Trump Organization Tax-Fraud Trial to Begin Oct. 24

(Bloomberg) — The Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer will go on trial Oct. 24 in a tax fraud case, after a New York state judge rejected their request to dismiss the case against them.

They were charged last year with conspiring to avoid income taxes by paying certain employees in unreported perks. They had pleaded not guilty to the charges and asked the judge to dismiss the case. The CFO argued in court filings he was charged mainly because he refused to cooperate in a prosecution of Trump. He said prosecutors told him at a meeting before his July 2021 indictment that his only “way out” would be to cooperate with their probe into Trump, and that he was warned that one of his sons could face charges.

The Oct. 24 date is the beginning of jury selection in the trial.

Though former president Donald Trump is not a defendant in the case, a trial for his company and a longtime business associate comes as he is facing a rising tide of legal threats of his own.

His Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida was searched on Monday by federal agents investigating his possible removal of confidential documents from the White House, and he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on Wednesday to avoid answering deposition questions in a civil probe of his family real estate business by New York Attorney General Letitia James. 

Two veteran prosecutors who led the investigation resigned in February alleging newly sworn-in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg stopped supporting their push to bring criminal charges against the former president. Bragg has said that the investigation is ongoing. Trump unsuccessfully fought against having to sit for James’s deposition in part by arguing that her civil probe was a smokescreen to gather evidence for Bragg’s criminal investigation.

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