A senior executive at Donald J. Trump’s family business who was charged with participating in a yearslong tax scheme is nearing a deal with Manhattan prosecutors but will not cooperate with a broader investigation into Mr. Trump, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
If it becomes final, a plea deal for the executive, Allen H. Weisselberg, would bring prosecutors no closer to indicting the former president but would nonetheless brand one of his most trusted lieutenants a felon.
On Monday, Mr. Weisselberg’s lawyers and prosecutors met with the judge overseeing the case, according to a court database. The judge scheduled a hearing for Thursday, a possible indication that a deal has been reached and a plea could be entered then.
While Mr. Weisselberg, 75, is facing financial penalties as well as up to 15 years in prison if convicted by a jury, a plea deal would avoid a high-profile trial and spare him a lengthy sentence. Two people with knowledge of the matter said that Mr. Weisselberg was expected to receive a five-month jail term. With time credited for good behavior, he is likely to serve about 100 days.
The other terms of Mr. Weisselberg’s deal were not clear, including whether he had made additional concessions to prosecutors to receive it. His lawyer, Nicholas A. Gravante Jr., confirmed that he was in negotiations but declined to discuss the specifics. Another lawyer for Mr. Weisselberg, Mary E. Mulligan, declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg.
In fits and starts over the last few years, the district attorney’s office has been examining whether Mr. Trump and his company fraudulently inflated the value of his real estate to obtain loans and benefits. The investigation, initially led by Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney at the time, evolved into one of the greatest legal threats Mr. Trump faced.
The district attorney’s criminal investigation continued after Mr. Weisselberg was charged last summer with taking part in a 15-year scheme to receive off-the-books perks at Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, which was also indicted in the case.
The company will not join Mr. Weisselberg in pleading guilty on Thursday, two people with knowledge of the matter said. And Mr. Weisselberg, while admitting his own guilt, is not expected to implicate anyone in the Trump family.
Prosecutors have long hoped that they could persuade Mr. Weisselberg to testify against Mr. Trump, given his decades in the employ of the Trump family and his vast knowledge of the company and its business practices. But Mr. Weisselberg has refused to meet with them even as his lawyers negotiated a potential deal, the people with knowledge of the matter said.
Mr. Trump and his company have long maintained that Mr. Weisselberg would have had to lie to implicate Mr. Trump. Still, his decision to plead guilty — and accept prison time — underscores the extent of his loyalty to a family that has employed him for nearly a half-century.
The Trump Investigations
The Trump Investigations
Numerous inquiries. Since Donald J. Trump left office, the former president has been facing several different civil and criminal investigations across the country into his business dealings and political activities. Here is a look at some notable cases:
A plea agreement for Mr. Weisselberg could leave Mr. Trump’s company to face trial in the tax case alone. A deal would also be likely to draw renewed attention to the status of the district attorney’s criminal investigation of Mr. Trump and his company’s business practices, an inquiry that lost momentum early this year and has largely disappeared from public view.
Mr. Bragg, a Democrat as was Mr. Vance, has said the investigation is continuing. But its direction and future are unclear. Mr. Trump, who has called the investigation a partisan witch hunt, has himself not been accused of wrongdoing.
The plea negotiations with Mr. Weisselberg came to light after a New York State judge, Juan Merchan, last week declined to toss out the criminal case against the Trump Organization and Mr. Weisselberg.
What we consider before using anonymous sources.
How do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.
The judge’s decision marked the latest legal blow to Mr. Trump, whose Florida home was recently searched by the F.B.I. in connection with an unrelated inquiry. In another embarrassing episode for a former president who has mocked others for declining to answer questions under oath, he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in an interview with the New York state attorney general last week.
The attorney general, Letitia James, a Democrat, is conducting a civil inquiry into some of the same conduct that the district attorney is investigating. And some of her office’s lawyers joined the district attorney’s criminal investigation last year.
The Manhattan district attorney’s investigation took a detour early last year shortly after Mr. Vance won a victory at the Supreme Court that ended a battle to obtain Mr. Trump’s tax returns and other business records.
Armed with those records, the prosecutors began to focus on perks Mr. Weisselberg had received from the company, including several leased Mercedes-Benzes, a rent-free apartment and private school tuition for his grandchildren. Mr. Weisselberg, prosecutors said when they charged him last July, failed to pay taxes on $1.7 million in perks and other income.
Before he was charged, prosecutors applied significant pressure on Mr. Weisselberg to cooperate with their investigation into Mr. Trump because of his in-depth understanding of the Trump Organization’s inner workings.
But Mr. Weisselberg, who was chief financial officer at the time, did not strike a deal, and he was indicted. Since then, the Trump Organization has stripped him of his title, though he continues to work at the company and appeared ready to head to trial. But Mr. Gravante, who also represented two other Trump Organization employees who were not charged in the case, joined Mr. Weisselberg’s defense team in June and signaled an openness to striking a deal.
The Trump Organization, where Mr. Weisselberg spent his career climbing the ranks from junior accountant to chief financial officer, was also charged in the indictment, which outlined a scheme coordinated by senior executives at the company to underreport their income by accepting benefits that were not listed on tax documents.
Even without Mr. Weisselberg’s cooperation, the prosecutors continued to build a case against Mr. Trump, focusing on whether he falsely inflated the value of his hotels, golf clubs and other assets.
Late last year, Mr. Vance directed prosecutors to begin presenting evidence about Mr. Trump to a grand jury, laying the groundwork for a potential indictment of the former president.
But Mr. Vance had decided not to run for re-election, and after weeks of meetings about the case, Mr. Bragg developed concerns about the challenge of showing that Mr. Trump intended to break the law, a requirement for proving the charge under consideration.
The two senior prosecutors who had been leading the investigation, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, resigned shortly afterward. In his resignation letter, which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Pomerantz said that Mr. Trump had been guilty of “numerous felony violations” and that it was “a grave failure of justice” not to bring charges and hold him accountable.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism