The former chief financial officer for the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, pleaded guilty Monday to perjury charges related to his testimony in the New York attorney general’s probe of the real estate company’s finances.
Mr. Weisselberg, 76, surrendered to the Manhattan prosecutor’s office earlier Monday and entered state court in handcuffs, wearing a mask, before pleading guilty to five counts of perjury.
Prosecutors accused Mr. Weisselberg of lying under oath when he answered questions in a deposition in May and at the October trial about allegations that Donald Trump lied about his wealth on financial statements to banks and insurance companies.
Under New York law, perjury involving false testimony is a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison.
Mr. Weisselberg’s plea did not implicate the former president in new wrongdoing. He is not expected to testify in an upcoming criminal that focuses on hush money payments that the GOP presidential front-runner allegedly made to porn star Stormy Daniels and two others in 2016.
However, the plea is another setback for Mr. Weisselberg, a loyal longtime employee in the Trump Organization. Mr. Weisselberg previously spent 100 days at the Rikers Island jail after pleading guilty to 15 counts of tax fraud in a trial of two Trump Organization entities that resulted in a conviction and fine.
Separately, a civil court judge found Mr. Weisselberg liable on fraud claims and fined him $1 million as part of a sprawling judgment against Mr. Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization that, with interest, totaled about $450 million.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s team looked into Mr. Weisselberg’s testimony last fall in the business fraud case brought by state Attorney General Letitia James because he said he “never focused” on the size of Mr. Trump’s penthouse in Trump Tower, which was listed as nearly three times its actual size in financial statements.
Forbes magazine, however, said Mr. Weisselberg had tried to convince the magazine that the apartment was as big as the financial statements stated, indicating he did think about the matter.
His guilty plea served as a reminder of the thicket of legal woes surrounding Mr. Trump even as the Supreme Court delivered the ex-president a victory Monday, ruling unanimously he could stay on the 2024 ballot even though some liberal-leaning states labeled him an ineligible insurrectionist under the 14th Amendment.
Beyond the hush money trial, Mr. Trump faces a federal trial in Washington on charges he conspired against the U.S. and its voters by trying to overturn the 2020 election results.
A separate federal case in Florida alleges the former president unlawfully took government records to his Mar-a-Lago estate and obstructed archivists’ attempts to retrieve them, and he faces an election subversion case in Georgia on state racketeering charges.
• This story is based in part on wire service reports.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.