“Indicted Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg may have offered an unprompted early defense to investigators on the day he was charged in a 15-year tax avoidance scheme involving unreported perks such as free cars and high-end apartments for executives at former president Donald Trump’s company, according to court documents. ‘In sum and substance, defendant Allen Weisselberg stated that the commute to work from Long Island was difficult,’ said a defendant statement disclosure from district attorney investigators Anthony DiCaprio and Ethan Zubkoff that was filed in New York Supreme Court after Weisselberg’s arrest” the Washington Post reports.

“There was no additional context for his apparent words about grueling rush-hour travel in New York City, a remark cited in a publicly filed disclosure from prosecutors, a mandatory notice given to defense attorneys after an arrest. Prosecutors allege a 15-year tax fraud scheme as the Trump Organization and CFO Allen Weisselberg are arraigned on multiple criminal charges Weisselberg previously kept his legal address at a small home in the Long Island town of Wantagh, N.Y., until he sold it in 2013. But prosecutors allege he actually lived in a Manhattan apartment paid for by the Trump Organization and avoided several years of New York City taxes by concealing his status as a city resident. He made the comments as he sat for arrest processing with investigators on July 1, hours before he pleaded not guilty to charges including scheme to defraud and grand larceny. The day of his surrender, he also told the arresting investigators that he has lived in his Upper West Side apartment since 2005. The commute from his Riverside Boulevard home is less than two miles – and he was recently seen on multiple weekdays driving a Mercedes to Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, the headquarters of Trump Organization, where Trump himself has been spending time in recent weeks. The Trump Organization allegedly footed the bill for the Weisselberg family’s luxury vehicles for many years in lieu of paying him a higher salary, allowing him to claim significantly lower income than he was actually bringing in. The company ‘paid the annual lease expenses on two Mercedes-Benz automobiles for Weisselberg and his wife’ from 2005 to 2017, according to the indictment. It is unclear whether Weisselberg was trying to say that he commuted – at least at some point – to Manhattan from the suburbs, necessitating a vehicle.”