A judge was asked to make sure charges were brought against the Trump Organization and CFO Allen Weisselberg.
They said the investigation was not spurred by a dislike for Michael Cohen.
The indictment was too late to be filed.
The Manhattan District Attorney's office has asked a New York judge to reject arguments from the Trump Organization and its CFO to dismiss the pending criminal indictments against them.
They argue in a court filing that Weisselberg's and the company's claims don't pass legal muster and that they misrepresented the role that Michael Cohen played in the investigation.
The indictment is based on criminal tax evasion that took place in New York County.
In July, prosecutors brought a grand jury indictment accusing Weisselberg and the Trump Organization of a scheme that allowed him to avoid taxes on over $1 million in income.
The new filing gives the most extensive look yet into the Manhattan district attorney&s investigation of Trump.
It only focuses on the alleged executive payroll scheme.
Weisselberg is accused of stealing $900,000 in federal income taxes by collecting some of his pay in gifts. The charge can carry up to 15 years in prison.
The new filing states that Allen Weisselberg violated the basic imperative that all New Yorkers dutifully report and pay tax on their income.
Weisselberg and the company asked the judge to dismiss the charges. They argued that the case was politically motivated and that Cohen had a vendetta against Weisselberg. Cohen has been angry with Weisselberg ever since the CFO gave grand jury testimony that led to the charges against him, they said.
The name of Allen Weisselberg and his former daughter-in-law are blacked out in the new response from prosecutors. The identities of Cohen and Weisselberg are clear in the new filing despite the redactions.
Solomon Shinerock laid out a different sequence of events in a new filing.
There was an ongoing investigation into the Trump Organization. According to Shinerock, Cohen told investigators in September that Weisselberg told him about cash, school tuition, and housing provided by the Trump Organization to her and her former husband. After a set of articles about those untaxed benefits were published in November 2020, prosecutors looked into it.
The Monday filing said that Weisselberg's testimony prompted the Office to expand an existing investigation to include the conduct for which he now stands indicted.
Weisselberg's leaps of logic about the roots of the investigation are incorrect, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's motion.
Weisselberg asks the court to assume that his testimony led to the federal indictment of Cohen, that he was angry at him, and that he needed to provide evidence against him to get a more favorable federal sentence.
The fourth charge, for criminal tax evasion, should be dropped against Weisselberg, but they argued that it should stick with the Trump Organization.
The charges are more substantial than thefringe benefits case that the defense lawyers have described. They said that the intermingling of personal and business finances is not normal.
The nature and magnitude of the non-cash compensation employees received under the indicted scheme is large.
There is no mention of additional defendants or charges in the filing. The original Trump Organization-Weisselberg indictment has some strings left dangling.
There are no references to the Trump Organization executives who are alleged to have been involved in the scheme.
The Manhattan District Attorney's investigation had appeared to be winding down ever since Bragg took over, but the filing breathes new life into it.
Insider reported last year that the Manhattan District Attorney&s 3-year probe into the Trump Organization had focused on potential criminal charges against former President Donald Trump himself.
Sources had said that there was little left to do after that effort ended in February.
A parallel investigation spearheaded by New York Attorney General Letitia James has gained steam in recent weeks.
A lawyer from the James office told the court that the New York attorney general had gathered a lot of evidence that could support a civil enforcement action. The comment came as the New York attorney general's office fended off a bid by Trump's legal team to end the inquiry into the financial practices of the Trump Organization.
Andrew Amer, an assistant New York attorney general, said that the inquiry arose from the testimony of Michael Cohen, the former Trump lawyer who called the former president a con man.
In January, James said that her office had uncovered evidence that suggests Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization misrepresented the values of multiple assets to financial institutions for economic benefit.
The attorneys for Trump argue that the investigations of the attorney general and district attorney have been politically motivated and unfairly intertwined.
James has no power to shape the investigation according to the Monday filing.
The Office did not seek input from AG James, nor was she ever a decision maker on the case.
A New York state judge found Trump in contempt and fined him $110,000.
The New York Supreme Court Justice set several conditions for lifting the contempt order against Trump, one of which was payment of the fine.
The original article is on Business Insider.
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