Trump Org. entities were held in criminal contempt and fined $4K ahead of tax fraud trial
By Lauren del Valle and Kara Scannell, CNN
A Manhattan criminal court judge held entities of the Trump Organization in criminal contempt for not complying with multiple grand jury subpoenas dating as far back as October 2020 and three court orders mandating they produce the requested evidence ahead of their recent tax fraud trial.
Judge Juan Merchan’s order requiring that the Trump Org. entities pay $4,000 in fines for the violations had been sealed since he issued the ruling last December so as to not prejudice against the defendants at trial, the judge previously said in court.
It is unclear whether the companies have already paid the fines levied a year ago, separate from the penalties that could tally as much as $1.61 million in connection to the guilty verdict against the two Trump Org. companies.
CNN has reached out to the parties for comment.
Merchan ruled at the end of the Trump Org. tax fraud trial that he would unseal the order once a verdict was handed down by the jury because he found the order to be “of significant public concern.”
A jury ultimately convicted the two entities — the Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corp. — last week on all counts related to schemes for Trump Org. executives to cheat their personal taxes.
The Trump companies did produce thousands of pages of documents in the discovery process, the order said, but still failed to fulfill key requests from prosecutors despite the court orders.
Lawyers for the Trump companies claimed they were noncompliant in 2021 because the subpoenas were vague and the time frame to respond was “unreasonably short given the scope and breadth of the demands,” according to the court order.
The-CNN-Wire
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