Legal AF by MeidasTouch - BREAKING: Former Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg SENTENCED to JAIL

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

Legal AF cohost Karen Friedman Agnifilo fresh from the courthouse today where she watched the sentencing of Trump CFO Alan Weissleberg to 5 months in jail. Joined by LegalAF cohost Michael Popok, Karen provides her analysis of what happened and why. Shop LegalAF at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 American Psyop: https://pod.link/1652143101 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Michael Popak, along with my colleague Karen Friedman-Eknifalo-Legalet-F reporting on breaking news concerning the sentencing hearing of Alan Weiselberg, former CFO long time of the Trump Organization, who cooperated, willingly or not, with the prosecutors in the Trump Organization, Trump Organization criminal trial, resulting in 17 felony convictions for tax evasion and other fraud. Now it's time for him to pay the piper, the deal that was struck by the Manhattan DA's office and Weiselberg was that if he was a good witness, a good boy,

he would, they would recommend a sentence of five months in Reikers Island, which is a terrible place to spend five months, but five months in jail in return for his testimony. Now, he's not out of the woods yet. They still could go after Alan Weiselberg for other issues, other fraud, but for right now, today was sentencing day, and our current Friedman Agnifalo, a former prosecutor, is not only reporting about it, she was in the courtroom live watching what happened.

Karen, tell us about it. We're eating popcorn. It was really interesting. It was a packed courtroom judge. Juan Mershon was presiding over the sentencing. He was the judge at the trial. And it was an agreed upon sentence, as you say, which is normally sort of the judge.

We recommended a certain amount. This is an agreed upon sentencing. And the defendant shows up to court, and he just gets sentenced. So it's usually not with any interesting or new information at these agreed upon sentencing when he starts to show when the defendant shows up to be sentenced. But I have to say I found a few things very, very interesting

about what I saw today in court. Tell us about that through a prosecutor's eye. Yeah. So the way it went down was, as you put it, the Alan Weiselberg plead guilty to 15 felonies, and he, which is all the charges that were against him, that he was charged with, he plead guilty to all of them, and he needed to testify truthfully

about the underlying facts in order to receive the promise sentence. Now, a small little point was he was under a plea agreement, which is very different than a cooperation agreement. A cooperation agreement is when the prosecution enters into an agreement with somebody that they are going to cooperate and they are going to give information or testify or whatever. This was not that. This was a plea agreement, which is very, very different. A plea agreement means he's just wanted to plead guilty. And he wanted to know what is the prosecution going to recommend and what is the judge going to give if he were to plead guilty. And so the plea agreement in this particular case was he, he ate the whole indictment as they say, you know,

he pled to the whole indictment every single charge, and he had a very detailed allocation where he discussed the facts of the case. And here, the agreement was that he had to testify truthfully about in detail, about the facts of the case. And if so, he would receive this sentence that you talked about. Now, a small little point is the prosecution actually recommended six months at Rikers and with a probation following that of five years, but they made a pitch

to the judge. You know, Look, he's 75 years old. He was a public school teacher. He was a vet, a veteran, and- You went to pitch care and the prosecutors? The defense. No, the defense attorney. The prosecutor said, we'll recommend six months. And the defense attorney, and this was before

when he pled guilty, and this came up a trial. So when he pled guilty back in August, I think it was August 18th of 2022 before he testified, he made a pitch to the court. Look, I know the prosecution's recommending six months with a probation at the back end, but can you please do better? My client's 75 years old, he's not in great health.

He was a public servant, a school teacher, he was a veteran, and serving six months as a 25 year old is very different than serving six months as a 75 year old at the notoriously violent and dangerous Rikers Island, right? So the judge heard that and the judge said, okay, you know what, I'll give you five months. And just so everybody knows,

the way it works in New York is a defendant will serve two thirds of whatever it is that you get. So he's gonna serve about a hundred days, a little over, you know, somewhere between three and four months of those five months. So, you know, any amount of time he could get off is good for him.

