Donald Trump’s family real estate business was convicted yesterday of 17 counts of financial crimes, including tax fraud, in a remarkable rebuke of the former president’s company and what prosecutors described as its “culture of fraud and deception.”
The conviction, which came after more than a day of jury deliberations in the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, resulted from a long-running scheme in which the Trump Organization doled out off-the-books luxury perks, such as fancy apartments and luxury cars, to some executives. Though the maximum penalty the company faces is $1.62 million — hardly a financial death knell — it is a highly public reckoning for the Trump Organization.
While prosecutors stopped short of indicting the former president, they invoked his name throughout the monthlong trial, telling jurors that he had personally paid for some of the perks and had even approved a crucial aspect of the scheme.
The company’s conviction — coupled with the prosecution’s claim that Trump was “explicitly sanctioning tax fraud” — could reverberate through the 2024 presidential race and might lay the groundwork for a wider criminal investigation into Trump’s business practices.
0 Comments