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NEW YORK, Dec. 6 (AP) — Jurors began deliberating the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud trial on Monday, weighing claims that former President Donald Trump’s company helped executives evade personal income taxes on perks like Manhattan apartments and luxury cars. accused.
The deliberations follow a month-long trial that saw testimony from seven witnesses, including longtime Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg and senior vice president and treasurer Jeffrey McGregor. Connie. An outside accountant who spent years preparing tax returns for Trump and the company also testified.
After about 40 minutes of deliberation, jurors sent a note asking the judge to reread one of the charges, fourth-degree conspiracy to defraud. Judge Juan Manuel Mercan was obliged to read the charges – occasionally pausing to listen to the blaring car horns 15 floors below.
Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty to avoiding taxes on the $1.7 million in additional fees, testified that he and McConney conspired to hide the additional fees from his income by deducting the additional fees from his pre-tax wages and issuing falsified W-2 forms.
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Prosecutors are charging the Trump Organization with two subsidiaries, Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll. The Trump Company was charged with nine counts. Trump Payroll Corporation was charged with eight counts.
Jurors must decide whether Weisselberg was a “senior management agent” acting on behalf of the company, as prosecutors allege, or whether he was acting in his own interest, as the Trump Organization lawyers have said. They also have to determine whether he intends to benefit the company’s bottom line, not just his own.
Weisselberg testified against the company in exchange for a promised five-month prison sentence. Other executives have also been charged with avoiding taxes on company allowances, but no one else has been charged.
Lawyers for the Trump Organization have argued that Weisselberg acted on his own without the knowledge of Trump or the Trump family. The company has denied wrongdoing.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass sought to counter that claim in closing arguments last week, showing jurors the lease Trump signed for the apartment that Weisselberg’s company paid for, and a memo initialed by Trump authorizing a pay cut for another executive who received additional perks.
Trump has not been charged. The Trump Organization case is the only trial in a three-year investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office into Trump and his business practices.
District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the investigation into Trump was “actively ongoing” and that no decision had been made on whether to charge him. No former president has ever been charged with a crime.
On Monday, Bragg announced the hiring of Matthew Colangelo, a lawyer for the New York attorney general’s office in charge of Trump-related investigations. As senior counsel, Colangelo will oversee the most sensitive and high-profile white-collar investigations conducted by the Manhattan DA’s office, Bragg said. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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