Tag: Trump grift

Trump Organization removes indicted top finance officer Allen Weisselberg from leadership roles at dozens of subsidiaries

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The Trump Organization has removed indicted chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg from his leadership roles at more than 40 subsidiary companies, according to corporate filings in the United States and Scotland.

The changes were made Thursday and Friday, a week after a grand jury in Manhattan indicted Weisselberg on 15 felony counts, including grand larceny and tax fraud. Weisselberg was accused by New York prosecutors of helping run a 15-year scheme to evade income taxes by concealing executives’ salaries — including more than $1.7 million of his own income — from tax authorities. Two Trump corporate entities were indicted alongside Weisselberg.

On Thursday, the Trump Organization removed Weisselberg as a director of the company that runs its golf course in Aberdeen, Scotland, according to British corporate records. Continue reading.

Weisselberg out in Scotland: First indication that indictment affects Trump Organization operations

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Allen Weisselberg, the indicted Trump Organization executive, was removed today as a director of Donald Trump’s golf resort in Aberdeen, Scotland, public records show. The move is the first to indicate how the indictment is affecting operations of the Trump Organization.

His removal comes as Scottish lawmakers and Avaaz, a global do-gooder organization, are pushing for an “unexplained wealth” inquiry into how Trump got the money to buy and refurbish both of his money-losing Scottish golf courses.

A 2018 British law lets investigators examine company and personal financial records to determine sources of money and riches that they deem suspicious. It’s been called the McMafia law. Continue reading.

Reporters point to a simple sign that Trump’s social media lawsuit is ‘unserious’

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It took Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee (RNC), the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) just “minutes” to begin fundraising off of what some are calling the former president’s “frivolous” lawsuits against Twitter, Facebook, and Google.

Politico’s Sam Stein posted this text from the joint Trump-RNC fundraising committee:

Continue reading.

Trump charged Secret Service nearly $10,200 in May for agents’ rooms

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Former president Donald Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., charged the Secret Service nearly $10,200 for guest rooms used by his protective detail during Trump’s first month at the club this summer, newly released spending records show.

The records — released by the Secret Service in response to a public-records request — show that the ex-president has continued a habit he began in the first days of his presidency: charging rent to the agency that protects his life.

Since Trump left office in January, U.S. taxpayers have paid Trump’s businesses more than $50,000 for rooms used by Secret Service agents, records show. Continue reading.

How Trump’s claims to being ‘the king of the tax code’ could come back to haunt him

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When former president Donald Trump weighed in on the criminal tax case against his business this weekend, some saw a tacit admission to the schemes the Trump Organization is accused of.

“They go after good, hard-working people for not paying taxes on a company car,” Trump said Saturday night at a rally in Sarasota, Fla. “You didn’t pay tax on the car or a company apartment. You used an apartment because you need an apartment because you have to travel too far where your house is. You didn’t pay tax. Or education for your grandchildren. I don’t even know. Do you have to? Does anybody know the answer to that stuff?”

It’s certainly valid to suggest Trump is granting that these violations might have indeed happened. Perhaps the better interpretation, though, is that Trump is mounting a defense: one of ignorance. (Okay, maybe this stuff happened, but we — or at least I — didn’t know it was illegal.) And knowledge of the tax law is vital to proving tax fraud. Continue reading.

Trump biographer explains why Ivanka Trump ‘is in peril’ along with Allen Weisselberg

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President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump is in about as much trouble as Allen Weisselberg is, according to biographer Michael D’Antonio.

Speaking to CNN’s Jim Acosta on Sunday, D’Antonio explained that the kinds of things that Weisselberg is accused of are similar to things that Ivanka Trump also did while working for the Trump Organization.

“You know, he really is acting as if he is going to go down with the ship,” said D’Antonio of Weisselberg. “I think this is astounding given Michael Cohen’s example. But there’s another thing that I notice in the president’s — or former president’s complaints. And his idea that, ‘Well, they’re going after really good people, and they would only be going after me because of political motivations.’ Well, the big problem for him is that he invited all of this. He ran for president in the first place as a publicity stunt. He wanted to amp up his visibility and increase his bottom line. He never intended to be elected president, and then when he became president, journalists started digging into the facts of his wealth, which has always been in doubt, and then people that he really hurt, that he steamrollered offer the years leaked documents to The New York Times that gave the truth about his taxes for the world to see. Faced with all of that, the prosecutions had no choice but to go after him. So, the idea this is political is crazy. He brought it on himself. These are practices that have been going on for more than a dozen years, and he’s getting what he deserves.”

Trump is already roadtesting his defense for a possible NY indictment — but there’s a big problem

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One section of former President Donald Trump’s rally speech on Saturday night in Florida stood out to many observers: his response to last week’s indictment of his company and its CFO Allen Weisselberg.

Weisselberg and the Trump Organization were hit with a 15-count indictment from the Manhattan DA, Cy Vance, alleging a scheme to defraud the government and avoid paying required taxes on more than a million dollars worth of non-salary compensation the CFO has received for over a decade.

Trump himself was not charged in the scheme, though many argue it’s hard to believe he wasn’t aware of this allegedly criminal conduct — and indeed, it’s hard to believe this kind of criminality wasn’t widespread under his leadership. But if Vance ever chooses to try and bring a case against the former president, Trump will likely try to claim he was unaware that these crimes were occurring, or that he was unaware that what was being done was illegal. On Saturday, he started roadtesting this type of defense — which, if true, would undermine the case that he had the criminal intent required to be found guilty of the crimes in question — for his fans: Continue reading.

Trump appears to acknowledge tax schemes while questioning whether alleged violations are crimes

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Former president Donald Trump lashed out at Manhattan prosecutors Saturday night for indicting his organization and its chief financial officer for tax fraud, calling it “prosecutorial misconduct” in his most extensive comments on the charges since they were unsealed Thursday.

As Trump criticized the investigation, he appeared to acknowledge the tax schemes while questioning whether the alleged violations were in fact crimes.

“They go after good, hard-working people for not paying taxes on a company car,” he said at a rally in Sarasota, Fla. “You didn’t pay tax on the car or a company apartment. You used an apartment because you need an apartment because you have to travel too far where your house is. You didn’t pay tax. Or education for your grandchildren. I don’t even know. Do you have to? Does anybody know the answer to that stuff?” Continue reading.

Eric Trump gets pilloried after giving away the game about the Trump Org indictment on live TV

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The Trump Organization and its Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg found themselves in hot water this week when the Manhattan DA revealed an indictment alleging a pattern of criminal financial conduct dating back more than a decade.

While it comes as no surprise that the Trump Organization remains a major topic of discussion today, legal experts, observers, and Twitter users are also puzzled by the public comments about the matter from one person who probably should have been silent: Eric Trump.

Under normal circumstances, people under the heat of criminal investigation are well-advised to refrain from making any remarks about the matter. But the former president’s son didn’t heed that counsel. Continue reading.

The Memo: Dangers intensify for Trump as Vance brings charges

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The legal and political dangers facing former President Trump became a lot more real Thursday, when his closest lieutenant in running his businesses, Allen Weisselberg, gave himself up to prosecutors at dawn.

Weisselberg, along with the Trump Organization, was formally charged in court a few hours later. He was brought into court handcuffed. 

The 15-count indictment alleges that Weisselberg committed grand larceny and tax fraud, and that the Trump Organization was complicit in many of those offenses.  Continue reading.