney General Letitia James, also elected Democrat.
Mr. Vance struggled for months to get the tax returns of the former New York magnate, the first US president since the 1970s not to publish them.
The former Republican president, who maintains ambiguity over a possible new presidential bid in 2024 and held his first major rally last week since leaving Washington, should not be blamed at this point in the report. The investigation, nor any member of his family, according to sources quoted by the American press.
But the investigation must continue in the coming months.
If Mr. Weisselberg was charged only for these in-kind merits, a relatively minor misdemeanor, many observers believed that his indictment could have had the primary purpose of persuading him to cooperate with the investigators: he who knows all the ins and outs of family affairs. He thus helped them prove their cases and come up with more substantive charges, a technique US prosecutors often use.
Donald Trump was, in 2016, the first billionaire to enter the White House. When he left for Washington, he refused to sell his company and simply left the reins to Allen Weisselberg and his two oldest sons, Donald Jr and Eric Trump.
But everyone expects the investigation by Mr. Vance and Mr.I James continues. A Trump Organization lawyer admitted earlier this week that Mr. Trump “has not yet come out of the woods.”
Many opponents of the former president openly rejoice at his company’s legal setbacks and eagerly await his direct involvement.
“Pray for that day,” his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who is the first to accompany Trump and then sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 after pleading guilty, tweeted Wednesday.
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