NY Times: Trump’s Company Is Guilty Of Tax Fraud

New York Times, Trump’s Company Is Guilty of Tax Fraud, a Blow to the Firm and the Man:

The Trump Organization, the family real estate business that made Donald J. Trump a billionaire and propelled him from reality television to the White House, was convicted on Tuesday of tax fraud and other crimes, forever tarring the former president and the company that bears his name.

The conviction on all 17 counts, after more than a day of jury deliberations in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, stemmed from the company’s practice of doling out off-the-books perks to executives: They received luxury apartments, leased Mercedes-Benzes, extra cash at Christmas, even free cable television. They paid taxes on none of it.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case, had previously obtained a guilty plea from the scheme’s architect, Allen H. Weisselberg, the company’s longtime chief financial officer. Mr. Weisselberg, one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal lieutenants, testified as the prosecution’s star witness but never implicated the former president.

Prosecutors did not charge Mr. Trump, but they invoked him 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 prosecution sounded a drumbeat of damning evidence about a freewheeling culture at his company, revealing that pervasive illegality flourished there for years.

• ABA Journal, Trump Organization Found Guilty of Tax Fraud; Maximum Penalty Is No More Than 'a Rounding Error'
• Newsweek, Trump Bemoans His Company's Tax Fraud Conviction: 'Hard to be Trump' in NYC
• Wall Street Journal, Trump Organization Found Guilty of Criminal Tax Fraud in New York Trial
• Washington Post, Trump Organization Convicted in N.Y. Criminal Tax Fraud Trial