It is the first time a Trump business has been convicted of criminal conduct and comes as the former president is running for a second term. The momentous verdict also comes as he faces a raft of other legal perils, including criminal probes of his handling of classified documents and of efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election.
The verdict is the culmination of a three-year investigation of Trump and his business practices by the DA’s office and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Trump has called the cases and investigations baseless political vendettas. In a Truth Social post last week, as the Trump Organization trial was wrapping up, he said there was “no gain for ‘Trump’” and that “we had no knowledge of it.”
The prosecution called five witnesses, including star witness Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty in August to skirting taxes on about US$1.76 million in perks and testified in hopes of a more lenient sentence than the 15 years he could have faced. McConney also testified for Bragg’s office, under a grant of immunity, though he was ultimately declared a hostile witness after being evasive on the stand.
In his own closing, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass said Trump “knew exactly what was going on” and had “explicitly sanctioned tax fraud.” He told the jury “this whole narrative that Donald Trump is blissfully ignorant is just not real” and that the two Trump companies could be held criminally liable for Weisselberg’s actions, including tuition for his grandchildren at a Manhattan private school.
Wow all this for 1.6 m fine