New York Times has this summary:
The conviction on all 17 counts, after more than a day of jury deliberations in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, resulted from a long-running scheme in which the Trump Organization doled out off-the-books luxury perks to some executives: They received fancy apartments, leased Mercedes-Benzes, even private school tuition for relatives, none of which they paid taxes on.
New York Magazine offers this coverage:
The result is significant but not exactly surprising. The Trump Organization was indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in the summer of 2021 along with the company’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, over a yearslong scheme to avoid paying taxes on compensation and benefits that Weisselberg received. Weisselberg pled guilty in August, which, given the way that corporate criminal liability works, dramatically simplified the case. (He promised to serve a five-month jail term.)
Lawyers representing Trump Organization sought to pin the blame on the company’s long-serving CFO, Weisselberg:
The Trump Organization’s lawyers reportedly pushed hard to argue that Weisselberg was acting solely in his self-interest — purely to lower his personal tax liability — but this made almost no sense in the context of the particular criminal scheme here. That is because if Weisselberg simply wanted more money, he could have lobbied for a higher salary, but the scheme he and others at the company settled on saved both him and the Trump Organization money. As one of the prosecutors explained, this was “by far the most significant benefit” to the company, which paid Weisselberg less as he managed to net about a million dollars over the course of the scheme. According to the D.A.’s office, the company would have had to pay about $3.5 million if Weisselberg’s benefits had been accurately reported to tax authorities.
What is your opinion on the conviction of Trump’s company?
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