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Trump Org CFO began resigning his positions days before he was indicted, documents show

By David A. Fahrenthold and Shayna Jacobs
July 13, 2021|Updated today at 8:10 p.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-org-cfo-began-resigning-his-positions-days-before-he-was-indicted-documents-show/2021/07/13/aa698b8e-e41e-11eb-a41e-c8442c213fa8_story.html

Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg resigned from his positions at dozens of the company’s subsidiaries in late June — several days before he was indicted on charges of tax fraud and grand larceny — according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

“Effective immediately, I, Allen Weisselberg, resign from each and every office and position that I hold” in the subsidiaries, Weisselberg wrote in the letter, dated June 25. What followed was a two-page list.

The Trump Organization submitted the letter to New Jersey liquor regulators last week, asking to remove Weisselberg’s name from the liquor licenses for two golf courses. New Jersey officials released it to The Post on Tuesday.

The list obtained by The Post was largely redacted, so that only a few company names were visible. But, from looking at other corporate records in the United States and Scotland, The Post has identified at least 54 Trump entities where Weisselberg has recently resigned from his positions.

On Tuesday, a person familiar with the Trump Organization said Weisselberg had resigned from every subsidiary at which he had held a title.

The Trump Organization’s operations are run by a web of interconnected corporate entities, overseen by a small cadre of executives at Trump Tower in New York. For more than two decades, Weisselberg has been a key member of that leadership.

It is unclear what his role in the larger company is now. The Trump Organization did not respond to questions about Weisselberg on Tuesday.

Weisselberg’s attorney, Mary Mulligan, declined to comment.

The resignation letter — and the reshuffling of responsibilities that has followed it — has shed new light on the impact of Weisselberg’s indictment on 15 felony counts in Manhattan on July 1.

New York prosecutors said Weisselberg had helped organize a 15-year “scheme to defraud,” in which the Trump Organization hid some of its executives’ pay from taxing authorities. Two Trump companies were also indicted. Former president Donald Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing.

Weisselberg pleaded not guilty and his lawyers said he would fight the charges, giving no indication he intends to cooperate with investigators.

The date of the resignation letter shows that Weisselberg seemed to anticipate the indictments. On June 24, Weisselberg’s lawyers made a last-ditch effort to talk prosecutors out of charging him. They failed.

The day after, Weisselberg signed his resignation letter.

The Trump Organization has not said why he resigned, and Weisselberg’s brief letter did not give a reason. But legal experts have said that this move could assuage potential concerns from regulators, vendors or lenders about dealing with a company whose officer had been indicted.

The shifts in leadership that have followed his resignation — detailed in other corporate filings — show that the Trump Organization appears to be increasingly reliant on Trump’s adult sons to manage a company facing several difficulties, including the indictments, the coronavirus pandemic and the toxic politicization of the Trump brand.

When Trump entered the White House in 2017, he kept ownership of his company but handed day-to-day leadership to a triumvirate: Weisselberg and his sons Eric and Donald Jr.

That arrangement showed up in corporate filings. At most subsidiaries, Weisselberg was listed as an officer alongside one or both of the sons. When Trump left office in January, Trump left that setup in place — largely declining to retake his old titles.

Now, as Weisselberg has resigned his roles at the subsidiaries, no new executive has stepped up to take his place.

Instead, corporate filings show, in most cases Trump’s sons just added Weisselberg’s old jobs to their own. On paper, their three-person leadership team shrank to just two.

Or, in some cases, one.

At one company connected to Trump’s golf club in Northern Virginia, Donald Trump Jr. is now “President, Vice President, Chief Executive Officer, Secretary, Treasurer [and] Chief Financial Officer,” according to papers the Trump Organization recently filed with the state of Virginia.

The filings also hint at one potential complication for that strategy: Donald Trump Jr. has become a well-known conservative activist and provocateur, buying a home in Florida and frequently speaking at pro-Trump events. His brother Eric has played a much larger role in running the company, according to people who know the Trump Organization well.

In the new corporate filings that laid out his larger role at Trump companies, Trump Jr. also said his mailing address is no longer Trump Tower, the company’s longtime headquarters.

Instead, he said, his mail should be sent “care of” a Trump golf course in Jupiter, Fla., close to his new home.


By David Fahrenthold
David A. Fahrenthold is a reporter covering the Trump family and its business interests. He has been at The Washington Post since 2000, and previously covered Congress, the federal bureaucracy, the environment and the D.C. police. Twitter

By Shayna Jacobs
Shayna Jacobs is a federal courts and law enforcement reporter on the national security team at The Washington Post, where she covers the Southern and Eastern districts of New York. Twitter

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-org-cfo-began-resigning-his-positions-days-before-he-was-indicted-documents-show/2021/07/13/aa698b8e-e41e-11eb-a41e-c8442c213fa8_story.html