Trump Org top executive surrenders to prosecutors ahead of criminal indictment: Report

Ahead of expected criminal indictment, Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg surrendered to the Manhattan district attorney's office on July 1, according to CNN. Weisselberg is set to be arraigned later Thursday at a lower Manhattan courthouse. A day earlier, a Manhattan grand jury had filed the indictments, stemming from a New York investigation into the former US president’s business dealings, as per AP reports. 

The charges against the Trump Organization and the company’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, are set to be unsealed on Thursday. They are expected to involve alleged tax violations related to benefits the company gave to top executives, possibly including the use of apartments, cars and school tuition. The charges would be the first criminal cases to arise from the two-year probe led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., a Democrat who leaves office at the end of the year.

Trump’s tax probe 

Over the two years, prosecutors have been scrutinizing Trump’s tax records, subpoenaing documents and interviewing witnesses, including Trump insiders and company executives. They even added a special prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, to aid in the expansive inquiry. But in recent months, the focus has narrowed to taxes on benefits. In particular, it came to centre on Weisselberg, a top company executive who has worked for Trump since 1973. 

Prosecutors have gathered evidence on Weisselberg with the cooperation of his former daughter-in-law, Jennifer Weisselberg. According to CNN, in the months since she began speaking to authorities, she has turned over boxes of financial records and has met with investigators multiple times. Documents from Jennifer Weisselberg's divorce from Allen Weisselberg's son Barry reportedly show thousands of dollars in payments for cars, rent, tuition, medical bills and more going from Allen Weisselberg to his son's family. 

Now, Weisselberg’s indictment would intensify the pressure for him to cooperate with prosecutors in their wide-ranging investigation of Trump, the company and its executives. Prosecutors even subpoenaed another longtime Trump finance executive, senior vice president and controller Jeffrey McConney, to testify in front of the grand jury in the spring. Prosecutors probing untaxed benefits to Trump executives have also been reportedly looking at Matthew Calamari, a former Trump bodyguard turned chief operating officer, and his son, the company’s corporate director of security. 

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