If the negotiations are successful, Weisselberg will plead guilty to lying.
Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's former chief financial officer, is in a plea deal with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office to resolve possible perjury charges, a person familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.
If the negotiations are successful, Weisselberg would plead guilty in October to lying on the witness stand in a civil fraud trial that named him and his former boss, former President Donald Trump, as defendants, according to people familiar with the matter. It is said that it will become.
The plea deal is in the early stages, officials said, and was first reported by The New York Times. A spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to comment. Mr. Weisselberg's lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
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 as 30,000 square feet on the financial statement.
“I didn't give it much weight because it was almost insignificant compared to his net worth,” Weisselberg said during the trial. “He never thought about the apartment.''
However, after Weisselberg's appearance, Forbes published an article accusing him of lying under oath, stating that Weisselberg was actually thinking about the apartment because it was listed on President Trump's financial statements. He suggested that this was because the magazine played a key role in convincing the magazine that it was as big as it was.
At trial, Louis Solomon, a lawyer with the New York state attorney general's office, asked Weisselberg to clarify the size of the apartment in an email from Forbes magazine and to Mazars USA, the Trump Organization's accountant. He presented him with a letter signed by Mr. Weisselberg proving the excess area.
“Forbes was right. There were actually only 10,996 triplexes, right?” Solomon asked. “Yes,” Weisselberg finally admitted.
If Weisselberg pleads guilty to perjury, it will be his second conviction. He has previously pleaded guilty to criminal charges and testified against the Trump Organization, which was convicted of tax evasion in 2022.
His testimony was careful not to implicate Trump, and Weisselberg is a witness in the Manhattan prosecutor's office's criminal case against Trump, which accuses him of falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to porn stars. There are no plans to call it that.
Trump is in New York awaiting the verdict in a $370 million civil fraud trial that could transform the personal fortune and real estate empire that propelled him to the White House.
Trump, his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and other Trump Organization executives used “numerous frauds and misrepresentations” to inflate the president's profits over the course of a decade. He has been accused by New York State Attorney General Letitia James of being involved in a scheme that spanned several years. You need to increase your net worth to get more favorable loan terms. The trial comes after the judge in the case ruled in a partial summary judgment that Trump had submitted a “fraudulent valuation” of his assets, and that the defendants should receive further action and It was left to the courts to determine the fine (if any).
The former president has denied all wrongdoing.
