(NEW YORK) — Allen Weisselberg, the ex-chief financial officer of former President Donald Trump’s family real estate company, will plead guilty Monday to perjury charges that resulted from his testimony during Trump’s civil fraud trial, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The terms of the plea remain sealed until Weisselberg appears in court Monday.
This will be Weisselberg’s second criminal conviction after he pleaded guilty in 2022 to evading taxes on nearly $2 million in off-the-books compensation from the Trump Organization, including an apartment, a luxury car and his grandchildren’s school tuition.
As ABC News reported last month, Weisselberg, 75, had been in plea talks with the Manhattan district attorney’s office to resolve charges that he lied on the witness stand when he testified in October at the civil trial in which he was also held liable for fraud.
During his testimony, Weisselberg struggled to explain why Trump’s Fifth Avenue Manhattan triplex, which is less than 11,000 square feet, was listed on Trump’s statements of financial condition as 30,000 square feet.
“It was almost de minimis relative to his net worth, so I didn’t really focus on it,” Weisselberg said during the trial. “I never even thought about the apartment.”
But Forbes magazine published an article following Weisselberg’s appearance that accused him of lying under oath and suggested Weisselberg did think about the apartment because he played a key role in trying to convince the magazine the apartment was as big a Trump’s financial statements represented.
At the trial, a lawyer with the New York attorney general’s office, Louis Solomon, confronted Weisselberg with emails from a Forbes reporter seeking clarity about the apartment’s size and a letter signed by Weisselberg certifying the excessive square footage to the Trump Organization’s accountant, Mazars USA.
“Forbes was right, the triplex was actually only 10,996 right?” Solomon asked.
“Right,” Weisselberg finally conceded.
Weisselberg is not expected to be called as a witness in the criminal trial that starts later this month accusing Trump of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied all wrongdoing.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office has said in court filings Weisselberg that advised then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen how to pay off Daniels, and later arranged for Cohen to be paid back in monthly installments.
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