A top executive at the Trump Organization was sentenced to five months in jail on Wednesday after pleading guilty to perjury in a New York attorney general's investigation into the company's business practices. Allen Weisselberg, who worked for the Trump family for a half-century before retiring recently, was taken into custody after a brief proceeding in New York Supreme Court and is expected to serve his sentence at Rikers Island, The Washington Post reports. Weisselberg, 76, now a Florida resident, pleaded guilty on March 4 to several counts of perjury for lying in sworn testimony both before and during New York Attorney General Letitia James’s civil fraud trial. He has been embroiled in Trump’s legal issues for years because he was a key figure at the former president’s namesake company for decades.
Weisselberg was a defendant in the civil fraud trial and was ordered in February to pay $1 million as a penalty, representing the amount of severance he received from the company. New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron found that Weisselberg was a player in the persistent fraud and that his severance was an award for remaining loyal to Trump. Trump was fined more than $350 million, representing ill-gotten gains earned through deceptive practices in real estate deals. He owes another $100 million in prejudgment interest, but he is appealing the judge’s decision. In 2023, Weisselberg served about three months of a five-month sentence related to the company’s tax fraud case. The Trump Organization was convicted and fined $1.6 million, the maximum allowed by law. In that matter, Weisselberg blamed himself and another executive, Jeffrey McConney, for orchestrating a 15-year tax evasion scheme that sought to compensate company executives, including Weisselberg, with unreported benefits such as free cars, apartments and other paid personal expenses. Weisselberg testified that Trump was not involved in those crimes.