NEW YORK — The Manhattan district attorney’s fraud case against former President Donald Trump’s family real estate business and its long-serving bookkeeper should move forward, prosecutors urged a judge in lengthy court filing Monday.
The filing comes in answer to a February motion by the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, to have felony charges against them dismissed. Both have pleaded not guilty to a June 2021 indictment alleging they dodged income tax on more than $1.7 million over 15 years and other financial crimes.
“This case, at its core, is ordinary,” wrote Assistant District Attorney Solomon Shinerock. “It arises from the fact that Allen Weisselberg violated the basic imperative that all New Yorkers faithfully report and pay tax on their income.”
Weisselberg’s lawyers have argued charges against him stem from evidence provided by Trump’s convicted former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who has an ax to grind because of Weisselberg’s testimony against him in a 2018 federal probe.
But the 129-page filing by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office says state prosecutors had never “seen or been briefed on the contents of Weisselberg’s testimony” against Cohen to the feds.
Regardless, Cohen wasn’t the source of information used to bring charges against Weisselberg, the filing stated.
“Indeed, the claim that (Cohen) sparked this Investigation as part of a vendetta resulting from Weisselberg’s immunized testimony is incorrect,” the filing states. “And, regardless of (Cohen’s) feelings towards Weisselberg ... the Investigation that led to this indictment, and the information used to obtain that Indictment, are the result of sources completely independent of (Cohen).”
Shinerock also insisted New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat conducting a parallel civil investigation into the Trump Organization, didn’t influence the DA bringing a case against the CFO. He said neither office was aware the other was investigating Weisselberg in early 2021.
The filing notes it was an article published in Bloomberg on Nov. 2, 2020 about Weisselberg’s alleged off-the-books benefits that set off the criminal investigation.
Weisselberg’s ex-daughter-in-law Jennifer Weisselberg previously told The News about living in a rent-free corporate apartment overlooking Central Park on the Trump Org’s dime with her ex-husband, Barry Weisselberg, who managed Trump’s Wollman ice-rink, and their children from 2005 to 2011. She said her former father-in-law funded virtually every aspect of the family’s lives with Trump Org money, including Columbia Grammar and Prep school tuition, sleepaway camp fees and rental cars.
Shinerock wrote the compensation Weisselberg personally directed his employees to pay toward his personal expenses was significant.
The so-called fringe benefits “amounted to more than most New Yorkers can expect to earn in a given year: rent, utilities, and garage expenses at a luxury apartment building in Manhattan, private school tuition for multiple family members, leases for luxury cars for both Weisselberg and his spouse, large amounts of unreported cash, and ad hoc expenses such as electronics and furniture,” reads the filing.
The Trump Organization and Weisselberg “carefully recorded the value of these items and subtracted them from the amount they reported to tax authorities,” the filing states.
Weisselberg and the Trump Organization lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.
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