- The Trump Org. and its longtime top bookkeeper are seeking to dismiss criminal charges against them.
- They say that Manhattan prosecutors are targeting them because they don't like Trump.
- Weisselberg also claimed he's being targeted because Trump's former fixer Michael Cohen has a "vendetta" against him.
The Trump Organization and its longtime CFO Allen Weisselberg asked a judge to dismiss a 15-count indictment against them from the Manhattan district attorney's office, arguing that they were targeted because prosecutors don't like former President Donald Trump.
Trump has not been charged with a crime in connection to the DA's investigation, which is focusing on whether his company evaded tax laws and artificially inflated or deflated the value of its assets for loan and tax purposes.
But his lawyers argued in the filing, which was submitted late last month and unsealed Tuesday, that prosecutors "targeted Donald Trump's associates and companies for investigation and prosecution based on their animus toward his speech and political views."
They asked a Manhattan judge for a hearing, at which they'll argue that The Trump Organization and Weisselberg are the victims of "selective prosecution."
According to the filing, a copy of which was obtained by Insider, Trump's defense lawyers pointed out the Manhattan DA's collaboration with New York attorney general Letitia James, adding that James' parallel civil inquiry into the Trump Organization was "motivated by illicit animus."
James campaigned for office in 2018 as a Democrat promising to investigate Trump, and has continued to threaten Trump with prosecution, the lawyers wrote.
"Indeed, just last week Attorney General James sent out a fundraising solicitation which centered on Donald Trump, stating, 'The GOP continues to pave the way for another Trump run in 2024 — and he might win," they wrote.
Weisselberg's lawyers struck a similar tone, saying that he was "collateral damage" in investigators' "yearslong pursuit of Mr. Weisselberg's longtime boss, Donald J. Trump."
Weisselberg's attorneys also singled out Trump's former fixer, Michael Cohen, and claimed Weisselberg should not have been charged because he was granted immunity when he testified before the grand jury in a previous federal criminal investigation into Cohen.
That investigation focused on Cohen and Trump's efforts during the 2016 election to pay off the adult film actress Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about an affair she claims to have had with Trump in the mid-2000s. Cohen pleaded guilty to multiple felony counts of tax evasion, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations stemming from the inquiry.
Weisselberg's "immunized testimony was given during the federal investigation that resulted in the criminal conviction of Michael Cohen, and it sparked a vendetta that Mr. Cohen has pursued against Mr. Weisselberg in every forum available," the CFO's lawyers claimed in the unsealed filing.
But Cohen hit back at that characterization, telling Bloomberg that "there is no vendetta here, only an interest in seeing justice served and to ensure that no one is above the law."
The lawyers also argued in the newly unsealed motion that the DA has poured an "unheard of" amount of resources into its ongoing probe, for which a grand jury is currently hearing evidence — including "presumably millions" spent on an outside consulting firm.
They further claimed that too many prosecutors — including from the DA's office and from James' office — were present in the grand jury that handed up the Weisselberg and Trump Organization indictment.
The Manhattan DA's office indicted the Trump Organization and Weisselberg last summer.
These were the 15 counts against them:
- One count of scheme to defraud in the first degree.
- One count of conspiracy in the fourth degree.
- One count of grand larceny in the second degree.
- Four counts of criminal tax fraud in the third degree.
- Four counts of offering a false instrument for filing in the first degree.
- Four counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.
Both Weisselberg and the Trump Organization pleaded not guilty to the charges.