Sometimes a chair is just a chair.
And sometimes, a chair growing up with rich parents is a spoiled chair that is given gifts and lavish perks that aren’t declared on their taxes.
Fucking chair!
According to a scathing report from the Daily Beast, New York prosecutors have found that Barry Weisselberg, manager of the Trump-owned Wollman ice rink in Central Park, and the son of Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, avoided taxes while living rent-free in a Trump-owned luxury apartment.
Don’t worry, as New York prosecutors are all over this shit, and what’s most important here is that Allen is already in trouble with the law, having been charged with tax-related crimes, including a scheme to defraud and grand larceny. Now they can put the full court press on his son, Barry, to get Allen to flip on Trump.
Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together? But how did all of this come out? Well, that would be the work of Barry’s ex-wife, Jennifer. See, Jennifer, a cooperating witness, handed over all the receipts, including tax returns and financial documents, to investigators to show that her ex-husband wasn’t reporting all of the luxury perks he was allegedly receiving in his taxable income.
Jenifer claims that the Trump Organization often gave perks to their employees, including paying their tuition. So how did Barry end up in such a high-priced apartment when he was only the manager of an ice rink?
Well, kindness, of course.
“It’s a corporate apartment that I was given temporarily,” Barry testified under oath in August 2018, during his divorce proceedings.
The Daily Beast explains:
That deal was described as a tax-dodging “scheme to defraud” in the June 3 indictment against the Trump Organization and his father, the company’s chief financial officer. In it, prosecutors said the pad had “no reported rent at all.” The indictment noted that the company “intentionally failed” to report that income or pay associated taxes to federal, state, and local government agencies.
“The value of the lodging provided to [Allen] Weisselberg’s family member constituted income to that family member,” the indictment reads.
Barry Weisselberg was not named in the indictment, but he is the only person who matches the document’s description of a male Weisselberg family member who works at the company and lived there during that time.
But that isn’t all. During his divorce, Barry testified “that his father paid the leases for his 2015 Lexus RX 350 and his 2018 Range Rover Velar—though his ex-wife maintains that these were company-provided cars.”
“It’s all about control. The apartment, the car, the parking garage, the tuition, your vacations, your life, really,” Jennifer Weisselberg told The Daily Beast. “You’re embedded with them. You’re indebted to them…when you work there, you end up doing crimes.”
“You’re stuck. It’s like a mob. It all stays quiet because they end up owning you,” she said.
DISCUSSION
If after the obstruction of justice, the foreign grift, the corrupt pardons and the attempted coup, Trump gets nailed for tax evasion.... well, I guess it will have to do.