Legal expert pinpoints possible perjury by Trump Org exec that could land him back in Rikers
Reacting to a report from the New York Times that the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is threatening Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg with perjury charges unless he rolls over on Donald Trump, MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin said a cursory review of testimony the exec previously gave reveals where he may have created more problems for himself.
Weisselberg was recently released from Rikers after pleading guilty to 15 counts of grand larceny, tax fraud and falsifying business records and now the 75-year-old could be facing new charges that could send him back.
According to MSNBC's Rubin, testimony he gave under oath to New York Attorney General Letitia James is coming back to haunt him.
As she explained in her column, he appears to have perjured himself when discussing how he became aware that the Trumps inflated the valuation of a property during business dealings.
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Rubin wrote, "... a cursory read of those transcripts, coupled with other filings by the attorney general, suggests at least one potential avenue for a perjury charge: Weisselberg’s involvement in the overvaluation of Trump’s triplex apartment in Trump Tower and at what point he knew that valuation was false."
Noting a brief from the AG stated, “Weisselberg admitted that the Statements overvalued Mr. Trump’s apartment by ‘give or take’ $200 million — and evidence later revealed he was provided with the true facts regarding the apartment’s square footage before certifying as accurate the inflated apartment value based on false information,” Rubin added, that Weiseelberg's comments about a Forbes' article he reviewed about the valuation may have been the fatal error that could land him in hot water again.
"'The Forbes article' Weisselberg referenced in his deposition, according to the attorney general’s filings, was not provided to Weisselberg until March 2017, when he, as well as Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump, were alerted that while Trump told Forbes his apartment was roughly 33,000 square feet, the magazine found property records and 'concluded it was less than one third that size,'" she wrote before adding, "Put another way, at least according to the attorney general’s version of events, Weisselberg didn’t learn the valuation was false after the fact, as he testified. Instead, he received documents reflecting the 'true size of the triplex' years before he certified the 2015 financial statement."
Rubin added, "Therefore, the Manhattan DA’s office has a colorable argument that Weisselberg lied under oath during his July 17, 2020, deposition."
You can read more details here.