A new court document shows that a key witness in Donald Trump’s fraud trial in New York may have struck a deal with the prosecutors to admit perjury. This could have a major impact on the outcome of the trial, which involves $370m of alleged fraud by Trump.
The judge of the trial, Arthur Engoron, emailed the lawyers of both sides on Monday, requesting more details about the possible perjury deal. The witness is Allen Weisselberg, a former executive of the Trump Organization, who is also facing a separate criminal case by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.
Bragg’s office is not part of the fraud trial, which the state attorney general’s office leads. However, the New York Times reported on 1 February that Bragg’s office was in talks with Weisselberg to offer him a deal.
According to the report, Weisselberg would agree to confess that he lied under oath during his testimony in the fraud trial in October. In return, he would not have to testify against Trump in the other case, which is set for March.
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The other case accuses Trump of falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to the former adult film star Stormy Daniels. The fraud trial accuses Trump of overstating the value of his assets on official financial statements. The fraud trial is a bench trial, which means there is no jury, and the judge is the only one who decides the verdict.
Judge questions Weisselberg’s credibility
Weisselberg is a crucial witness in both cases, as he was the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization and had a close knowledge of Trump’s finances for many years.
Weisselberg cut short his testimony in October, when Forbes published a story that exposed his lie on the stand. He had been mostly uncooperative in his testimony, claiming that he had no role in appraising Trump’s triplex apartment in Trump Tower. However, Trump’s financial statements claimed that the apartment was 30,000 sq ft, when it was actually around 11,000 sq ft.
Forbes revealed that it had records of Weisselberg trying to persuade the magazine that the triplex was 30,000 sq ft, when the magazine had proof that it was 11,000 sq ft. Weisselberg had worked with Forbes to calculate Trump’s net worth.
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Engoron wrote in his email that he wanted to know if Weisselberg “is admitting he lied under oath in my courtroom at this trial”.
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“Although the Times article focuses on the size of the Trump Tower Penthouse, his testimony on other topics could be called into question.”
Engoron said he might use the perjury confession to “invoke falsus in uno”, which means he would disregard Weisselberg’s entire testimony as unreliable. Engoron asked the lawyers from the attorney general’s office and from Trump’s team to tell him “anything you know about this that would not violate any of your professional ethics or obligations” and how they think Engoron should “address this matter, if at all, including the timing of the final decision”.
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He set a deadline of 7 February.
The judge had originally planned to deliver a verdict by 31 January, but the email suggests that there will be more delay before the final judgment is announced.
