Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg released from jail
Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg has once again been released from jail, according to New York City corrections records.
Weisselberg was sentenced April 10 to five months in New York City's Rikers Island jail complex, in line with a plea agreement reached with prosecutors over perjury he committed in a 2023 civil fraud case. He was released Friday, after 100 days, due to good behavior. It was his second 100-day stint in jail in just over a year.
Weisselberg pleaded guilty to two felony counts of perjury, admitting he gave false testimony regarding the size of former President Donald Trump's triplex apartment in New York during a July deposition. Prosecutors originally charged Weisselberg with three more counts of perjury, but Weisselberg's plea agreement allowed him to avoid pleading guilty to those charges.
One of those initial counts was related to false sworn testimony on May 12, 2023 in a discovery deposition. The other two counts stemmed from Weisselberg's Oct. 10, 2023, testimony in his civil fraud trial, in which he, Trump and other company executives were found liable for fraud.
The trial revolved around allegations by New York State Attorney General Letitia James that Trump, two of his sons, Weisselberg and others falsely inflated valuations of Trump Organization properties. A judge ordered the former president to pay more than $450 million, including interest, an amount attributed to "ill-gotten gains" from the scheme.
Weisselberg was found liable for fraud and ordered to pay $1 million plus interest. During the fraud trial, he acknowledged receiving $2 million in severance after leaving the Trump Organization.
Weisselberg committed perjury soon after he was released from jail following a previous guilty plea in a separate 2022 criminal tax fraud case against the company. A jury in that case found two subsidiaries of the Trump Organization guilty of 17 felony counts.
The Trump Organization entities were fined $1.6 million in the 2022 case. Trump was not personally charged in that case and denied any knowledge of fraud.
Weisselberg was released from that first five-month jail sentence after 100 days, also for good behavior, on April 19, 2023. He committed perjury during a deposition 32 days later, on May 21, 2023, according to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg..
He admitted to committing perjury again 55 days after that, during the July 17 deposition in the civil fraud case. And again 87 days later, on Oct. 12, while testifying during the trial.
Weisselberg's recent sentence saw him incarcerated while Trump himself stood trial as the first former president ever charged with crimes. At one point, the judge in that case asked prosecutors for Bragg and lawyers for Trump why Weisselberg wasn't called to the stand, having been identified as a potential witness to a falsification of business records scheme that Trump was convicted of in May.
Both prosecutors and Trump's attorneys demurred, indicating that neither wanted to call the twice-jailed perjurer as a witness for their side.
