Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg is in talks with the Manhattan district attorney’s office to resolve a possible perjury charge, sources familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.
If negotiations are successful, Weisselberg would plead guilty to lying on the witness stand when he testified in October in the civil fraud trial that names him, his former boss, former President Donald Trump, and others as defendants, the lawsuits said. sources.
The plea negotiations, which sources described as being in the early stages, were first reported by The New York Times. A spokesman for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to comment. A lawyer for Weisselberg did not respond to a request for comment.
Allen Weisselberg, former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization Inc., prepares to testify in the New York State Supreme Court in New York on October 10, 2023.
Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
During his testimony, Weisselberg struggled to explain why former President Trump’s Fifth Avenue triplex, which is less than 11,000 square feet, was listed on financial statements as 30,000 square feet.
“It was almost minimal relative to his net worth, so I didn’t really focus on it,” Weisselberg said during the trial. “I didn’t even think about the apartment.”
But Forbes published an article after Weisselberg’s appearance that accused him of lying under oath and suggested that Weisselberg did think about the apartment because he played a key role in trying to convince the magazine that the apartment was as big as the states said. Trump’s financiers.
At trial, a lawyer from New York Attorney General Louis Solomon’s office confronted Weisselberg with emails from Forbes magazine asking for clarity about the size of the apartment and a letter signed by Weisselberg certifying the excess square footage to the accountant. the Trump Organization, Mazars USA.
“Forbes was right; the triplex was actually only 10,996, right?” Solomon asked. “Right,” Weisselberg finally admitted.
If Weisselberg ends up pleading guilty to a perjury charge, it would be his second criminal conviction. He previously pleaded guilty to criminal charges and testified against the Trump Organization, which was convicted in 2022 of tax evasion.
His testimony was careful not to implicate Trump, and Weisselberg is not expected to be called as a witness in the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal case against Trump that accuses him of falsifying business records in connection with a hush payment to a porn actress.
Trump is awaiting a verdict in New York in a $370 million civil fraud trial that could disrupt the personal fortune and real estate empire that helped propel Trump to the White House.
Trump, his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and other top Trump Organization executives are accused by New York Attorney General Letitia James of participating in a decade-long scheme in which they used “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation” to inflate Trump’s power. net worth to obtain more favorable loan conditions. The trial comes after the judge in the case ruled in partial summary judgment that Trump had submitted “fraudulent valuations” of his assets, leaving it to the trial to determine further actions and what penalty, if any, the defendants should receive.
The former president has denied any wrongdoing.