One of the key phrases found in the indictment against the Trump Organization handed down earlier this month is “nonemployee compensation,” a strategy which is used to pay an employee of a company but also giving them money they claim as a non-employee contractor or consultant, and it’s used as a way for the company and the recipient to dodge paying taxes.
The indictment from the office of Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. not only focused on the former president’s corporation but also on Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who is facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars if he refuses to cooperate with prosecutors.
But it turns out that someone much closer to Donald Trump has also been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by Trump Org: Ivanka Trump. And that suggests she can also be indicted for accepting nonemployee compensation, according to biographer Michael D’Antonio, who has written extensively about the former president and penned a biography of the real estate magnate.
D’Antonio spoke with CNN’s Jim Acosta on Sunday and was asked whether he thinks Weisselberg will flip on his boss and agree to help prosecutors. He replied:
“You know, he really is acting as if he is going to go down with the ship. I think this is astounding given Michael Cohen’s example. But there’s another thing that I notice in the president’s — or former president’s complaints. And his idea that, ‘Well, they’re going after really good people, and they would only be going after me because of political motivations.’ Well, the big problem for him is that he invited all of this.”
But it was what D’Antonio said next that should be of special concern to Ivanka Trump, who accepted $700,000 for work as a “consultant.”
“The other person who I think is in peril is Ivanka Trump. One of the things that Allen Weisselberg is in trouble for is taking money as a contractor and then claiming self-employed status so that he can get some of the retirement benefits that the tax code allows for self-employed people. Well, we know that Ivanka Trump got quite significant sums paid to her as nonemployee compensation. That freed the Trump Organization from paying part of her taxes, and it put her in a status that I think the IRS would have lots of questions about. So, these folks don’t know how to play the game straight. I think everything they do is crooked.”
Now consider this scenario: Ivanka is also indicted by Vance and then has to make a no-win decision: Give up her father to save herself or spend years in prison. Which will she choose?
If she’s anything like her daddy, she’ll toss him under the bus so quickly it’ll make the old man’s head spin.
Here’s Michael D’Antonio on CNN:
