Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump, Allen Weisselberg, Donald Trump, Jr. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)
On the eve of former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg’s perjury sentencing hearing, the New York Attorney General’s Office sent a letter to Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial judge urging him to direct a court-appointed monitor to investigate whether “Defendants and their counsel facilitated that perjury by withholding of incriminating documents.”
The day before Weisselberg was sentenced Wednesday to five months in jail for perjuring himself in testimony at Trump’s civil fraud trial, AG Letitia James’ (D) office called on New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron to empower court-appointed monitor Barbara Jones to investigate “the potential failure to properly produce documents in a legal proceeding relevant to the valuation of Mr. Trump’s triplex.”
Prosecutors in Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s (D) office have detailed that Weisselberg, during a deposition, falsely denied that he was “present” on Sept. 21, 2015 when Trump “stated to a Forbes reporter that the size of his triplex was 33,000 square feet,” overestimating the square footage of the Trump Tower Triplex by a factor of three — a central part of the civil fraud case that ended with a massive judgment against the former president, his eldest sons, and the family business.
Weisselberg was also asked if he “advised any financial institutions” that a 2015 statement of financial condition contained the triplex calculation “error.”
“Well, we didn’t find out about the error until the Forbes article came out,” he answered.
Prosecutors said that wasn’t true either and that Weisselberg has since admitted as much.
“Whereas, in truth and in fact, as the defendant knew, that testimony was false, and the truth was that the defendant was informed that the triplex was 10,996 square feet—not 30,000 square feet—prior to the publication of the May 2017 Forbes article and before the finalization on March 10, 2017 of the 2016 SOFC, which valued the triplex based on the misstatement of 30,000 square feet,” prosecutors said.
James’ office is focused instead on Weisselberg’s perjury in October 2023, at his former boss’s civil fraud trial.
“Among the evidence cited as proof that Mr. Weisselberg lied when he testified at trial, the Criminal Court Complaint identifies an August 18, 2016, email between Mr. Weisselberg and a Trump Organization employee with the Trump Tower Declaration confirming the size of the triplex apartment,” James’ office said in an April 4 letter, notifying Engoron that the email in question was conspicuously absent from discovery in the civil fraud case.
“OAG has undertaken review of the files produced by Defendants in the investigation and this action and has not been able to identify the referenced communications,” the letter said.
Along with the civil fraud judgment, Engoron decided that Barbara Jones, a retired judge, would continue on in her role as court-appointed monitor of Trump business activities for at least three years.
The Empire State’s attorney general is now asking Engoron to give Jones another assignment, arguing in a footnote that “Defendants and their counsel are completely incapable of independently disclosing any impropriety and outside certification is the only means to get to the truth.”
“Mr. Weisselberg has admitted that he perjured himself during discovery and the trial in this action. The Court is well within its authority to determine if Defendants and their counsel facilitated that perjury by withholding of incriminating documents,” wrote Senior Enforcement Counsel Kevin Wallace of the Economic Justice Division. “The Monitor has already been tasked with assessing Defendants’ internal controls, compliance functions and record-keeping. The potential failure to properly produce documents in a legal proceeding relevant to the valuation of Mr. Trump’s triplex plainly falls within the ambit of her authority, and certainly within the power of this Court to safeguard the integrity of its own proceedings.”
Wallace dismissed the Trump team’s “myriad complaints” about modifying Jones’ duties now that the civil fraud trial has ended, telling Engoron he “has the authority to appoint a special referee to conduct the inquiry” — into “certain issues surrounding the recent perjury plea by defendant Allen Weisselberg.”
“We have already raised multiple times the prospect that Defendants have withheld relevant and responsive information from OAG,” the state reiterated Tuesday. “We therefore ask that the Monitor be tasked with reviewing the electronic files collected by Defendants, including those collected for production to DANY, to determine if the documents referenced in the Criminal Complaint were in the possession of the Trump Organization and if they were produced in either the underlying investigation or in the discovery in this action. And if they were not produced, the Monitor be authorized to determine why they were not produced. We would further ask that the Monitor be authorized to conduct this investigation and report back to the Court and OAG within two weeks.”
Notably, lawyers for Weisselberg and Trump both opposed the AG’s request on Monday.
While a Weisselberg attorney called the ask “extraordinary and wholly improper,” Trump’s lawyer said James seeks a “quasi-prosecutorial, retrospective investigative authority” that “far exceeds the limited prospective powers of the Monitor specified in the final judgment.”
“To be clear, counsel for Defendants have no ‘knowledge’ that Mr. Weisselberg made false statements during the trial; to the contrary, many believe that Mr. Weisselberg only made such admissions because he was being threatened with life in prison,” added Trump lawyer Clifford Robert. “Indeed, counsel for Defendants have no more ‘knowledge’ that Mr. Weisselberg made these purportedly false statements than the Court or any other person who read of his highly publicized guilty plea.”
Robert said Engoron should reject the AG’s gambit “in its entirety.”
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