And just before you go on Karen, just so our people understand, they may have seen movie depictions of Rikers Island, but Rikers Island is not club fed. Rikers Island is like, if people have seen the movie Attica, there is a riot in the Attica prison. Rikers Island, as you said, is a dangerous jungle that's not right unless you're convicted criminal for anybody to be hanging out in for a hundred days. That'll be like dog years.

That'll be that hundred days would be like a thousand days in a cushy, posh, you know, federal sentence, a federal jail. This is a state jail that actually, like Guantanamo, they've been talking about shutting it down because it's so terrible for years, but go on. Yeah, no, Rikers Island's under a consent decree, a federal consent decree because it's so, anyone who wants to know how bad Rikers Island is, just Google and every mayor has said,

it needs to be closed down, there are plans to close it down and the sole stated reason is because it's so broken and terrible. It's a terrible place. State prison would have been much better. So he, so he, so that's what he was supposed to do, right? So he goes to court today and the prosecution stood up and, you know, they said, who for the prosecutor? Who was the prosecutor? It was Susan Hofinger, who's the chief

of the investigation division. She's a longtime criminal defense attorney. I don't think she'd ever been a prosecutor actually. And I've known her for years and years as a defense attorney, but Alvin Bragg brought her over to work in the office and lead the division. And she's excellent. She did a great job.

And she was one of the co-counsel along with Josh Steinglass, who's really a serious trial attorney who worked on this case. And so she did the sentencing and you know she said that you know she said a couple of things that I found interesting. So first of all as the what what he had to do was first of all he allocated to the facts so that means he talked about them in detail. He waived his right to appeal so he's's not going to appeal any of this case. And if he does, he was waived any appellate issues that occurred.

And that he had to pay back all his back taxes and penalties to the New York State and New York City tax authorities. So he's still facing federal tax evasion potential charges, by the way. And he did not waive, he waived evasion potential charges, by the way. And he did not waive, he waived his Fifth Amendment privilege, I should say. So he testified under oath at trial and spoke about all the crimes he committed, and he could still be prosecuted federally for federal tax evasion. And he testified at trial to the underlying facts of the case. I'm just looking at my notes. And he testified for about three days.

And the people said, the prosecution said they believe he testified truthfully about the facts and admitted to all the crimes that he, along with others, significantly it was Matthew Kalamari, and I forgot the other guy's name, who he also implicated, and that the scheme occurred from 2005 to about 2018. He also tested. Let me ask you a question about, I want to stay on today's allocation and sentencing. Did Weiselberg actually stand up and read aloud the facts or did what happened how does that work so in that was an august in august 18th when he will play guilty

you he did have to stand and read the facts allowed and talk about the facts and so that was his plea allocation at sentencing it's very pro forma in In fact, the only thing Alan Weissselberg said when he had an opportunity to speak, he basically just said, my lawyer, I'll tell you what his lawyer said in a minute, but what he said was the words that my lawyer said, I agree with, but it's been really difficult. That's all he said. Let me let's get inside the courtroom with you. Did you see Weiselberg, right?

Yeah. What do you look like? How do you look today? So it was very interesting that you asked that question because the first thing that the defense attorney said was, I'm really sorry that my client is dressed this way. Normally, he would wear a suit to court, right? But my client expects to be remanded and to be set to Rikers Island today. So he was, he looked like he was wearing combat fatigues, actually. He looked like he was like dressed and ready to go, you know, into this tough place. Obviously, obviously, been coached by a consultant about how to survive jail. They have those kind of consultants. Did you, could you tell from the audience who was there for him, family,

Trump organization members, like who was there for him? I honestly didn't see anyone that I recognized, so I have no idea. There was a lot of press, and there were lots of people in the courtroom. It was packed. There was a bank of cameras on the outside. There were a lot of people there, but I'm not sure who it was. And so just going back to what the prosecution said during the sentence, because the way it works is the judge comes in and says,

Mr. Alan Weiselberg, you're here to be sentenced. During the sentencing, the prosecutor has an opportunity to speak, the defense attorney has an opportunity to speak and you'll have an opportunity to speak, that ifence attorney has an opportunity to speak, and you'll have an opportunity to speak, and then I'm going to sentence you. And as I said, in these types of sentencing where it's agreed upon, there aren't usually a lot of speeches.

