Key figure in Trump’s affairs will plead guilty to lying during trial
Allen H. Weisselberg, a longtime lieutenant to former President Donald J. Trump, reached an agreement with Manhattan prosecutors to plead guilty to perjury charges as early as Monday, according to people with knowledge of the case.
Still, Mr. Weisselberg, who has remained steadfastly loyal to Mr. Trump for years despite intense prosecutorial pressure, is not expected to implicate his former boss. That unwavering loyalty has frustrated prosecutors and already cost him his freedom.
It is now expected that Mr. Weisselberg, 76, will admit he lied on the witness stand in Mr. Trump’s recent civil fraud trial — but will not cooperate against the former president. He could also admit that he misled investigators from the New York attorney general’s office, which brought the fraud case against Mr. Trump.
That civil lawsuit ended when a judge imposed a massive financial penalty on the former president — more than $450 million, including interest. The attorney general, Letitia James, had accused Mr. Trump of vastly inflating his wealth to obtain favorable loans and other benefits.
Mr. Weisselberg’s plea deal with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg comes weeks before the former president is scheduled to stand trial on separate criminal charges. That case, also brought by Mr. Bragg, stems from a hush-money payment made on behalf of Mr. Trump to a porn star, Stormy Daniels.
The perjury plea marks the latest twist in a tortured legal odyssey for Mr. Weisselberg, who has taken on several law enforcement agencies in both civil and criminal trials. As chief financial officer of the Trump family business — the former president’s trusted money man — Mr. Weisselberg was considered a linchpin in getting Mr. Trump involved.
Mr. Weisselberg has been rewarded for his loyalty to the family he served for nearly half a century: When he left Mr. Trump’s company last year, he was given a $2 million severance package that required him not to participate in any law enforcement investigation, unless required by law.
He also paid a price. In 2022, he pleaded guilty in a tax fraud case. Although he did not implicate Mr. Trump, he agreed to testify at the trial on the same charges against the former president’s company, the Trump Organization.
In that case, the company was convicted and Mr. Weisselberg received a five-month prison sentence. With good behavior, he served almost 100 days behind bars at the infamous prison complex on Rikers Island.
With this latest plea, Mr. Weisselberg now gets extra time for Rikers.
It is unclear how many charges he will face and whether they will be felonies or misdemeanors.
Yet Mr. Weisselberg’s plea deal comes at an inopportune time for the former president, just weeks before he is expected to go to trial on a series of charges accusing him of falsifying company documents in connection with the hush money deal. It is the first criminal prosecution of a former president and the trial will begin with jury selection on March 25.
Mr. Bragg has accused Mr. Trump of orchestrating a cover-up of a possible sex scandal involving the porn star that could have affected the outcome of the 2016 election.
A guilty plea on Monday could strengthen Mr. Bragg’s hand heading into trial, keeping other witnesses in Mr. Trump’s inner circle from taking the stand. The perjury allegations could also discredit Mr. Weisselberg, who has disputed details of the prosecution’s evidence in the case surrounding the 2016 election.
Although Mr. Weisselberg did not commit a violent crime, prosecutors argue that perjury undermines the broader goals of justice and cannot be ignored.
For his part, Mr. Trump has lashed out at Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, and accused him of persecuting Mr. Weisselberg. And Mr. Trump’s allies have lamented that Mr. Weisselberg will be behind bars again well into his 70s, and have disputed that he lied in the civil fraud case brought by Ms. James, another Democrat.
Ms James filed her lawsuit in 2022 and it led to a trial late last year. In February, the judge presiding over the non-jury case sided with the attorney general, concluding that Mr. Trump had manipulated the value of his properties. The judge, Arthur F. Engoron, imposed a wide range of sentences, including the verdict of more than $450 million.
A focus of the case — and Mr. Weisselberg’s testimony — was Mr. Trump’s triplex apartment in Trump Tower, which is 10,996 square feet but had been listed in his financial statements for years as being 30,000 square feet .
Under oath, Mr. Weisselberg claimed he was “never focused” on the unit.
But shortly afterwards, Forbes magazine, which compiles a list of America’s richest people, published an article published citing emails and notes showing that Mr. Weisselberg “played a key role in efforts to convince Forbes” of the apartment’s value over a number of years.
During the recent trial, Judge Engoron concluded that Mr. Weisselberg was not a credible witness, in part because of his severance agreement, which is paid in installments, as if to keep Mr. Weisselberg in the Trump family’s thrall.
“His testimony in this trial was deliberately evasive, with major gaps in ‘I don’t remember,’” the judge wrote in his decision last month, adding that the dismissal agreement “makes his testimony highly unreliable.”
“The Trump Organization is stringing Weisselberg along,” the judge wrote. “And it shows.”