The Trump Organization and its chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg were indicted for engaging in a criminal tax fraud scheme in which Weisselberg accepted payment off the books rather than as taxable income, but was he acting alone? Why hasn't Trump thrown Weisselberg under the bus yet?
One does not have to walk out on a long limb to speculate that Trump hasn't abandoned Weisselberg because he knew about it or endorsed the scheme, but Trump may have been more directly involved.
According to sources who spoke to the Daily Beast, Weisselberg's former daughter-in-law told prosecutors that the whole thing was Trump's idea.
In January 2012, inside Trump’s office at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, Jennifer Weisselberg watched as Trump discussed compensation with her husband and her father-in-law, both company employees. Her husband wouldn’t be getting a raise, but their children would get their tuition paid for at a top-rated private academy instead. [...]
If true, Jennifer Weisselberg’s claims would directly tie Trump to what a New York criminal indictment described as a corporate scheme to pay executives “in a matter that was ‘off the books.’”
“The scheme allowed the Trump Organization to evade the payment of payroll taxes that [it] was required to pay,” an indictment for the Trump Organization claims. On the flip side, it also alleges that executives avoided having to pay income taxes on a huge chunk of their pay.
After reading this report, I recalled that Trump's former henchman Michael Cohen said Allen Weisselberg doesn't need to flip on Trump to make a case against his former boss and now I understand why he would say that.
Cohen may not have necessarily had Jennifer Weisselberg on his mind when he said that, but this illustrates that evidence against Trump and his company is pretty overwhelming.
To some extent, the evidence has been known all along but no one had the gumption to make a case out of it until Trump nearly destroyed the country.
We could have had taco trucks on every corner if someone had taken on Trump before he ran for president.