Former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg was sentenced to five months in prison on Wednesday after he pleaded guilty last month to two counts of first-degree perjury related to his testimony in former President Donald Trump’s New York civil fraud trial.
Weisselberg, 76, was hit with perjury charges by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg after his testimony for the civil fraud case brought by New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James. James had charged Weisselberg, alongside Trump and others, with scheming to deceive banks and insurers about Trump’s wealth. In a March deal with Bragg’s office, Weisselberg pleaded guilty to lying during deposition testimonies in July 2020 and May 2023 and while on the stand during the trial in October 2023.
His sentencing on Wednesday took less than five minutes as his plea deal stipulated that he would spend five months behind bars for the charges. After Judge Laurie Peterson asked him if he would like to speak to the court, Weisselberg said, “No, your honor,” according to the Associated Press. He is expected to be held at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex.
In his plea deal, Weisselberg admitted lying to investigators about the size of the Midtown Trump Tower triplex in Manhattan.
Trump’s lawyers have accused Bragg of a double standard by going after Weisselberg but not pursuing charges against former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, a key witness in Bragg’s case against Trump over alleged “hush money” payments to Stormy Daniels. They said that Bragg made a “conscious choice to ignore obvious and admitted criminal conduct by Cohen and to instead deploy unethical, strong-armed tactics against an innocent man in his late 70s underscores the irresponsibility of your conduct in office.”
In other legal filings, Trump’s lawyers suggested that Weisselberg may have taken a plea deal to avoid a harsher prison sentence.
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“To be clear, counsel for Defendants have no ‘knowledge’ that Mr. Weisselberg made false statements during the trial; to the contrary, many believe that Mr. Weisselberg only made such admissions because he was being threatened with life in prison,” the lawyers said in a filing to Judge Arthur Engoran, who oversaw James’s case against Trump. “Indeed, counsel for defendants have no more ‘knowledge’ that Mr. Weisselberg made these purportedly false statements than the Court or any other person who read of his highly publicized guilty plea.”
Weisselberg, whose legal bills have been paid for by the Trump Organization, previously spent time in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion.
In the civil fraud case, Engoron sided with James and the prosecution in February, ordering Trump to pay $350 million, which has increased to $454 million, including interest, and barring Trump and his sons from running their business in New York for two to three years. Bragg’s criminal court case is slated to start on April 15.
