Trump’s fraud trial rattled by witness’s possible perjury deal
A potential perjury deal with a key witness could shake up the verdict in Donald Trump’s $370m New York fraud trial, a new court document reveals.
Arthur Engoron, the judge presiding over the case, sent an email to the trial’s lawyers on Monday asking them to give him more information about a supposed perjury deal that Allen Weisselberg, a former Trump Organization executive, is making with the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.
While Bragg’s office is not involved with the fraud trial – which is being prosecuted by the state attorney general’s office – the district attorney’s office is overseeing a separate hush money case against Trump. The New York Times reported on 1 February that Bragg’s office was in the early stages of a deal with Weisselberg.
Tl;DR: a key witness that was set to testify against trump in his hush money case might not testify because of a separate deal for his possible perjury
Not quiet. This is a key witness that testified in trump's defense, and even went to jail for trump. Now, however, he's struck a new deal in a different case to testify against trump... which isn't great for the ongoing case where he already testified for trump.
In other words, this is terrible news for both Trump AND Weisselberg.
Not quite.
I will caveat that I’m not familiar with the case details at all, but my reading of that suggests that because of the deal he will not be testifying against trump, not that he will have to as part of the deal.
He already testified in this fraud trial that's finished but awaiting a verdict. He may be confessing to committing perjury in that testimony. That would make the already super fucked Trump even more fucked since Weisselberg testified in Trump's defense.
But you're right that he won't have to testify in a future trial.
I wonder if Team Trump is trying a strategy of sacrificing Trump's fuckage level in certain trials to try to reduce his fuckage in others, rather than spreading his fuckedness around evenly among them all.
IANAL, but...
This is just a civil trial but it's pretty high stakes. Engoran already found him guilty of fraud and revoked his business license in NY (which was stayed for now). If he rules that Trump must pay $300M, Trump will have to put up a $360M bond to appeal it or else they'll pretty quickly start coming after his assets. And there's no way he'll get protected by bankruptcy for willful fraud either.
I actually can't remember the potential penalty for the hush money case though. Maybe they figure he's already fucked to the max here so it couldn't get much worse?
Do you get a prize if you have done so much purgury and fraud that when you admit to it, people can't figure out if this is a good or bad thing?
Yes. The prize is generally prison.
Edit: unless you're rich or a politician, then it's a toss-up.
It's also important to factor that Trump has the worst lawyers.
If he admits perjury, his credibility is gone, and nobody would want to use him in any other case regardless of any deal.