The former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization was grilled over discrepancies in financial statements as the second week of Donald Trump’s fraud trial kicked off in New York.
Prosecutors questioned Allen Weisselberg, who worked at the company for decades, about whether the Trump Organization was aware of inconsistencies between documents. The New York attorney general’s office has been trying to prove that Weisselberg and others at the Trump Organization knowingly inflated the value of Trump’s assets to boost his net worth.
Before the trial began, the New York judge Arthur Engoron issued a pre-trial judgment ruling that Trump had fudged financial statements to broker deals and obtain favorable loans. The trial is focused on whether there was knowledge and intent from Trump and other defendants, including Weisselberg, when they misreported the value of the properties of financial statements.
Trump’s team is arguing that the whole case is a political stunt from New York attorney general Letitia James, who has been in the audience of the trial since its beginning. Trump had appeared in court for the first two days of the trial, but left during the third.
Lawyers also argued that the 23 properties that have been singled out in the case were just a few line items in a whole swath of properties owned by the company. Banks that gave loans to Trump knew that the financial statements were not verified, and thus knew the risk they were taking when using them.
Prosecutors honed in on these arguments during their questioning of Weisselberg, who signed off on the financial statements at the center of the case. Louis Solomon, a prosecutor for James’s office, asked Weisselberg about the value of Trump’s triplex apartment in Trump Tower.
On documents, Trump had listed the apartment as 30,000sq ft and worth $327m, despite other documents – including one personally signed by the former president in 1994 – reporting that the apartment was actually under 11,000sq ft.
Weisselberg said the value of the apartment was “about 1%” of Trump’s overall net worth, adding that Trump and other executives did not care about properties that represented less than 5% of his net worth. Weisselberg repeatedly said that the triplex apartment was a smaller asset compared to others under Trump, and that he was focused on the overall picture of the company.
“My dealings with Trump Tower was always about the commercial side,” Weisselberg said. The triplex apartment “was never a concern of mine. I never even thought of the apartment.”
Later, Solomon pointed out that, if Trump’s net worth was around $6bn, the triplex apartment would have been over 5% of his net worth.
Solomon pulled up multiple emails from Forbes reporters asking the Trump Organization about the size of Trump’s triplex apartment. Trump had been listing on financial statements that the size of the apartment was 30,000sq ft. The reporters had pointed out that the apartment, in other documents, had been listed as 10,996sq ft.
Weisselberg said he didn’t recall any of the interaction with Forbes reporters, or with Trump Organization employees dealing with Forbes reporters.
“I just stopped speaking to them,” Weisselberg said of the reporters, saying that “they would mess up” information.
In one instance in 2017, a Forbes reporter reached out to the Trump Organization about discrepancies in the apartment’s size. Four days later, Weisselberg had signed a financial statement confirming the accuracy of the financial statements.
“You were comfortable with certifying that nothing … in the statement required adjustment,” Solomon said.
Solomon pulled up an article Forbes published shortly after that, reporting that Trump had been lying about the size of his triplex apartment.
“That’s when we started to do our investigation as to what the number actually was,” Weisselberg said.
Prosecutors have meticulously gone through various documents, sometimes line by line, asking witnesses to detail their recollection of preparing or signing off on statements. Solomon pointed out that the financial statements Weisselberg signed off said that the Trump Organization was following accounting rules and principles.
Weisselberg earlier this year served about four months in New York City prison after being convicted of tax fraud, not paying taxes on perks for working at the Trump Organization, including a Mercedes-Benz, a New York City apartment and school tuition for his grandchildren. Weisselberg had made a deal with prosecutors that he would testify truthfully in exchange for a more lenient sentence.
The former Trump executive is the fourth witness to testify in the trial, which is scheduled to continue until 22 December.
