The former US President was not personally in the dock, but his company is found guilty on all 17 counts. The financial penalty is likely to be relatively harmless – in contrast to the business and political consequences.
Trump attorneys listen to the verdict being delivered in the Manhattan courtroom.
Ex-President Donald Trump is not resting. Two subsidiaries of his family business are in New York on Tuesday Trump Organization convicted of tax fraud and other financial crimes. In the run-up to the jury’s decision on the case, the prosecutors had spoken of a “culture of fraud and deception”.
In fact, the jury before the State Supreme Court in Manhattan the two divisions Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp. After more than a day of deliberations on all 17 counts, he was found guilty of years of systematically favoring and lavishly treating Trump Organization executives.
Chic apartments, expensive Mercedes – all over the tax
They received fancy apartments, leased Mercedes-Benz vehicles and their children even had their private school fees reimbursed – without having to pay any taxes. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, for example, was able to prove that bonus payments for vacations were disguised as consultant fees for 13 years.
It is the first time Trump firms have been convicted of criminal conduct, just after the former president announced that he would be running for a second term. The verdict is the first in a series of other lawsuits that include criminal investigations into handling classified documents, asset manipulation, hush money payments to a former porn star and, last but not least, the efforts of Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Everything under the ex-president’s nose
While prosecutors refrained from personally indicting the ex-president in this case, throughout the month-long trial he kept giving his name and telling the jury he personally paid for some of the perks and even approved a key aspect of the plan. They produced masses of incriminating evidence showing that his company’s lavish culture and pervasive illegality had been playing out right under his nose for years.
The material burden of the verdict will be relatively modest by Trump’s standards, with an estimated fine of probably only around $1.6 million, but the overall consequences for the Trump Organization can take on a completely different dimension, according to experts. Some anticipate that the company may struggle to do business in the future. It is about “intangible risks” because it could become difficult to conclude contracts with government agencies or to transact with banks. Of course, the legal defeat also threatens political damage, because the opponents in the potential election campaign in 2024 can exploit the available material for arguments.
Trump Organization branded as a criminal
Ultimately, the Trump Organization is the very company that is now being branded as a criminal, which had served as the basis for the former President to become known and famous, to get a starring role in “The Apprentice» and to finally start his political career, which he crowned with the presidency.
Prosecutors had largely based the case on investigations into longtime Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg. The man had already pleaded guilty in August to 15 charges including tax fraud, conspiracy and aggravated theft to reduce the potential sentence from 15 years to about five months. The Trump Organization, on the other hand, “considers it absurd that a company could be held responsible for the actions of an employee who only favored himself,” she said in a statement.