Trump Organization Guilty On All Counts As Trump Continues Having Week He Deserves

Thoughts and prayers!

We speak on a semi-regular basis about our deep desire for Donald Trump to never again in his life experience a moment of peace, to never have a good day, to be daily repaid with the misery he has inflicted on the world. Yesterday qualified!

Obviously, Donald Trump's loser candidate Herschel Walker lost the runoff for the Georgia Senate seat, because apparently it doesn't matter whether or not Trump goes out and campaigns for somebody. All that matters is whether he's touched them with his poisonous endorsement.

But before that happened last night, the verdict came back on the criminal trial against two arms of the Trump Organization in New York, and the short version is that 17 charges entered that courtroom, on tax fraud and a host of other things, and 17 charges came back GUILTY.

As it was a criminal trial against a company, Trump isn't going to prison, but that doesn't mean this isn't an absolutely awful result for Trump.

The momentous verdict also comes as he faces a raft of other legal perils, including criminal probes of his handling of classified documents and of efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election.

The jury reached its verdict Tuesday on the Trump Organization ’s Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp. units after a monthlong trial.

While Bloomberg explains that the raw penalties for the convictions can only go as high as around $1.6 million, the real-world ramifications are likely to be far greater.

The firm faces “a host of intangibles,” said Bennett Gershman, a professor at Pace University’s law school. “The parent company, as a felon, could be barred from having contracts with government agencies, and it could make it more difficult to do business with banks,” Gershman said in an interview before the verdict. “This is a big deal.”

A big deal like the other one million criminal and civil probes Trump, his company, and his family face. Wheee! Bloomberg notes as an aside that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Monday " announced that he had hired Matthew Colangelo, a former senior Justice Department official with a record of challenging Trump and his firm, to focus on the office’s most important investigations."

You know, in case you were wondering if his Trump investigations were really over or not.

 Wonkette did a deep dive into the charges last year, which were made against both the Trump Organization and its forever CFO Allen Weisselberg. They were accused of defrauding the state of New York, the city of New York, and the federal government by knowingly creating schemes to enrich themselves through hiding large chunks of income in apartments, in cars, in private school tuition, hinky bonuses and more.

 Allen Weisselberg And Trump Org Are Pretty Dumb Criminals, ALLEGEDLY 

 Uh Oh, Maybe Allen Weisselberg IS Testifying Against Trump Organization! 

For the longest time, Allen Weisselberg was loath to cooperate with the authorities, out of some ridiculously misguided sense of loyalty to the human dogshit that is Donald Trump. But he did, finally, end up pleading guilty in August and testifying against the Trump Organization.

And he did testify. In the closing arguments, the Trump Organization lawyers said Weisselberg had betrayed Trump, because that's their general story, that Weisselberg came up with all of this on his own, because he is a bad man. During the trial Weisselberg had blubbered that he had indeed personally betrayed Trump and [ voice breaking ] he was just really upset about that. (Are you embarrassed, asked Trump lawyer Alan Futerfas. "More than you can imagine," said Weisselberg. LOL fuck off.)

The Trump Organization lawyers' claims of betrayal inadvertently led to a new line of discussion being allowed in court, namely whether Trump himself was aware of all the hinky schemes. The judge said yup sure does!

In a hearing without the jury, prosecutors told New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan that line of argument had opened the door to discussing whether Trump was aware of the scheme. The judge agreed.

In his own closing, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass said Trump “knew exactly what was going on” and had “explicitly sanctioned tax fraud.” He told the jury “this whole narrative that Donald Trump is blissfully ignorant is just not real” and that the two Trump companies could be held criminally liable for Weisselberg’s actions, including tuition for his grandchildren at a Manhattan private school.

The jury clearly agreed.

Sentencing is set for January. Trump will obviously appeal, and we are sure he will do some ALL CAPS moaning on Truth Social and each new day will continue bringing new comeuppance for the karma he's been creating for himself his entire life.

[ Bloomberg ]

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