The Trump Organization and the company’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, are expected to be charged Thursday with tax-related crimes.
The charges come amid Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s investigation into the alleged criminal conduct at the Trump Organization, such as falsifying business records, insurance fraud, and tax fraud, Chicago Tribune reports.
The charges against the Trump Organization and Weisselberg involve perks that top executives allegedly received, such as the use of apartments, cars, and paid school tuition.
As previously reported by theGrio, earlier this year, Vance obtained copies of Trump’s tax records after the Supreme Court rejected the former president’s last-ditch effort to prevent them from being handed over.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office enforced a subpoena on Trump’s accounting firm within hours of the Supreme Court’s ruling in February and now has the documents in hand. Per the Associated Press, Vance had been fighting for a year and a half for access to Trump’s tax records for the criminal grand jury investigation into his business dealings. The documents are protected by grand jury secrecy rules and are not expected to be made public.
Vance, a Democrat, is conducting a wide-ranging investigation that includes an examination of whether Trump or his businesses lied about the value of assets to gain favorable loan terms and tax benefits. The district attorney is also scrutinizing hush-money payments paid to women on Trump’s behalf.
theGrio reported earlier that the investigation has been underway since 2019, looking into whether the Trump Organization — with Trump and his sons in leadership — misled banks and insurance companies by inflating property value to attain loans. Further, the probe explores whether the company deflated property values to pay less in taxes.
In May, Trump responded to New York Attorney General Letitia James adding a criminal component to her civil probe into the financial practices of the Trump Organization.
Trump fired back at James and other prosecutors targeting him in a lengthy statement that said, “There is nothing more corrupt than an investigation that is in desperate search of a crime.”
“But, make no mistake, that is exactly what is happening here,” he continued. “The Attorney General of New York literally campaigned on prosecuting Donald Trump even before she knew anything about me.”
The fraud probes in the state of New York, one of which is criminal and the other civil, reportedly include examining millions of dollars in “consulting fees,” some of which went to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump.
An attorney for the Trumps, Ron Fischetti, said last week that they were facing criminal charges because Weisselberg refused to cooperate with investigators.
“They could not get him to cooperate because he would not say that Donald Trump had knowledge or any information that he may have been not deducting properly the use of cars or an apartment,” he said.
Meanwhile, Allen Weisselberg’s former daughter-in-law, Jen Weisselberg, has been cooperating with the investigation. She has turned over a slew of tax records and documents to investigators. Jen was married to Allen’s son Barry Weisselberg, and just like his father, he too is a Trump loyalist.
Trump described the investigation as “a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of the United States. Working in conjunction with Washington, these Democrats want to silence and cancel millions of voters because they don’t want ‘Trump’ to run again.”
In addition to Weisselberg, James’ investigation also extends to Trump’s son, Eric Trump, who investigators deposed before the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s former attorney-turned-whistleblower Michael Cohen testified before Congress that it was common practice for his ex-client to inflate his assets to secure loans and deflate assets to reduce real estate taxes.
Fischetti told the AP that Trump himself is not included in the charges expected this week.
“There is no indictment coming down this week against the former president,” Fischetti said. “I can’t say he’s out of the woods yet completely.”
This story contains additional reporting from theGrio’s Associated Press.
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