In fact, the prosecution can sometimes say what we use to say all the time is judge people rely on the promise sentence. That's it. That's all we would say. But in a case like this, because it's so significant, the prosecution felt they had to say a lot more. So the other thing they said they made sure to say

was Mr. Weiselberg testified that he was a high managerial agent, which is an element of the crime. They also said that he provided benefits. And they spelled out what those benefits were, to the Trump organization, not just to himself. And the benefits, in particular, that the prosecution said they relied upon was, for example, the Trump organization avoided having to pay Medicare taxes of a higher amount due to these

bonuses, if you will, or these perks that were given to him like a free apartment, a free car, private school tuition. You know, since that was all given as perks, they didn't have to pay Medicare taxes on that. The other thing that I thought was really interesting is they talked about, you know, they avoided giving what they called grossed up raises. And what that, I'd never heard that term before, but grossed up raises are the way it was explained was let's say they wanted to give him a raise of 200,000 in his pocket.

Since he would be in a 50% tax bracket, they would have to give him 400,000 in his pocket. Since he would be in a 50% tax bracket, they would have to give him 400,000, 400,000 for him to get 200,000. We did grow stuff a lot in Wall Street. When I worked in Wall Street, grow stuff in executive compensation is common so that they net what they want, but the company pays the tax.

Exactly. And so that's, that is a huge benefit to the Trump organization because they don't have to give, they're not out of pocket anything, right? And on top of that, they didn't have to pay things like payroll taxes, et cetera. They also said that it was interesting that in 2019 and 2020, after the Trump organization, quote unquote, cleaned up these practices

when Trump was president, that for the first time ever, Alan Weiselberg went to Eric Trump and said, give me a raise. He never asked for a raise before because he didn't need one because he was getting all these perks. So he went to Eric Trump, asked for a raise, and Eric gave him a $200,000 raise.

So again, that sort of consciousness of guilt, right? That they suddenly do something differently. 1,000%. So I mean, I don't want to cut you off, and let's get what happened. What did the judge do today? So the defense attorney said, so the court, so the prosecution said,

therefore, although we recommended a six month split with probation, we recognize that the judge said it would be five months. The defense attorney says gets up and says, you know, the thing about the clothes and sorry he's dressed this way. And he specifically said to the court, please judge, you know, Mr. Weiselberg tried really hard to cooperate. He met with the prosecution at least for three full days, even though he wasn't required to. He was only required to testify. He authorized me as the defense attorney to

answer any questions the prosecution had about any documents. So please judge, please judge, please judge, give him house arrest, give him anything because he's 75 years old. He has never been arrested before. He was in the military. He's accepted responsibility. He's not a danger to the community. So he said, please, please, please, please, and you know, we really want, you know, he's got these, he talked a lot about his grandkids, you know, that his grandkids have been suffering by watching him on TV and you know, all that kind of stuff. So, so the defense attorney just said basically a judge, please, we know you went from six months to five months,

please go lower. Any day less at Rikers Island, he can benefit from. So the court, the judge said, the judge signaled that he wasn't going to say this at sentencing, but said, since Mr. Futterfoss, the defense attorney, since you asked me to go lower, and since you're saying all these things about your client, I feel that I need to address to you

what I think about your client and why I'm not going to go lower than five months. He said, if I were to test if I were to sentence him today, now having sat through the trial and seen the facts of this case, I would sentence him to more. He deserves more than the five months. And he said, I presided over this trial, I saw the evidence and had I known what I now know, I would have imposed a much greater sentence.

He said the only reason I gave him a benefit at all was because he was a veteran and a public school teacher. But having now sat through this trial, I'll tell you the one fact that I thought was really significant. He said that you put your wife on payroll for $6,000 a month that was purely driven by greed so that she could contribute to social security and one day receive a benefit of social security that she would never be entitled to

and that there are millions of Americans who are sitting here worried about whether one day they're going to be able to receive social security and you, with your fraud, against that is one of the reasons why the social security could potentially go bankrupt. And because of what I saw and because of what you did, you deserve a different sentence, but I'm going to give you what I promised I would give you, which I thought was really interesting. Well, let me ask you two follow up questions.

