The Trump Group and former Chief Monetary Officer Allen Weisselberg on Tuesday requested a choose to dismiss the Manhattan district legal professional's legal fraud and tax evasion costs towards them, claiming they have been focused due to politics.
Former President Donald Trump's eponymous firm was accused in July of offering executives with lavish untaxed perks, or "oblique worker compensation." Weisselberg, who had been at Trump's facet on the firm for many years, was accused of receiving perks — together with an residence and automobile — price $1.7 million.
Weisselberg and the corporate have entered not responsible pleas.
In Tuesday's filings, attorneys claimed the corporate and former CFO have been "improperly focused....based mostly on political animus." Trump is a Republican, whereas Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg and New York Legal professional Common Letitia James are Democrats.
A spokesperson for Bragg didn't instantly return a request for remark.
Weisselberg's attorneys claimed the tax costs are associated to federal revenue tax returns, and are due to this fact not within the Manhattan district legal professional's jurisdiction. In addition they wrote that the costs towards Weisselberg must be tossed as a result of he obtained immunity towards sure federal costs when he testified to a federal grand jury investigating former Trump legal professional Michael Cohen.
They argued that Cohen's later cooperation within the Manhattan case was partly as a consequence of Cohen having a "vendetta" towards Weisselberg for his function in Cohen's conviction.
In a textual content message to CBS Information on Tuesday, Cohen mentioned, "There is no such thing as a vendetta, as alleged right here…solely an curiosity in seeing justice served and to make sure that nobody is above the legislation!"
Weisselberg's attorneys are additionally asking the choose within the case to suppress proof from two Manhattan district legal professional investigators who they are saying "struck up small discuss" with Weisselberg whereas he was in custody, arguing the investigators basically tricked him into divulging data he may in any other case not have with a lawyer current.
The choose will rule on the motions to dismiss after prosecutors file their response.
The filings comes lower than per week after Trump and the corporate suffered a defeat of their battle towards a parallel civil investigation being run by James. A choose dominated Thursday that Trump and two of his youngsters, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, may be deposed as a part of the New York Legal professional Common's Workplace's fraud probe.
A February 14 submitting in that investigation revealed that Trump's longtime accounting agency, Mazars USA, not too long ago knowledgeable the Trump Group that it was recanting a decade of monetary statements ready for the corporate and would not work for it.