Former Trump executive Allen Weisselberg sentenced to five months in jail for perjury

Former Trump Group Chief Monetary Officer Allen Weisselberg on Wednesday was sentenced to 5 months in jail for mendacity below oath in the course of the civil enterprise fraud trial of former President Donald Trump.

Weisselberg declined to talk earlier than the decide in a quick listening to in Manhattan prison courtroom. The 76-year-old former govt is anticipated to move on to New York Metropolis’s Rikers Island to start serving the sentence on two counts of perjury within the first diploma.

It will likely be Weisselberg’s second time behind bars in two years in connection along with his work for Trump’s firm. He spent three months in jail at Rikers final yr after pleading responsible to serving to orchestrate a tax fraud scheme on the enterprise.

“Allen Weisselberg accepted accountability for his conduct and now appears ahead to the top of this life-altering expertise and to returning to his household and his retirement,” mentioned his legal professional, Seth Rosenberg, in a press release later Wednesday.

The tax and perjury expenses have been introduced by the workplace of Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg, who’s prosecuting Trump on expenses of falsifying enterprise data as a part of a hush cash scheme.

That case is about to move to trial Monday in Manhattan Supreme Court docket. Weisselberg isn’t required to testify in it. Trump’s attorneys have tried quite a few occasions to delay the trial, together with by claiming that Weisselberg’s sentencing was scheduled intentionally close to it with the intention to drum up extra destructive information protection in opposition to Trump.

New York appellate judges on Monday and Tuesday of this week rejected two different current makes an attempt by Trump’s attorneys to postpone the hush cash trial.

Weisselberg on March 4 admitted mendacity throughout his testimony within the civil fraud trial introduced by New York Legal professional Normal Letitia James in opposition to Trump, his two grownup sons, his enterprise and its executives.

Weisselberg falsely testified that he was unfocused on the main points of Trump’s triplex residence, which was valued at nearly 3 times its precise dimension on Trump’s monetary statements.

Weisselberg pleaded responsible to 2 counts of mendacity in regards to the dimension of that residence throughout a 2020 investigative deposition, his plea take care of prosecutors confirmed.

However he additionally admitted to committing conduct associated to a few extra perjury counts, which centered on false statements Weisselberg made in a Could 2023 deposition, and in his trial testimony in October.

Trump was discovered accountable for fraudulently inflating the values of his properties and different property on years of economic types. Manhattan Supreme Court docket Decide Arthur Engoron ordered Trump to pay a complete of $454 million in fines and curiosity. Trump is interesting that verdict.