The former chief financial officer of Donald Trump’s business empire has admitted to making false statements in court during the former US president’s fraud trial. Allen Weisselberg has agreed to plead guilty to two counts of perjury, according to an affidavit circulated Monday and signed by Weisselberg.
In return for his admission of guilt, the 76-year-old was sentenced to just five months in prison. According to the statement, perjury can result in up to seven years in prison. In addition, the public prosecutor’s office decided not to investigate Weisselberg further in connection with his work for Trump’s company. Weisselberg was primarily responsible for their finances from 2005 to 2021. He had already served time in prison for aiding and abetting tax fraud for Trump’s companies.
The case in which Weisselberg committed perjury involved the accusation that Trump had artificially inflated the assets of the family real estate empire by billions of dollars over the years in order to get better conditions for loans and insurance. Trump was sentenced to pay a fine of more than $350 million (around €322 million) in the trial in February. His former finance chief Weisselberg had made incriminating statements against Trump’s group of companies, but had not personally linked the former president to crimes.
The ex-president has numerous other problems with the judiciary, including being accused in criminal proceedings. Two indictments concern the Republican’s attempts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and thus stay in power. In January, Trump was ordered to pay $83.3 million in a civil defamation lawsuit against columnist E. Jean Carroll.
