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For 50 years, Allen Weisselberg faithfully served the Trump family. On Tuesday, he appeared intent on continuing to do so as he offered hesitant, often confused testimony in a civil fraud suit targeting former president Donald Trump and his business empire.
In a long day on the witness stand, Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s long-serving chief financial officer — until he left late last year — distanced himself from the so-called statement of financial condition at the centre of a suit by the New York state attorney-general.
The valuations of individual golf courses, office buildings and other assets that comprised the document were prepared by “others” — often his subordinate, Jeffrey McConney, the company’s former controller, Weisselberg said time and again.
He came across as an executive who was hands-off in the extreme — routinely signing documents without reading them and unable to recall the circumstances surrounding company transactions, including a $25mn short-term loan provided by a firm, Ladder Capital, where his son worked.
When it came to the $327mn valuation the former president assigned to his triplex penthouse — an exaggeration of $200mn, the lawsuits allege — Weisselberg said it had not been important to him because it was “immaterial” in the context of a Trump fortune variously estimated at $6bn or more.
“I never focused on the triplex, to be honest with you,” Weisselberg told Louis Solomon, a lawyer for the New York attorney-general, who led the questioning. “It was almost de minimis, relative to his net worth.”
Later, Weisselberg dithered when asked if he would have amended the financial statement if he had known about the error — first answering “no” after a pause and later changing his mind.
Letitia James, the New York attorney-general who filed the suit, appeared to smile as she watched from the gallery.
Weisselberg was dressed in a white shirt and pink tie that matched his bald pate. Just before he took the stand, a smiling Alina Habba, one of Trump’s lawyers, huddled over him, whispering a few words.
After a few perfunctory questions from Solomon his manner on the stand turned resistant — so much so that at one point Weisselberg refused to answer a simple maths question: whether $327mn was more than 5 per cent of $6bn. After one meandering answer, he looked pleadingly towards Trump’s lawyers.
“Your role is to answer the question — not give speeches or explanations,” Judge Arthur Engoron admonished him at one point.
Weisselberg, with a heavy bearing and fixed jaw, went to work for Fred Trump, the family patriarch, in 1973, two years after earning a degree from what was then known as Pace College. In 1986 he began working for Fred’s ascendant son, Donald, serving for decades as his chief financial officer and even appearing on his reality television programme, The Apprentice.
His unique knowledge of the family’s finances has made him a target of legal authorities who have scrutinised the former president and his business. Yet Weisselberg has never broken ranks.
He spent three months at the notorious Rikers Island jail last year after pleading guilty to tax evasion for arranging to receive luxury cars, school tuition payments and other unreported perks from the Trump Organization.
If loyalty were not enough, Weisselberg might have another motive to remain in the family’s good graces, Solomon suggested on Tuesday: a $2mn separation agreement he signed last December, to be paid in $250,000 increments over two years.
The statements of financial condition were not only a matter of vanity for Trump, according to the attorney-general’s lawsuit. They were also used to access favourable bank loans and other economic benefits. Judge Engoron has already ruled that Trump, his eldest sons and his business empire are liable for fraud, although that ruling is being appealed.
If Weisselberg often appeared doddering and ill-informed on Tuesday, the session was a triumph for Forbes magazine. The diligence with which its reporters and editors compile its annual list of wealthy Americans was on display in emails presented by the prosecution as evidence.
On several occasions Forbes reporters pressed Weisselberg on Trump’s claims, particularly regarding his apartment. Their reporting resulted in a May 2017 article headlined: “Donald Trump Has Been Lying About The Size Of His Penthouse.”
Of Forbes, Weisselberg said: “We’d spend an inordinate amount of time going back and forth with them. No matter what we told them, showing them evidence and things, they were just ignoring. I stopped talking to them.”
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