Tag: trump organization
Ivanka Trump Tried To Dodge Her Court-Appointed Financial Monitor

Ivanka Trump Tried To Dodge Her Court-Appointed Financial Monitor

Ivanka Trump, daughter and ex-aide of former President Trump, tried and failed to keep her finances — and hers only — away from the prying eyes of a court-appointed financial monitor tasked with scrutinizing the Trump Organization’s transactions and those of entities connected to it, The Daily Beast reported Monday, citing anonymous sources.

According to the Beast, Ivanka Trump’s attorneys sent private letters to Justice Arthur Engoron, the New York state judge who ordered the financial supervision in the state’s ongoing lawsuit against the Trump company, asking to be exempt from the monitor’s scrutiny, a step her brothers, Don. Jr. and Eric, didn’t take.

Engoron summarily ignored Ivanka’s private plea and — in a bold ruling on Thursday — said the Trump Organization had just two weeks to provide "a full and accurate description of the corporate structure” to the monitor, retired judge Barbara Jones, giving her a window into the company’s “financial disclosures to any persons or entities."

The Trump family must also provide the judge a 30-day advance notice before moving any assets, Engoron ruled, citing the audacious founding of a Trump Organization II in Delaware, “the shell company capital of the country,” according to the Beast.

New York Attorney General Letitia James requested a monitor to supervise the Trump family company’s finances until her civil suit against the organization — the culmination of her three-year-long investigation into its business practices — goes to trial.

In her over 200-page-long filing, James’ office alleged widespread fraud by Trump, his company, and the offspring he made its executives — participants in an over ten-year-long effort to bloat the former president’s finances to get favorable loan agreements.

Seeking $250 million in penalties from the Trump Organization, in a motion filed last month, James asked for the company to be barred from offloading its assets ashore and conducting any kind of “significant fraudulent and illegal business,” ensuring that “funds are available to satisfy any disgorgement award.”

Ivanka Trump — who has sought to distance herself from her father’s political operations, most recently his announcement of a 2024 presidential bid— is a defendant in James’ suit even though her name hasn’t come up in recent court hearings, the Beast noted.

“I love my father very much. This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family,” Ivanka told Fox News, excusing her absence from her father’s announcement. “I do not plan to be involved in politics.”

In the Trump family’s attempt to stave off Engoron’s ruling via appeal filing, Ivanka’s lawyers made a personal argument to get her off the hook, saying that she had not been involved with the company for over five years.

“Ms. Trump submits this separate affirmation to set forth with specificity the reasons why the trial court erred in including Ms. Trump in the Order in her individual capacity… there was no legal or factual basis to issue the Order against Ms. Trump,” her lawyers argued.

“Ms. Trump has had no involvement for more than five years… Ms. Trump has had no role as an officer, director, or employee of the Trump Organization or any of its affiliates since at least January 2017… NY AG never intended to impose an injunction against Ms. Trump,” the attorneys added.

In her tenure as a White House adviser, Ivanka Trump raised myriad ethics red flags, and as a Trump Organization executive before that, she was — as described by James in a court filing for Ivanka’s refusal to testify in January — a "key player in many of the [Trump company’s] transactions."

Weisselberg Will Testify Against Trump Companies in Reported Plea Deal

Weisselberg Will Testify Against Trump Companies in Reported Plea Deal

Allen Weisselberg, the ex-Trump Organization CFO who has worked for the former president’s family since 1970, is expected to plead guilty to 15 felonies and “criminally implicate” the real estate empire.

“The Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer will admit to conspiring with the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corporation in a 15-year tax fraud scheme while head of the company’s finances at a Manhattan Supreme Court hearing on Thursday,” the Daily News reports. “Allen Weisselberg is expected to criminally implicate Trump’s family real estate business when he pleads guilty to criminal tax fraud charges, a source familiar with the matter told The News on Wednesday.”


Weisselberg is also expected to agree to testify against the Trump companies, and agree to a five-month sentence at Rikers Island, the horrific New York City jail that is slated to be shut down by 2026.

Rolling Stone adds that Weiselberg “will say in Manhattan court Thursday that he conspired with several of the ex-president’s companies when he pleads guilty to state tax crimes.”

The New York Times calls the impending plea deal “a serious blow to the company that could imperil its chances in an upcoming trial.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Judge Rejects Motion To Dismiss Charges Against Weisselberg

Judge Rejects Motion To Dismiss Charges Against Weisselberg

Attorneys for the Trump Organization have unsuccessfully tried to get the financial case against long-time chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg thrown out, but so far, they haven’t had any luck. And on Friday morning, August 12, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan rejected their motion to dismiss the charges.

In 2021, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office charged Weisselberg with multiple crimes, including conspiracy, grand larceny, criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records. Former President Donald Trump, however, has not been charged with anything in connection with the Manhattan DA’s criminal investigation, which is separate from a civil financial investigation of the Trump Organization being conducted by the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James.

