​Don Jr. And Eric Head To Fox Instead Of Listening To Lawyers, Shutting The F*ck Up

Yes, yes, very sound legal strategy.

The Trump Organization and its CFO Allen Weisselberg got indicted yesterday, and look out, world, because the Trump boys are PISSED!

Now in the normal course of human events, principals in a company that is under indictment take their lawyers' advice and shut the fuck up. But you only have to look at their stupid faces to know that there's nothing normal about Deej and the Dipshit. So naturally they headed to Fox to barf out nonsense lies about the charges.

Don Jr says this indictment is "no different" than what Putin has done to Alexei Navalny. (Navalny, who Don Jr. re… https: //t.co/JCjBfZFDOG

— Jan Wolfe (@Jan Wolfe) 1625183562.0 

"Listen, Jesse, this is the political persecution of a political enemy," Don Jr. whined to Fox's Jesse Watters. "This is what Vladimir Putin does. Just ask Navatny."

Let's assume that Jr. means Alexei Navalny, because WORDS HARD. Navalny was poisoned, beaten, convicted of failing to report to his parole officer when he was in a medically induced coma, and sent to a penal colony where he's on a hunger strike to protest the denial of medical care. Which is exactly the same as Allen Weisselberg getting arrested for failing to pay taxes on a huge chunk of his salary and released on his own recognizance pending trial.

"After five years, three million documents, countless witnesses, and hours of grand jury testimony, outside forensic auditors, this is what they come up with?" complained Trump's eldest son, as if the charges against Weisselberg were an end in and of themselves, not just a mechanism to flip the accountant on his boss.

"They're gonna charge a guy who's 75 years old on crimes of avoiding paying taxes on a fringe benefit? Like, you know, people in corporate America get a corporate car. Like, Jesse, I'm sure you've paid taxes every time you've taken a car to or from work, right?" he sneered sarcastically, before veering off into an operatic recitative of whataboutism covering everything from the Lehman Brothers collapse to "tens of thousands of looters" during last summer's racial justice protests.

First of all, Weisselberg is 73. Second of all, a car service to ferry an executive to or from work is a benefit to the company . It is not taxable income, because it's not a benefit to the employee . That's not the same thing as his and hers leased Mercedes Benzes available for the exclusive use of Allen Weisselberg and his wife so they can run to CVS to pick up a prescription on Sunday afternoon. Those are taxable benefits which should have been declared, but were instead paid for using pretax dollars deducted from his top line salary before Uncle Sam got to take a cut.

And in case that math isn't totally clear, let's assume a 50 percent tax rate in Weisselberg's bracket. If it cost $16,000 annually to lease those two cars, Weisselberg would have had to earn $32,000 in pretax income to pay for it. Instead he called it a corporate expense and took the $16,000 off his $940,000 salary before it was even reported to the IRS. Neat trick, huh?

But Deej wasn't through lying his ass off. Let's turn to Mediaite , who transcribed this portion of the interview for our head-sploding pleasure.

They're saying $1.7 million over 15 years. But it's not $1.7 million. That's income. The taxable portion of that to New York state is eight percent. That's $136,000 over 16 years. That's ten grand a year. Half of that – because my father is a good guy – he paid for this guy's grandchildren's education. Our tax experts say that's not even taxable.

GODDAMMIT.

Okay, let's check out the indictment.

During the period of the scheme, Weisselberg thereby evaded approximately $556,385 in federal taxes, approximately $106,568 in state taxes, and approximately $238,159 in New York City taxes, and he falsely claimed and received approximately $94,902 in federal tax refunds and approximately $38,222 in state tax refunds, to which he was not entitled.

Referring to the tuition payments for Weisselberg's grandchildren "because my father is a good guy" is bloody rich, particularly when he's pretending the scheme netted the CFO just $8,500 annually. The tuition payments alone were as high as $100,000 per year. And perhaps there is some universe where this would not be considered taxable compensation under the med-ed exclusion , but this ain't it! This wasn't a gift from Trump at all. It was subtracted from Weisselberg's $940,000 annual compensation, allowing him to pay his grandchildren's tuition with $100,000 in pre-tax money, rather than earning $200,000 and handing half of it to Uncle Sam before he paid the school.

And of course Eric was out there being Eric. 

Clearly no one at Trump Org has told the nepotism hires that commenting on the criminal matter is unwise. Run your… https: //t.co/xJUpl6PrFr

— Bradley P. Moss (@Bradley P. Moss) 1625194221.0 

"These are employment perks," Eric Trump huffed to Fox's Raymond Arroyo.

"I guarantee you there's people on this network that have corporate vehicles," he insisted, never bothering to wonder if those people had the good sense to declare the benefit and pay taxes on it. Then he, too, launched into an indignant soliloquy on the 2006 real estate crisis, which he conveniently referred to as a "financial crisis." Because certainly no one in his industry had anything to do with that unpleasantness, right?

"They didn't go after a single person on Wall Street, despite the fact that these people were literally, they took down the US economy," he howled. "But they'll go after someone for fringe employment benefits? Is that really what the DA is focused on as little girls are getting shot in the middle of Times Square?"

As if those things are remotely related to each other.

But then Eric ran out of space on his hand for his notes, ALLEGEDLY. So he never got to the part about Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. being "No different than Putin, no different than the mullahs."

Luckily, Deej got it in earlier onPissplayWatters World. Keep practicing, Eric, you'll get there!

[ Mediaite ]

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