Legal expert explains why Allen Weisselberg is screwed
Even after New York prosecutors let it be known to the media last week that Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg is on track to be criminally indicted sometime this summer if he doesn’t flip on Donald Trump, the defeatists insisted that Weisselberg will never flip because he’s surely only facing a slap on the wrist anyway. After all, they argued, he’s a wealthy guy who committed a white collar crime.
Palmer Report tried to explain that this won’t be the case in this instance, because prosecutors want Weisselberg to flip on Trump, which means they’re going to really stick it to Weisselberg if he doesn’t flip. But the “They’re going to magically get away with it all no matter what” narrative continues to be its own justification to those who have decided that all hope is lost.
Now, New York criminal defense lawyer Earl Ward, who has a history of handling cases like the one that Allen Weisselberg is facing, is confirming that there’s no way Weisselberg is going to end up with a slap on the wrist if he goes to trial. Ward has explained to the Washington Post that Weisselberg will face serious criminal consequences “because of the real target in this investigation,” meaning Trump.
Allen Weisselberg is 73 years old. From what we can tell, the charges he’s facing come with a sentencing guideline of three to seven years. At his age, and with the way prison conditions tend to prematurely age a person, any sentence in that range would be a de facto life sentence or something close to it. So no, Weisselberg isn’t simply going to pay a fine and magically go home. If he flips on Trump, he might walk. But if he insists on going to trial, his life as he knows it will basically be over. There’s no way to know for sure whether he’ll flip, but he clearly has strong incentive to do so.
