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Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of Donald Trump’s Trump Organization, is expected to plead guilty to perjury charges on Monday over the testimony he gave to investigators examining the real estate company’s finances.
Mr Weisselberg arrived at the office of Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg early on Monday morning and is expected to enter his plea later in the day, CNN reports.
The former executive has been engaged in plea talks with Manhattan prosecutors for several weeks but neither he nor his lawyer Seth Rosenberg have yet commented on Monday’s developments and the exact charges he will plead guilty to are not yet known.
The potential agreement with Mr Bragg’s office would reportedly require his admission that he lied during his testimony in that case and in his interviews with the office of New York attorney general Letitia James.
However, he is not expected to turn on Mr Trump or be called as a witness against him in the upcoming criminal case brought against him by Mr Bragg, which is scheduled to begin on Monday 25 March.
Mr Bragg indicted Mr Trump a year ago on 34 charges related to the falsification of business records to conceal “hush money” payments made on his behalf to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election in order to secure her silence about an extramarital affair they are alleged to have had a decade earlier.
Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty.
In another New York case related to the company, Judge Arthur Engoron last month ordered Mr Trump and his associates to pay more than $355m plus interest in financial penalties to the state of New York after they were found guilty of misrepresenting the value of company assets between 2011 and 2021 to secure favourable terms from city banks and insurers in a case brought by Ms James.
Mr Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and appealed against the verdict in the case, complaining without evidence that he is the victim of a conspiracy to prevent his return to the White House – even comparing his plight to that of the late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.
Mr Weisselberg’s latest plea deal, first reported last month by The New York Times, follows his 2022 conviction on 15 violations of New York tax law, after prosecutors accused him of participating in a years-long “systemic” fraud scheme.
That case involved a “sweeping and audacious illegal payment” arrangement in which Trump companies paid him generous benefits – including free rent, luxury car leases and private school tuition for his grandchildren – that were not reported for tax purposes.
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