Newsman: The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the New York Attorney General’s Office have obtained indictments against the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, people familiar with the matter told ABC, NBC, and CNN News network on Wednesday.
NY prosecutors examining cash bonuses at Trump Organization, according to sources. Prosecutors have also scrutinized cash bonuses paid to employees and whether appropriate taxes were paid on them, CNN reported Wednesday.
The charges stem from a scheme to pay compensation to Weisselberg and possibly others “off the books” by the Trump Organization. Though former President Donald Trump faced multiple federal and state prosecutorial inquiries during his administration, the district attorney’s indictment would be the first to charge his namesake company with criminal conduct.
The charges, handed up by a New York grand jury, are expected to be unsealed in court Thursday afternoon in Manhattan, one Trump representative told NBC News. It was not immediately clear how many charges are in the indictments.
Trump accused the prosecutors of targeting him because of politics, calling their actions “devastating for New York.”
“Having politically motivated prosecutors, people who actually got elected because they will ‘get Donald Trump,’ is a very dangerous thing for our Country,” he said in the statement.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that the charges would be filed Thursday, including against Weisselberg.
Spokesman for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance declined to comment. And a lawyer for Weisselberg, declined to comment to news media.
Spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has declined to comment on a report that indictments have already been filed against the Trump Organization and Weisselberg.
The charges come amid an investigation Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance has been conducting into a variety of allegations of financial improprieties against former President Donald Trump’s company. Vance’s office had been looking into criminal conduct at the Trump Organization, court documents previously showed, such as falsifying business records, insurance fraud and tax fraud.
According to NBC News report in March,Weisselberg’s former daughter-in-law, Jennifer Weisselberg, had spoken multiple times with investigators and that Vance was investigating whether Trump employees, including the Weisselbergs, were able to avoid paying taxes in exchange for fringe benefits, such as an apartment.
The investigation appeared to speed up once Vance’s office won a lengthy battle in February to obtain Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns and underlying financial documents.
Last week, an attorney for the Trumps, Ron Fischetti, called the impending charges “completely outrageous” and said they were being pursued because Weisselberg didn’t cooperate with investigators.
“They could not get him to cooperate because he would not say that Donald Trump had knowledge or any information that he may have been not deducting properly the use of cars or an apartment,” he said.
“In my more than 50 years of practice, never before have I seen the District Attorney’s Office target a company over employee compensation or fringe benefits,” Ronald Fishchetti, an attorney for former President Trump, told ABC News in a statement last week, adding the case in his view is “completely outrageous.”
The expected charges are set to come after lawyers for the Trump Organization met twice with prosecutors in recent days to present arguments about why the company shouldn’t face criminal charges.
And they will come after more than two years of investigation that began with an inquiry into accounting connected to hush-money payments made by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and expanded to include questions about whether the company or certain employees paid taxes on benefits including rent-free apartments, car leases or private school tuition.
Though prosecutors have focused on Weisselberg in an effort to coax him into cooperating with their investigation, his lawyers recently informed the district attorney’s office that he would not cooperate, people familiar with the matter said according to CNN news.
However, a source familiar with the matter says the pressure on Weisselberg has not been successful for a reason.
“Consider the possibility that Allen has nothing to flip on,” the source said.
Investigators’ scrutiny of Weisselberg began late last year, as prosecutors gathered evidence on him with the assistance of his former daughter-in-law, Jennifer Weisselberg. Since then, she has turned over boxes of financial records and has met with investigators multiple times, her lawyer Duncan Levin told CNN.
On Wednesday, Levin said she was pleased to learn of forthcoming charges against her former father-in-law and his longtime employer.
“We have been working with prosecutors for many months now as part of this tax and financial investigation and have provided a large volume of evidence that allowed them to bring these charges,” Levin said. “We are gratified to hear that the DA’s office is moving forward with a criminal case.”
In recent weeks, as prosecutors have inched closer to bringing charges, Trump has lashed out at their inquiries, deriding the probe — led by Manhattan District attorney Cyrus Vance and New York state Attorney General Letitia James.
The current Trump Organization leadership includes the former president’s sons, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump.Trump himself is not expected to be part of these criminal charges. He has denied all wrongdoing and has dismissed the investigation as being politically motivated, calling it “a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history.”
