NEW YORK — Donald Trump — the “elephant not in the room” at the Trump Organization trial — was brazenly aware of wide-ranging criminal tax fraud at his namesake company, a Manhattan prosecutor said Friday.
In his final statements to jurors in Manhattan Supreme Court, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass asked them to reject assertions by Trump company lawyers that the ex-president was an innocent business owner whose top executives acted alone.
“This whole narrative that Donald Trump was blissfully ignorant is just not real,” said Steinglass, later adding, “He is not on trial, but that doesn’t mean you should believe the defense’s narrative that Allen Weisselberg and Matthew Calamari went rogue.”