With Merchan having rejected Trump Organization attorneys’ motion to dismiss the charges against Weisselberg, jury selection in his trial is scheduled to being on Monday, October 24.


Law & Crime reporter Adam Klasfeld, in an article published on August 12 following Merchan’s decision, explains, “Prosecutors accuse Weisselberg of a 15-year scheme to defraud federal, New York State, and New York City tax authorities of $1.76 million in ‘off-the-books’ compensation. These included $359,058 in tuition expenses for multiple family members, $196,245 for leases on his Mercedes Benz automobiles, $29,400 in unreported cash, and an unspecified amount in ad hoc personal expenses, according to his indictment.”

Merchan, Klasfeld reports, said he will issue a written explanation for his August 12 ruling.

More than one year and a half after leaving office, Donald Trump continues to be a subject in a variety of investigations — from James to Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg to Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to the January 6 select committee. Merchan’s ruling comes only four days after the FBI executed a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in South Florida, where, according to the Washington Post, agents were searching for official White House documents.

Under the Presidential Records Act of 1978 — which was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter and went into effect after President Ronald Reagan’s January 1981 inauguration — official White House and presidential records are considered government property when a former president leaves office and must be handed over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Trump, of course, is allowed to store as many private documents as he wants at Mar-a-Lago, but the FBI was searching for the possible presence of White House documents that never should have left Washington, D.C. in January 2021, the month of President Joe Biden’s inauguration. And on Thursday, August 11, the Post reported that according to its sources, the documents the FBI was searching for at Mar-a-Lago included “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons.”

Merchan’s ruling also comes the same week in which Trump opted to invoke the 5th Amendment for a deposition in James’ civil probe of the Trump Organization’s finances.

Trump, however, hasn’t been charged with anything in connection with any of these investigations — some of which are criminal, some of which are civil. And of course, the January 6 select committee, started by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2021, doesn’t have the power to bring about any charges; it is comprised of politicians, not law enforcement agents — although it can certainly share evidence it gathers with the DOJ and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and “fixer,” has alleged that the Trump Organization cooked the books when he was working for the ex-president. The next hearing in the Manhattan DA’s Office’s case against Weisselberg is set for September 12.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump Cancels Paid Rally To Testify In New York Fraud Case

Trump Cancels Paid Rally To Testify In New York Fraud Case

Former President Donald Trump has canceled an appearance at a paid rally on Friday in Greensboro, North Carolina, to testify under oath on the same day -- alongside his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and son, Donald Trump Jr. -- in the New York attorney general Letitia James’s probe into his finances, according to the Raleigh News and Observer.

The 45th president and a host of prominent conservatives were set to attend the rally, which was organized by the American Freedom Tour, a platform that organizes rally-like events across the United States, according to its website, to celebrate “faith… and God-given American freedoms.”

The American Freedom Tour quietly removed all mention of the mid-July event from its website and cited “unforeseen circumstances” when questioned by news outlets that noticed the mysterious cancellation.

Tickets sold for $9 to $3,955, depending on access to Trump, and the event’s organizers said that it had been postponed and that ticket holders could use their tickets at any other of their tours in the country.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, Fox News pundit and fiancee of Trump Jr., Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, Pinal County sheriff Mark Lamb, and far-right political commentator and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza were among a host of Republican personalities that also canceled their appearances at the rally.

The mass cancellation coincided with reports that Trump and two of his children, Trump Jr. and Ivanka, will submit to July 15 depositions by James’s office, which is in the “final phase of her investigation into Mr. Trump and the business practices of his company, The Trump Organization,” the New York Timesreported.

Trump and his family had for months prior tried to avoid questioning, arguing through their attorneys that James’s investigation was politically motivated. However, a panel of four judges in the appellate division of the state’s trial court disagreed and compelled the former first family to submit to James’s office’s summons for an interview as part of its probe.

The next American Freedom Tour rally — which, according to its website, is scheduled for August in Milwaukee, Wisconsin — will feature the same characters who silently bailed out of Friday’s event. “Come see President Donald J Trump, Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump Jr, Dinesh D’Souza, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Judge Jeanine Pirro, Sheriff Mark Lamb and many, many more live and in person,” the website promised.

Making paid speeches to supporters is a money-making venture for the former President, and the American Freedom Tour — the brainchild of Chris Widener, a far-right motivational speaker with a trail of bankruptcy filings — has lined Trump’s pocket with substantial proceeds.

However, the ex-president’s earnings did nothing to prevent the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection from taking him to task in its Tuesday hearing. The committee attempted to tie Trump to the extremists who led the attack on the Capitol and accused the former president of witness tempering.

Trump has denied the allegations and derided the congressional panel as partisan and controlled by Democrats.