Melissa Harris-Perry: Hi, everybody. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry in for Tanzina Vega, and you're listening to The Takeaway. On Thursday morning, a years-long investigation into the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, came to a head when Weisselberg turned himself in to New York prosecutors.
Weisselberg was then charged with grand larceny in the second degree. Prosecutors said he evaded taxes on $1.7 million of income, and in addition, the Trump Organization was indicted on 10 counts, including a scheme to defraud and four different counts of criminal tax fraud.
Now, legal analysts are watching to see whether Weisselberg who has worked very closely with Donald Trump over the years will ultimately cooperate with officials to reveal incriminating evidence about the former president's business dealings. Trump and his lawyers have criticized the investigation as politically motivated because the district attorney and the Attorney General leading the investigation are both Democrats.
As for me, I'm getting my popcorn ready and just waiting for the Weisselberg-Trump version of the 2019 snitch fest by rapper 6ix9ine when the heavily tattooed rapper went to court and told all the business of his gang in order to skirt a life sentence. It just makes me giggle to think of the Weisselberg version of this viral Instagram post by the maligned rapper.
6ix9ine: "Y'all don't want to accept the fact that those are all true facts. Y’all don't understand why I snitched, y’all don't understand. Y’all don’t want to understand."
Melissa Harris-Perry: We're joined now by Rebecca Ballhaus, investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Thank you for being here, Rebecca.
Rebecca Ballhaus: Hi, thanks for having me.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Oh, it's lovely to have you. Give us a little bit of context here. How do yesterday's events fit into the indictment process?
Rebecca Ballhaus: As you said, this has been a years-long investigation now and it grew out of this separate investigation into hush money around 2018 and would include a review of Trump's tax returns, a focus on bank fraud, insurance fraud. What we saw yesterday was really a focus on these fringe benefits.
What prosecutors alleged in the indictment that was unveiled yesterday was that there was a pattern at the Trump Organization by both the company and by its chief financial officer, in which executives like Weisselberg would receive perks like apartments, cars, tuition payments for his family member's private school in Manhattan, and wouldn't pay taxes on it, and the company wouldn't pay taxes on it either.
Melissa Harris-Perry: So it ends up being the kind of income that isn't dollars in the bank, but has these kinds of benefits on top of?
Rebecca Ballhaus: That's right. As you said, prosecutors said that Weisselberg avoided paying taxes on $1.7 million in income since 2005, which is a pretty eye-popping number.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, tell us a little bit about the role that Weisselberg played in the Trump Organization.
Rebecca Ballhaus: Weisselberg is one of Trump's closest confidants. He's worked for the company for nearly 50 years, his son worked for the company, and the way that former and current Trump Organization employees and others who are close to the former president and to the company described him is that he's intimately involved in several aspects of the company's finances.
That he and Trump would go over all the checks that needed to be signed at the end of the day, according to Lewandowski who is Trump's former campaign manager, I think once described him as knowing about every dollar that went out the door. He's somebody who's really involved in a lot of aspects of how that company works and is also personally very close to Trump.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Was it surprising he turned himself in?
Rebecca Ballhaus: That's just how this works. He was charged yesterday, he pleaded not guilty. His lawyers have said that he plans to fight the charges in court. This is part of this larger effort by prosecutors to get Weisselberg to cooperate, which so far he has refused to do. I think that it really remains to be seen whether the charges that were released yesterday are going to be enough to force him to cooperate.
The charges that he's facing carry a maximum prison sentence of 15 years. It's possible that if he's looking at the possibility of spending time in prison, that he's going to choose to cooperate with prosecutors, but I think that so far, we're not publicly seeing any shift in his stance. I think it's still very much an open question whether he's going to change course here.
Melissa Harris-Perry: You just said that we don't see a shift in his public stance, Mr. Weisselberg's, do you think that others within the Trump Organization and perhaps former President Trump himself are feeling nervous though at this moment?
Rebecca Ballhaus: We know that the investigation is still very much ongoing. We know that they're still seeking to build a case against Trump. We know that in addition to trying to gain Weisselberg's cooperation, they're also trying to persuade others at the Trump Organization to cooperate, including the chief operating officer, whose name is Matthew Calamari.
We reported a couple of weeks ago that Calamari has also been under scrutiny by prosecutors for these fringe benefits that they say he received. He was mentioned, though not by name in the indictment yesterday as an employee who received an apartment and a car lease from the company and didn't necessarily pay taxes on it. We know that they're still very much working on trying to get people to cooperate with them. It's just not clear yet I think whether that's going to happen.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Does former President Trump have a point that this seems to be politically motivated?
Rebecca Ballhaus: On the one hand, I think he has said that about every investigation that he's faced since running for president. On the other hand, I think what we have heard from legal experts and former prosecutors is that it's somewhat unusual to bring a case that focuses solely on fringe benefits. It's often a part of a larger case, but it's a little bit rare to bring a case that's just on that subject.
On the other hand, we did see some legal experts say yesterday that they felt like the charges were actually more sweeping than they expected and that they portrayed a slightly more brazen scheme to avoid taxes than people might have anticipated.
Melissa Harris-Perry: What does this mean for the business of Donald Trump and the Trump Organization?
Rebecca Ballhaus: Practically, if the company is convicted, they could face fines, they could face other penalties, but it doesn't mean necessarily that anyone goes to prison if the company itself is convicted. More broadly, an indictment against the company can really make it difficult for the company to do business. This is coming at a time when the company has been somewhat restricted in what it's been able to do while Trump was in the White House, and this was very much a time I think when they were looking to expand and possibly looking to expand more abroad in particular.
If they're facing now these charges, if they're going to be in the news every day about this case for the next several months, I think that that certainly complicates that effort. There's also this separate question, I think of, their dealings with banks. Do banks try and call in loans, outstanding loans early? I think that there's a number of issues that the company needs to consider right now.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Is there a possibility that former President Trump himself is going to face charges?
Rebecca Ballhaus: I think that really remains to be seen. Certainly, he was not mentioned by name in the indictment yesterday. We know that prosecutors are very much looking to build a case against him. We were certainly told that there wasn't much that happened at his company that he didn't know about in terms of whether he was aware of the conduct that was described in the indictment on Thursday, but still very much an open question whether they're going to charge him.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Help us to understand a little bit about the timeline here. I presume that we're not expecting these indictments to stop with Weisselberg. That there may be some other folks, are we talking about across to summer coming very soon, what are you hearing?
Rebecca Ballhaus: We don't, currently, I think have an expectation of when another round of indictments might come. I think it definitely hinges on whether Weisselberg or others decide to cooperate. We know that they're continuing to investigate, for example, whether Trump and the company were manipulating the value of the company's real estate to get loans and other tax benefits. We know they're continuing to look at these fringe benefits. There certainly could be more, but I don't think we have any sense of the timeline on when more would come just yet.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Thank you so much to Rebecca Ballhaus, an investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for joining us.
Rebecca Ballhaus: Thanks for having me.
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