Weisselberg is not Trump’s tax accountant. Mazars is.
Whatever the D.A.’s office can’t get out of Weisselberg, it’ll get from Mazars. Weisselberg may be willing to go to prison for Trump but, unlike Weisselberg, Mazars is not wholly owned by Trump.
If you read the link above — a ProPublica investigative report on Mazars — you’ll notice the firm’s reputation and history ain’t up there with the best. A few tasty tidbits:
It’s the firm’s first burst into the media glare apart from an unfortunate moment of tabloid coverage in 2016 after one of its New York partners stabbed his wife to death in the shower of their suburban home. (He pleaded guilty to manslaughter.)
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…Trump entrusts his taxes and planning to a tiny, secretive team of CPAs who have operated at various times from humble quarters in Queens and two Long Island office parks.
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One theme has been consistent: partners and sometimes the firm itself have faced accusations of fraud, misconduct and malpractice on multiple occasions, an investigation by ProPublica and WNYC has found.
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The firm operated without malpractice insurance for a period and was dogged by feuds — with current and former partners suing each other — and financial problems.
And it ran afoul of regulators. In January of 2004 — one week after “The Apprentice” premiered on NBC — the Securities and Exchange Commission formally censured the firm for willfully aiding and abetting misconduct. The SEC suspended one partner from practicing before it for four years for what the agency called “highly unreasonable” and “improper professional conduct.”
Although Mazars have been in court for Trump previously (delaying seems to be their standard tactic) and lost, the spotlight on them now is of an entirely different wattage.
This paragraph should start you musing over the possibilities:
…Trump’s accountants are far from bystanders in the matters under scrutiny — or in the rise of Trump. Over a span of decades, they have played two critical, but discordant, roles for Trump. One is common for an accounting firm: to help him pay the smallest amount of taxes possible. The second is not common at all: to help him appear to the world to be rich beyond imagining. That sometimes requires creating precisely the opposite impression of what’s in his tax filings.
And Mazars is not an accounting firm with anything like the credibility of Arthur Anderson, which did not survive the Enron scandal.
Mazars may be as corrupt as their client, but I doubt they are as delusional about tax law and criminal codes as Trump is.
They will not go to prison for Trump. Thus, they can be worked.