I’m reading the text of the indictment, and this scheme was blatant and brazen…. but it was also petty and paltry. It would probably still be going on, except for the inconvenience of the Former Guy getting elected as president….. and most, if not all of the larceny and tax fraud ended in 2017 — gee, I wonder why?
It occurred to me, as my headline brings up, that it’s pretty hard to believe Alan Weisselberg just cooked up this scheme to ‘enrich’ himself. If he did, he was pretty stupid about it. Here’s one amazing detail from the indictment itself:
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that ol’ Alan got $500,000 in salary, and an additional $100,000 in ‘off the books’ benefits, like rent, car lease payments, school tuition, etc. in a given year. According to the indictment, the Trump Organization kept a SPREADSHEET that totaled up those off the books payments, and then DEDUCTED that amount from Alan’s paycheck. Now think about that for a moment…… if you were stealing from your company as well as defrauding the IRS, would you dock your pay by the amount of your theft? And keep a spreadsheet with the details? And get other people working for you to do the dirty work of keeping track of your theft? And get your boss (Orange Julius) to sign some of the checks?
Nahhhhh, no way — you can’t convince me that they didn’t use this same scheme for Junior, Ewic, Ivankaaaaah…. probably put Tiffany through college the same way.
It’s also impossible to conceive that Orange Julius didn’t know about this scheme, approve of it, participate in it, and benefit from it as well. I suspect we’ll be hearing more about this in the near future.
This was just the opening salvo — Weisselberg gets to feel the handcuffs, do the perp walk into the courtroom (a bit over the top, if you ask me — he’s 74 and not in good shape, he needs handcuffs for what purpose?), and stare a couple years in the slammer in the face (maybe he’ll call Cosby for advice). I suspect they don’t really NEED him or his testimony, but it would be helpful, so why not fire this barrel first?
This is the gift that will just keep on giving. Keep the popcorn coming.
Cheers.