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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

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Kendra
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#1

Post by Kendra »

Does this case have a thread? The NY investigations thread is locked, and the I don't think that the NY AG civil thread is a match. Help help this :oldlady:


MONDAY the Trump Organization goes on CRIMINAL trial in Manhattan for a 15+ year tax conspiracy. All eyes will be on evidence of Trump’s knowledge and role in the scheme.
Normal defense strategy is to attack govt witnesses as liars. But if former CFO Weisselberg (W) is treated that way successfully, he may flip finally against Trump. The court has said if W lies he will throw the book at him at sentencing. We will be watching quite the chess game.
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#2

Post by Foggy »

There wasn't a thread for this case, but it goes to trial next week (maybe, trial is never guaranteed) so I took Kendra's post and made it into a new thread.
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#3

Post by Foggy »

I'm not sure what you meant by "The NY investigations thread is locked" Kendra, but I don't think we have any locked threads on the entire site. If I'm wrong about that, somebuddy gimme a link, por favor.
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#4

Post by Kendra »

Thank you Foggy. This could be :popcorn: good. How to divide my time between work, this trial and the Oathkeepers trial? :oldlady:
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#5

Post by Foggy »

Here's a gift link to the Washington Post article explaining the case.

Fraud-related criminal trial against Trump Organization to start Monday
Trump Organization, former president Donald Trump’s namesake company, is set to go on trial Monday for alleged tax crimes — the result of a lengthy investigation into the company and its executives related to fraud and other potentially illegal business practices.

Trump is not charged personally and the portion of the investigation for which he still could face criminal charges is not yet concluded by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigators.

Bragg has promised to announce the results of the remaining parts of the Trump probe when it is finalized, but to date, the only charges filed have been against the Trump Organization, its subsidiary Trump Payroll Corporation and its longtime Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg.

Weisselberg in August pleaded guilty to 15 counts tied to an alleged longtime fraud scheme within the organization and is required to testify in the criminal trial as part of a plea agreement.

The jury selection scheduled to begin Monday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan could involve hundreds of potential panelists. They will likely be asked, among other things, whether their feelings about the former president are so strong they would not be able to set them aside and fairly evaluate evidence.
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#6

Post by Kendra »

Maybe a dumb :?: , but who will set at the defendant table? Just lawyers?
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#7

Post by much ado »

Kendra wrote: Sat Oct 22, 2022 3:48 pm Maybe a dumb :?: , but who will set at the defendant table? Just lawyers?
If Trump appeared in person, it would give the proceedings a legitimacy that he is desperately trying to undercut by all possible means. So no Trump.
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#8

Post by raison de arizona »

Foggy wrote: Sat Oct 22, 2022 3:04 pm I'm not sure what you meant by "The NY investigations thread is locked" Kendra, but I don't think we have any locked threads on the entire site. If I'm wrong about that, somebuddy gimme a link, por favor.
viewtopic.php?p=137513#p137513
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#9

Post by Foggy »

Ack, you gotta reminder me these things! :lol:

:oopsy: :bag:

Unlocked now, phew!
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#10

Post by Kendra »


The criminal trial against the Trump Organization begins TODAY.

Watch
@MichaelCohen212
break down jury selection and more live at 5p ET:
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#11

Post by Kendra »

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-orga ... 022-10-24/
Jury selection began Monday morning in the Trump Organization's trial on New York state criminal fraud charges, and the judge told potential jurors that former President Donald Trump could be called as a witness in the case.

The company was indicted by a grand jury in July 2021. It faces 14 counts related to allegations it provided untaxed "indirect employee compensation" to executives. The high-end perks, which included in at least one case an apartment and two luxury cars, were described as "secret pay raises at the expense of state and federal taxpayers" by a prosecutor at a hearing last year.

The company has denied wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Trump has not been personally charged in the case, though Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat whose office is prosecuting the case, has said that he remains under investigation.
:snippity:
Also among the witnesses expected to be called by the government is former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, who in August entered a guilty plea in the case.

Weisselberg's deal with prosecutors calls for a sentence of five months in New York's Rikers Island jail, followed by five years' probation. He must also pay $1.9 million in back taxes and fines, and testify under oath as a witness in the company's trial.

Weisselberg's son, Barry Weisselberg, who also worked for the company, and his ex-wife Jennifer Weisselberg, are also on the list of potential witnesses.

Cohen, a former Trump "fixer" who is now an ardent critic, told CBS News he was unaware he was on the witness list. Cohen said he met with officials from the Manhattan D.A.'s office for more than 100 hours during their investigation. Trump has previously called Cohen a "fraud" and sought to highlight Cohen's 2018 guilty plea to campaign finance charges and lying to Congress, for which he served prison time and home confinement.
:snippity:
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#12

Post by RTH10260 »

Trump: Feds 'tortured' Allen Weisselberg just for 'not paying taxes' on multiple company benefits

Brad Reed
October 24, 2022

With longtime Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg due in court this week to testify in a tax fraud trial against the company whose finances he ran for decades, former President Donald Trump decided to lash out at investigators for criminally charging his longtime top financial officer.

