Trump’s Criminally Charged CFO Steps Down as Director of Trump Organization Golf Club

One week after being hit with more than a dozen criminal charges, and the prospect of more than a decade in prison, Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime CFO, has stepped down as a director of Donald Trump’s Scottish golf club. In a Thursday filing, the company said that Weisselberg was no longer “a person with significant control” of the Trump International Golf Club Scotland, which Bloomberg notes is “the first sign of Trump’s longtime finance chief relinquishing duties after he was charged alongside the Trump Organization,” both of which pleaded not guilty to the 15-count indictment from the office of Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., which detailed how Weisselberg and his employer allegedly avoided taxes on $1.76 million worth of perks, including an apartment, cars, and private school tuition.

At this time, it’s not clear what Weisselberg’s stepping down means with regard to Trump’s chances of staying out of prison. Is the company trying to distance itself from Weisselberg, and laying the groundwork to claim he acted alone? Given Trump’s long history of pretending not to know people who could get him in serious trouble, it’s entirely possible! Is Weisselberg preparing to step aside from the company, and inform on his old boss? That obviously could also be the case. The news could also have nothing whatsoever to do with the recent charges against Weisselberg and the company, though that seems somewhat unlikely.

Regardless, if Trump isn’t generally concerned at the moment, he definitely should be. Prosecutors have for months been working to get Weisselberg to flip, and while he has reportedly thus far remained loyal to the ex-president, there’s nothing like the chance of numerous years in prison to get a person to rethink their situation. As former federal prosecutor Cynthia Alksne told MSNBC earlier week, “The jury will hate [Weisselberg]. He’s not going to have a jury of people who go to MAGA rallies, he’s going to have a cross section of people who live in Manhattan, who do pay Manhattan taxes, who don’t get free Mercedes, who don’t have somebody else paying for their children’s education and not have tax ramifications for that. So I think he will be a very hated defendant, Mr. Weisselberg, and I’m sure his defense attorneys have told him so.” Also weighing in on the CFO’s situation was former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who tweeted, “I am optimistic he’ll be convicted. The law is fairly clear on what is income & what is taxable. He’s a sophisticated executive; mistake is implausible. The company booked much of it as income. And juries hate rich tax cheats.”

All of which leaves Trump in a worrisome situation if one is worried about spending their twilight years behind bars. After the indictment was unsealed, Bloomberg noted that Weisselberg’s cooperation “could lead to a more expansive case against the company and raise the prospect of a historic and politically charged prosecution of a former president. With a trial unlikely before next year, the CFO will have months to decide whether to fight the charges or plead guilty and possibly strike a deal with prosecutors. A Trump executive for four decades, Weisselberg has unique insight into the former president’s finances and business deals.”

In other words, he knows where all the bodies are buried (and has basically indicated as much in the past, describing himself as Trump’s “eyes and ears” at the company). As his ex-daughter-in-law Jennifer Weisselberg, who reportedly handed over numerous boxes of financial documents to prosecutors this spring, said in April, “Trump doesn’t care about Allen, but Allen knows every bad thing he ever did.” And even if Weisselberg does remain loyal, some people believe the government will have a case against Trump regardless:

Michael Avenatti will have a lot of time to think about what he’s done

The former Stormy Daniels lawyer who once considered running for president before being arrested and charged with attempting to extort more than $20 million from Nike Inc., and separately charged for allegedly embezzling money from a client and defrauding a bank, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison. Per The Wall Street Journal:

Avenatti, 50 years old, was convicted after a jury trial in February 2020 on all three counts he faced: extortion, transmission of interstate communications with intent to extort, and wire fraud. The case grew out of Mr. Avenatti’s threats to expose purported corruption in Nike’s elite basketball program unless the apparel giant paid him to conduct an internal investigation. Before handing down the sentence, U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe called Mr. Avenatti’s conduct outrageous and said he operated as if laws that apply to everyone else didn’t apply to him. “Mr. Avenatti had become drunk on the power of his platform,” Judge Gardephe said in a Manhattan federal courtroom.

Thursday’s sentencing caps just one of Mr. Avenatti’s legal battles. He also faces a litany of tax and bank charges in California with a trial set to begin next week in federal court in Santa Ana, Calif. A trial in New York is scheduled to start next year on federal charges that he embezzled money from Ms. Daniels. Mr. Avenatti has pleaded not guilty to the charges and has denied wrongdoing.

