Trump’s fraud trial rattled by witness’s possible perjury deal
Trump’s fraud trial rattled by witness’s possible perjury deal
Judge asks lawyers for details of potential agreement between ex-Trump executive and district attorney
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.
Should he take the deal, Weisselberg would admit to committing perjury during his October testimony in the fraud trial. In exchange, he would not have to be a witness against Trump in the hush-money trial, which is scheduled for March.
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.
And Weisselberg testified, so if he's admitting to perjury, the judge has to basically assume he lied about all of it.