- Defense attorneys in tax-evasion trial of Donald Trump's business are trying to keep the blame off Trump.
- Trump's company, the Trump Organization, is facing multiple charges, including scheme to defraud.
Defense attorneys in the New York criminal tax-fraud trial of former President Donald Trump's international real-estate company unveiled their strategy in the case on Monday — keep all blame off the former president and anyone else with the Trump name.
Prosecutors in the high-profile trial playing out in New York Supreme Court in lower Manhattan allege that the Trump Organization ran a 15-year scheme to trick tax authorities by giving top executives significant compensation in the form of untaxed "perks" like luxury cars and rent-free Trump-branded apartments.
Trump Organization lawyer Susan Necheles told the jury during opening statements on Monday that the fraud scheme "started with" former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg "and it ended with Allen Weisselberg."
Weisselberg pleaded guilty to the tax-dodge scheme over the summer. He agreed to testify truthfully about his own role as part of a plea deal. Under the deal, Weisselberg must serve five months jail and pay back $2 million.
But he and two other key prosecution witnesses are still on the Trump payroll and have been coordinating with Trump attorneys.
All three can be expected to support the Trump line of defense on the witness stand: that the tax-dodge scheme was a conspiracy by rogue Trump Organization executives who kept the very top of the company, including Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and the former president — its owner and sole beneficiary — in the dark.
"Donald Trump didn't know that Allen Weisselberg was cheating on Allen Weisselberg's personal tax returns," Necheles told the jury's four women and eight men. "The evidence will be crystal clear on that."
"Allen Weisselberg does not own the Trump Organization," she stressed.
Another Trump Organization attorney, Michael van der Veen, turned it into something of a mantra.
"Weisselberg did it for Weisselberg," he repeated no fewer than four times in his own openings.
Van der Veen likened Weisselberg to a "prodigal son" whose greedy scheming betrayed his "family" — the Trump family.
Weisselberg the "son" was nonetheless kept in the family fold, van der Veen said, using a Biblical analogy to explain away a sticky circumstance: Weisselberg and other prosecution witnesses are still being paid salaries and even have their legal defenses covered by Trump.
It was out of charity and forgiveness that Weisselberg was kept on the payroll, van der Veen suggested.
"He made mistakes," the lawyer said.
"Serious mistakes that have put his liberty at jeopardy ... crimes that have hurt his company," he added, countering prosecutors' insistence that the Trump Organization clearly benefitted from a scheme that kept their top executives happy and saved them in Medicare contributions.
"He has been removed from his position as chief financial officer," van der Veen continued. "But his ability to financially support his [own] family has not been stripped from him."
He added: "The meat of our defense is that Allen Weisselberg did not act at all with the intent to benefit the Trump Payroll Corporation."
The Trump Corporation is the Trump Organization subsidiary that directly employs its top executives, including Weisselberg. The Trump Payroll Corporation is the subsidiary that manages the payroll. Both do business as the Trump Organization, and both are defendants in the case.
Weisselberg has admitted to pocketing $1.7 million in tax-free perks over 15 years, including Mercedes-Benz luxury cars for him and his wife, free use of Trump-branded apartments on Manhattan's Hudson River and tuition for his grandkids' private schools.
The scheme saved him nearly a million dollars in taxes over 15 years, prosecutors have said.
But while "Weisselberg did it for Weisselberg" was the defense mantra, the prosecution's mantra — that Weisselberg was a "high managerial agent," a three-word phrase repeated in prosecutors' openings — was a bit less catchy.
Prosecutors must show that Weisselberg and a second executive who answered to him, former controller Jeff McConney, took actions on the company's behalf and were both "high managerial agents" under the law, meaning they were so high up in the company they can be equated with the company itself.
"The scheme was conducted and authorized ... at the highest level," said Susan Hoffinger, the Manhattan district attorney's investigations chief, during opening statements. She promised jurors entries in Donald Trump's personal financial ledger and a check he signed linking him to the scheme.
"This case is about greed and cheating," she told jurors. "Cheating on taxes."
Trump's company paid some $1.76 million in perks to Weisselberg over the last 15 years, Hoffinger told them, "and even paid him cash for his personal holiday gifts."
"We're going to focus in on the paper trail," she promised, including W2 forms and other tax documents she said were falsified to hide the perks from taxing authorities.
"Why not just give Allen Weisselberg a raise?" she asked rhetorically, before answering, "because doing it legally would have cost the Trump Organization more."
That included Weisselberg paying more in income taxes, and the company paying more in withholding taxes and Medicare contributions, she said.
The company was also able to "keep their trusted chief financial officer happy by paying him more," she said.
"Everybody wins here," she said. "Allen Weisselberg and the company … The problem with doing it this way is that it is not legal."