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The
Trump
Organization
has been
found
guilty
of tax
fraud.
AFP via
Getty
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The
company
faces up
to $1.6
million
in fines
at
sentencing.
Getty
Images |
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Trump
Organization
Found
Guilty
in Tax
Fraud
Scheme
By Jonah
E.
Bromwich
nytimes.com
NEW YORK
- The
guilty
verdict
is a
stern
rebuke
for a
company
that
fostered
crime.
Donald
J.
Trump’s
family
real
estate
business
was
convicted
on
Tuesday
of tax
fraud
and
other
financial
crimes,
a
remarkable
rebuke
of the
former
president’s
company
and what
prosecutors
described
as its
“culture
of fraud
and
deception.”
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.
The
Manhattan
district
attorney’s
office,
which
led the
case
against
two
Trump
Organization
entities,
had
previously
extracted
a guilty
plea
from the
architect
of the
scheme,
Allen H.
Weisselberg,
the
company’s
long-serving
chief
financial
officer.
Mr.
Weisselberg,
one of
the
former
president’s
most
loyal
lieutenants,
testified
as the
prosecution’s
star
witness,
but
never
implicated
Mr.
Trump.
While
prosecutors
stopped
short of
indicting
the
former
president,
they
invoked
his name
throughout
the
monthlong
trial,
telling
jurors
that he
personally
paid for
some of
the
perks
and even
approved
a
crucial
aspect
of the
scheme.
The
prosecution
also
sounded
a
drumbeat
of
damning
evidence
that
spotlighted
his
company’s
freewheeling
culture,
revealing
that
pervasive
illegality
unfolded
under
Mr.
Trump’s
nose for
years.
The
company’s
conviction
—
coupled
with the
prosecution’s
explosive
claim at
trial
that Mr.
Trump
was
“explicitly
sanctioning
tax
fraud” —
could
now
reverberate
through
the 2024
presidential
race,
providing
early
fodder
for
opponents
and
their
attack
ads.
It also
might
lay the
groundwork
for the
district
attorney’s
office
to
intensify
its
wider
criminal
investigation
into Mr.
Trump’s
business
practices
— and
hush
money
paid to
a porn
star who
said she
had an
affair
with him
— an
inquiry
that
gained
momentum
in
recent
months,
according
to
people
with
knowledge
of the
matter.
The
conviction
on
charges
of tax
fraud, a
scheme
to
defraud,
conspiracy
and
falsifying
business
records
is
hardly a
death
sentence
for the
Trump
Organization.
The
maximum
penalty
it faces
is $1.62
million,
what
amounts
to a
rounding
error
for Mr.
Trump,
who
typically
notched
hundreds
of
millions
of
dollars
in
revenue
during
his
presidency.
Yet the
verdict
represents
a highly
public
reckoning
for the
Trump
Organization,
forever
branding
it as a
felonious
enterprise.
A
company
that
served
as a
launching
pad for
the
former
president’s
tabloid
celebrity,
his star
turn on
“The
Apprentice”
and
ultimately
his
political
career,
might
now be
best
known
for its
conviction,
rather
than the
hotels
and golf
clubs
that Mr.
Trump
spent a
generation
building.
The
former
president
has
blamed
it all
on a
politically
motivated
witch
hunt.
But
while
his
attacks
on
prosecutors
might
appeal
to his
most
loyal
voters,
lenders
and the
broader
business
world
might
now shun
his
company.
In a
statement
after
the
verdict,
the
company
took aim
at Mr.
Weisselberg,
noting
that he
“testified
under
oath
that he
‘betrayed’
the
trust
the
company
had
placed
in him.”
“The
notion
that a
company
could be
held
responsible
for an
employee’s
actions,
to
benefit
themselves,
on their
own
personal
tax
returns
is
simply
preposterous,”
the
company
said in
the
statement.
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