As for the Nike case, in March 2019, Avenatti met with two of the company’s outside lawyers and claimed his client had evidence Nike employees had secretly funneled illegal payments to the families of high school basketball players, according to The Wall Street Journal, threatening to expose the alleged payments unless Nike paid his client $1.5 million and hired him to conduct an internal investigation. Later, in a conversation that was recorded by Nike’s outside counsel, Avenatti repeated the alleged threats and demanded either a minimum $12 million retainer or a $22.5 million settlement to make the whole thing go away. According to prosecutors, over the course of three days in March, Avenatti told attorneys representing Nike:

• That he had the power to “take $10 billion off your client’s market cap” if his demands were not met;
• That they would be demanding millions too, if they “held [someone’s] balls” in their hand;
• That he was “not fucking around”;
• That “a few million dollars doesn’t move the needle,” so if they thought they were “gonna negotiate a million five” and then pay him “3 or 5 or 7 million” to conduct an internal investigation, they could go get lost;
• That he didn’t want to hear excuses, re: why he hadn’t gotten his money, like “that somebody’s grandmother passed away or the dog ate my homework” or “somebody [went] on a bike trip”;
• That, again, he was “not fucking around.”

Report: Trump is still gouging the Secret Service

The ex-president is still collecting a nice chunk of change each month from U.S. taxpayers, according to The Washington Post:

Former president Donald Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., charged the Secret Service nearly $10,200 for guest rooms used by his protective detail during Trump’s first month at the club this summer, newly released spending records show. The records—released by the Secret Service in response to a public-records request—show that the ex-president has continued a habit he began in the first days of his presidency: charging rent to the agency that protects his life. Since Trump left office in January, U.S. taxpayers have paid Trump’s businesses more than $50,000 for rooms used by Secret Service agents, records show.

Legal experts have said there are no laws to prohibit Trump’s company from charging the Secret Service rent at his properties, either during or after his presidency. The rate is effectively up to him: By law, the Secret Service can pay whatever it must to rent rooms near its protectees for use as command posts and meeting rooms. “The service is more focused on the protective necessity, as opposed to, ‘How much is it going to cost after the fact?’ There’s nothing they can do” if rates are high, said Jonathan Wackrow, a longtime Secret Service agent who now works for the consulting firm Teneo. “It’s a question of not, ‘Can they do it?’ but ‘Should they be charging that much?’”

Given Trump’s frequent bragging about how rich he is, and the fact that he reportedly remains a billionaire, one might argue that, no, they should not be charging that much and, in fact, probably shouldn’t be charging anything at all. According to The Washington Post, no other president or vice president in recent history has charged the Secret Service rent, with the exception of Joe Biden, whose security detail paid him $2,200 per month to use a cottage on his property in Delaware while he was serving as Barack Obama’s number two, which came out to $171,600 between 2011 and 2017. Biden has not charged the government rent since becoming president, unlike his predecessor, who the Secret Service paid more than $2.5 million during his presidency.

Elsewhere!

“Shut down everything”: Global ransomware attack takes a small Maryland town offline (The Washington Post)

U.S. citizen among suspects arrested in assassination of Haitian president, official says (The Washington Post)

Spectators barred from Tokyo Olympics venues amid Japan’s COVID-19 state of emergency (ESPN)

Toyota to stop donating to GOP lawmakers who objected to certifying Biden’s win (The Washington Post)

As Bezos called for tax hikes, Amazon lobbied to keep its tax bill low (Politico)

Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Says Burned-Out Bankers Should Choose Another Living (Bloomberg)

Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg’s Partnership Did Not Survive Trump (NYT)

“Bubble man” roams San Francisco streets, bringing joy (Reuters)

World’s tallest sandcastle assembled in Denmark (UPI)

— Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Decades-Long Relationship With Leslie Wexner
— Trump’s Deranged Replacement Theory Might’ve Lost Him the Election
— Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk Want to Burn Their Cash in Space
— Three Texans Bust Myths About the Alamo’s Famous “Last Stand”
— The Guy Who Could Send Trump to Prison May Soon Cooperate With the Feds
— Bill and Melinda Gates’s Epic Divorce Saga Enters Its Next Phase
— Juneteenth, Critical Race Theory, and the Winding Road Toward Reckoning
— Trump Is Now Urging People Not to Vaccinate Their Kids Against COVID
— From the Archive: Microsoft’s Odd Couple, in the Words of Paul Allen
— Not a subscriber? Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.