One, do you think it was a mistake on Futterfoss, the defense lawyers part, to try to reopen the door to invite the judge, and do you think the judge would have done it based on that statement if Futterfoss hadn't tried to drive down the sentence lower? I do not think the judge would have said that, but at the same time, because he made it a point to say, and this is a judge who doesn't grandstand.

He's a very circumspect judge's judge, you know. He doesn't, you know, there are some judges who love to give speeches and talk. This is not one of those judges. He kind of says the bare minimum of what needs to be said. He doesn't go out on a limb. He's one of those guys who kind of doesn't, you know, he doesn't always look you in the eye when he talks.

He kind of looks down. He's an understated judge. He's an excellent judge. He's a little understated. And so for him, and he specifically said, the only reason I'm talking about this is because you asked me to go lower. Otherwise, he would have given him the promise sentence.

Did he make a mistake? Maybe in the court of public opinion, Futter Foss made a mistake, because now that's what everyone's gonna talk about, I think that's what everyone's gonna talk about, is that the judge said you deserve more, but I'm not sure he made an, there was no mistake in the sense that he didn't get

anything less, and if he had a 1% chance to get him less, I think he kind of have to. You know, plus look, I'm sure Weiselberg said to him, please ask for something lower. Sure. And so he probably had to do that. So, you know, I thought all of that was really, you know, was really interesting. Go ahead, sorry. Yeah, no.

And as we wrap up here, anything else that you picked up from Gleene from being a sponge in the actual courtroom, where are the sentencing today of Alan Weiselberg to replace final words? A couple of things. Number one on Friday is the sentencing of the Trump organization, or I should say, of the Trump payroll and Trump co. Trump, Trump, Trump ink. Yeah, Trump, Trump ink and Trump payroll is on Friday. That's going to be one to watch to see very, very interesting.

And, you know, what they are facing, what the Trump org is facing is, and I think what the, what I suspect the prosecution will be asking for is the maximum fines, which will total $1.6 million. You know, the Trump corporation was convicted of nine felies, and payroll was convicted of eight felonies. I think they're going to be asking for $810,000 to the Trump Corporation on the various charges because in the tax counts, there's a particular section, 1800 of the New York tax law that allows you to either double the unpaid taxes or get 250,000. And I think they're going to ask for the 250,000 on each of the counts if I were them.

That's what I would do. And I think they're going to ask for the Trump payroll, you know, corp to pay $800,000, you know, which I think is what the max they're allowed to ask for. And I think one of the things they're going to talk about at the sentencing will be that this has been going on since, you know, what came out at trial, although it was charged from back in 2005 for 13 years. They're going to, it's going to, this dated back into the 80s, so the 1980s.

So I think, you know, it'll be sort of interesting. The one thing to also look for is, will they ask for a conditional discharge on the Trump organization, you know, and a condition being, for example, that they can't do business in New York or some other thing, you know, that would really irritate know that would really irritate Which would really irritate Donald Trump I think if there's any kind of condition and opposed imposed on them other than just a fire

Karen Friedman, Ectifalo in the courtroom today for the Alan Weiselberg sentencing picking up all sorts of intel in real time And we're reporting Alan Weisberg, sentenced to the full amount of five months and change, five months in Ryder, Ryder, Zealand. He'll do 100 days. He'll do 100 days and we will report again with the breaking news concerning the Trump Organization sentencing this coming Friday, Michael Popak-Legal AF, joined by my co-anchor Karen Friedman, Agniphala. At Midas Touch, we are unapologetically pro-democracy,

and we demand justice and accountability. That's why we're spreading our message to convict 45. That's right, gear up right now with your convict 45 tees and pins at store. MidasTouch.com. That's store. MidasTouch.com. dot minus touch dot com. That's store dot minus touch dot com. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