Fogbow

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.

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.

Kendra wrote: ↑Sat Oct 22, 2022 3:48 pm Maybe a dumb , but who will set at the defendant table? Just lawyers?

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.

The criminal trial against the Trump Organization begins TODAY.

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

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.

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.

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/

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.

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.

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.

humblescribe: ancient practitioners of the dark accounting arts

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.