(Photo by Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images)
Allen Weisselberg will never give you up, never let you down, never tell a lie the truth and hurt you. But only if you are Donald Trump.
The Trump Organization’s former CFO pled guilty to two counts of felony perjury this morning, admitting that he lied to the Attorney General during the investigation which led to the civil fraud cause against the Trump family and their eponymous company. Once again, it’s the damn triplex apartment tripping him up, with Weisselberg claiming under oath that he never told lenders that Trump’s 11,000sf New York apartment was really 30,000sf, and in fact he only discovered the error when he read it in Forbes Magazine. He also claimed that he was never present when Trump himself made this claim.
In fact, as Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander wrote in January, Weisselberg gave them an earful about the triplex on the regular. It was part of his annual pitch to get his boss moved up on the Forbes 400 list of people to eat when the revolution comes. Trump even got in on the action himself, repeating the false claim to reporters in hopes of dazzling them with his sparkly truthiness.
In court this morning, Weisselberg admitted to lying about the apartment on the witness stand in Trump’s recent trial, although he was not charged with that particular failure of veracity.
The plea is functionally the other shoe dropping from a story four weeks ago at the tail end of the civil fraud trial. After the New York Times reported that Weisselberg was negotiating a perjury plea, Justice Arthur Engoron queried the defense lawyers if they had anything to declare which might inform the court’s opinion on Weisselberg’s credibility as a witness.
Alina Habba replied that she only represented Weisselberg in civil matters and knew nothing about any criminal plea. And Cliff Robert, who represents Trump, engaged in his usual performative dance of indignation, accusing the court of taking judicial notice of uncorroborated media stories.
“You and your co-counsel have been questioning my impartiality since the early days of this case, presumably because I sometimes rule against your clients. That whole approach is getting old,” Justice Engoron replied testily.
In the event, the court was able to discount Weisselberg’s testimony just fine without an assist from the DA. In a decision published on February 16, the judge noted that the Trump Org was still holding hundreds of thousands of dollars of Weisselberg’s retirement payout hostage pending his testimony.
“That alone renders his testimony highly unreliable. The Trump Organization keeps Weisselberg on a short leash, and it shows,” he wrote, adding a million dollar penalty for Weisselberg in the judgment to deprive him of what strongly resembled a payout for lying on the witness stand.
And now Weisselberg is looking at a second stretch in the clink, on top of the first visit he paid to Rikers when he refused to give up his boss in the tax fraud prosecution back in 2022.
No wonder Trump disdains dogs. No creature on earth could be more slavishly loyal than Allen Weisselberg.
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
