Newsman: the Trump Organization was sentenced for a “multi-dimensional scheme” to evade taxes. A judge in Manhattan sentenced the Trump Organization on Friday. Former President Trump was not charged but prosecutors insisted during trial he was not “blissfully ignorant” of elements of the scheme.
Judge Juan Merchan imposed the maximum sentence and scolded the defense for continuing to blame the company’s accountant for the fraud.
“It’s not what the evidence has showed and it’s not what the jury found,” Merchan said. He gave the company 14 days to pay.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office asked for the maximum fine of more than $1.6 million.
While a prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, conceded the amount is a fraction of the company’s earnings he called the scheme it was convicted of “far-reaching and brazen.”
“The sheer magnitude of this fraud merits the largest financial sanction authorized by law,” Steinglass said. “The defendants cultivated a pervasive culture of fraud.”
“A number of these fraudulent practices were explicitly sanction from the top down,” Steinglass said during the sentencing hearing.
The scheme helped former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg alone evade nearly $2 million in taxes by compensating him off-the-books in the form of rent, car leases and private school tuition payments. Weisselberg has paid back his unpaid taxes plus interest and was sentenced this week to five months in jail.
