Al Jazeera: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
United States jurors in the Trump Organization\u2019s tax fraud trial<\/a> have started deliberating after four weeks of testimony and arguments about executive pay practices at Donald Trump\u2019s real estate company that prosecutors say amounted to a years-long criminal scheme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The former US president\u2019s company was charged in 2021 with paying personal expenses for some executives without reporting the payments as income and compensating them as if they were independent contractors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The company\u2019s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg<\/a>, pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution. Trump, who last month announced plans<\/a> to seek the presidency again in 2024, was not charged in the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Justice Juan Merchan in New York state court in Manhattan instructed jurors on the law before deliberations began on Monday and reminded them that they had pledged not to let their opinions about Trump influence their verdict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDonald Trump and his family are not on trial here before you,\u201d Merchan said. \u201cYou must set aside any bias or prejudice you may have in favor of or against Mr Trump and his family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said in his closing arguments on Friday that Trump was aware of the scheme. It was part of an effort by the prosecution to counter the defence\u2019s argument that Weisselberg, 75, sought only to benefit himself and hid his wrongdoing from the Trump family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis whole narrative that Mr Trump was blissfully ignorant is just not real,\u201d Steinglass told the jury. \u201cHe is not on trial here, but that does not mean that you should believe the defence\u2019s narrative that Allen Weisselberg \u2026 went rogue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump, a Republican, has called the charges politically motivated. Alvin Bragg, the current Manhattan district attorney, is a Democrat, as is the district attorney who brought the charges last year, Cyrus Vance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Al Jazeera: United States jurors in the Trump Organization\u2019s tax fraud trial have started deliberating after four weeks of testimony and arguments about executive pay practices at Donald Trump\u2019s real estate company that prosecutors say amounted to a years-long criminal scheme. The former US president\u2019s company was charged in 2021 with paying personal expenses for some executives without reporting the payments as income and compensating them as if they were independent contractors. The company\u2019s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution. Trump, who last month announced plans to seek the presidency again in 2024, was… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28971,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28969\/revisions\/28971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}