Writing on Truth Social, Trump accused law enforcement officials of running a politically motivated investigation that he said was part of a plot to hurt his presidential ambitions.

"The highly partisan Democrat Witch Hunt goes on, this time in New York where, after viewing millions of pages of documents over many years, charges were brought against a long time Trump executive who they 'tortured' & threatened for years," Trump complained.

Trump went on to attack prosecutors for bringing charges against Weisselberg merely "for not paying taxes on the use of company cars, the use of a company apartment, and the education of his grandchildren," all of which does amount to criminal tax evasion under the law.

READ MORE: Former GOP mayor issues a dire warning as he endorses Democrat in New Jersey race

"No such 'fringe benefits' case has ever been brought criminally(?) in the U.S., & right during the important Mid-Term Elections, of course!" he concluded.




https://www.rawstory.com/allen-weisselb ... 658497122/
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#13

Post by noblepa »

RTH10260 wrote: Tue Oct 25, 2022 3:47 pm
Trump: Feds 'tortured' Allen Weisselberg just for 'not paying taxes' on multiple company benefits
Trump went on to attack prosecutors for bringing charges against Weisselberg merely "for not paying taxes on the use of company cars, the use of a company apartment, and the education of his grandchildren," all of which does amount to criminal tax evasion under the law.

READ MORE: Former GOP mayor issues a dire warning as he endorses Democrat in New Jersey race

"No such 'fringe benefits' case has ever been brought criminally(?) in the U.S., & right during the important Mid-Term Elections, of course!" he concluded.

Not reporting such fringe benefits and not paying taxes on them certainly amounts to tax evasion on the part of the recipient (Weisselberg), but isn't failure of the employer (The Trump Organization) to report those benefits as income to Weisselberg also a crime? Isn't that one of the crimes which the organization is being charged with?

Heaven forbid that prosecutors bring charges against someone for committing a crime. "Sure, he committed tax evasion and my company failed to report those benefits as income, but since when is that a crime?" is what TFG seems to be saying.

I also seriously doubt that "no such fringe benefits case has ever been brought criminally". Granted, it is rare, but I can't believe that it is unprecedented.
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#14

Post by humblescribe »

This is my take for what it is worth:

Taxation of fringe benefits is tricky. There are a bunch of tests the employer and employee have to meet before they can be considered tax-free to the employee. (For example, a no-cost benefit is like when an airline pilot gets to fly free when off duty. There is no additional expense to the airline because it is a regularly-scheduled flight. Tax-free to the pilot.)

In essence, Weisselburg's fringe benefits are considered compensation paid in kind instead of cash because they don't fall into any of the exceptions. There may or may not be employer payroll taxes that are avoided by not reporting these fringes that depend upon how much of his pay is reported on a W-2. And the Organization still deducts all costs that are related to these in-kind payments.

I have to believe that tfg was in on the deal from the git-go. And I suspect that there are others within the Organization who received these sorts of in-kind payments in order to reduce their personal tax burden while the Organization deducts these emoluments as business expenses.

I think the prosecution wants to have Weisselburg testify that this is somewhat standard in this company, and that his situation is not isolated.
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#15

Post by MN-Skeptic »

Many years ago, during one of the first audits I was involved with at the company I worked for, the IRS auditor started digging into management possibly getting things of value for which we were not including in their income. My boss - the Director of our Tax Department - just laughed at that. His comment was that the IRS auditor must have been new to auditing large public corporations. We did everything by the book. Closely held corporations are much more likely to stretch the rules when it came to perks for management and creative accounting.
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#16

Post by Kendra »

Will be interesting to see how the case unfolds. It seems clear that Weisselman and others got these nice perks, but did it come in a check from Trump Org? Did Trump Org pay directly to the vendors (landlords on the apartments, car dealers, to schools for tuition fees?). If they did, could they in some far off trump world did Trump Org put it on their taxes as a business expense? Did Trump Org ACH funds direct to these recipients?
Off Topic
All I know from my experience doing payables for a small-ish company, is anything over the threshold ($500?) I wouldn't even cut a check without a W-9 on file first, chasing them down afterwards can be somewhat challenging and time consuming. I don't do AP anymore, but poor M learned a lesson when one of the branch managers *hired* someone to do some work at the branch and the guy doing it first wanted cash (that wasn't gonna happen), but she cut him the check without getting the W-9 and I'm pretty damn sure the guy is not a business and since we didn't get a Tax ID #, there's no reporting back to him to make sure he claims the income.
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#17

Post by noblepa »

humblescribe wrote: Tue Oct 25, 2022 5:42 pm This is my take for what it is worth:

Taxation of fringe benefits is tricky. There are a bunch of tests the employer and employee have to meet before they can be considered tax-free to the employee. (For example, a no-cost benefit is like when an airline pilot gets to fly free when off duty. There is no additional expense to the airline because it is a regularly-scheduled flight. Tax-free to the pilot.)

In essence, Weisselburg's fringe benefits are considered compensation paid in kind instead of cash because they don't fall into any of the exceptions. There may or may not be employer payroll taxes that are avoided by not reporting these fringes that depend upon how much of his pay is reported on a W-2. And the Organization still deducts all costs that are related to these in-kind payments.

I have to believe that tfg was in on the deal from the git-go. And I suspect that there are others within the Organization who received these sorts of in-kind payments in order to reduce their personal tax burden while the Organization deducts these emoluments as business expenses.

I think the prosecution wants to have Weisselburg testify that this is somewhat standard in this company, and that his situation is not isolated.
When I took a tax law course in college, we talked about taxing fringe benefits. One of the tests we were told is used was, is the benefit available to every employee? The example given was parking. If the company had a large parking lot and provided free parking for everyone, it did not need to be reported. However, if they were in a downtown location, and no free parking was available, but the company paid the monthly charge for high-ranking execs to park in a commercial parking facility, then that amount must be reported as income to the executives. I doubt that every employee of the Trump Organization got the free use of a company-owned car, or got to live free in a company-owned apartment.

The other exemption we talked about were "de minimus" benefits. That is, things that were so cheap and hard to quantify that reporting was not required. For example, many companies either specifically allow (or simply look the other way) employees to use the office copier for occasional personal use, such as copying their tax returns. The value of such a benefit is trivial and almost impossible to track. Again, those benefits that Weisselberg and others received were hardly de minimus.
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Post by Volkonski »

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#19

Post by humblescribe »

Kendra wrote: Tue Oct 25, 2022 7:10 pm Will be interesting to see how the case unfolds. It seems clear that Weisselman and others got these nice perks, but did it come in a check from Trump Org? Did Trump Org pay directly to the vendors (landlords on the apartments, car dealers, to schools for tuition fees?). If they did, could they in some far off trump world did Trump Org put it on their taxes as a business expense? Did Trump Org ACH funds direct to these recipients?
Off Topic
All I know from my experience doing payables for a small-ish company, is anything over the threshold ($500?) I wouldn't even cut a check without a W-9 on file first, chasing them down afterwards can be somewhat challenging and time consuming. I don't do AP anymore, but poor M learned a lesson when one of the branch managers *hired* someone to do some work at the branch and the guy doing it first wanted cash (that wasn't gonna happen), but she cut him the check without getting the W-9 and I'm pretty damn sure the guy is not a business and since we didn't get a Tax ID #, there's no reporting back to him to make sure he claims the income.
There are a lot of ways that a business can bury things in the books. I want to see the ownership chart of his myriad entities. I bet it is like a convoluted pyramid with A owning parts of C,D,E,and F while D owns part of B and E, and B owning parts of C,E, and F, and so on. The ultimate owner of most of this stuff is tfg (Company A) with probably minority interests among his kids in selected entities.

Payments for these perks could have been split among several of these entities. It is easier to escape detection if a $25,000 payment to a vendor is carved up with five-$5,000 checks from five companies instead of one $25,000 check. I suspect that some of the rentals were in properties owned in full or in majority by tRump Organization. Nothing visible, and auditors don't look at the tenant lists unless they have a tip.

We also know that Daddy tRump used dummy companies to jack up the costs of operating rental properties. The dummy company would buy materials for $X, then turn around and sell those same materials for ten times that amount. He got certain benefits from spending those dollars while his kids got income from the ginormous markups on those materials. Do you think tfg is going to reinvent the wheel? Is it possible that he has continued to do similarly with these business perks, perhaps getting a little "tax-free" action in return? Venality is one of his attributes, amirite?

Regarding the W-9: this is a relatively new form. I think it came about in the 90s or so. Ancient practitioners of the dark accounting arts never bothered to obtain SSNs for independent contractors until the IRS started rattling its sabers and assessing a $100 penalty for each form that was not filed. You think a $100 a pop would deter someone like tfg?

I agree, it will be interesting to see how this all plays out. It will be interesting if many of his subterfuges are revealed at trial. It will be more interesting if the DA can distill these artifices down so that a jury can follow along.
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#20

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

humblescribe: ancient practitioners of the dark accounting arts
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#21

Post by RTH10260 »

Preparing for the IRS audit

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#22

Post by northland10 »

When it comes to receipting for charitable contributions, I have learned that IRS are laid back and easy going compared to Canada Revenue.
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#23

Post by jemcanada2 »

northland10 wrote: Wed Oct 26, 2022 7:00 pm When it comes to receipting for charitable contributions, I have learned that IRS are laid back and easy going compared to Canada Revenue.
I haven’t filed my taxes in 4 or 5 years :whistle: :whistle: :shh: :shh:
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#24

Post by Volkonski »

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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New York (Manhattan D.A.) v. Trump Organization - criminal case

#25

Post by Kendra »

:popcorn:
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