Senior Vice President and Comptroller Jeffrey McConnell told jurors in Trump’s criminal tax evasion trial that he saw little upside in criticizing longtime finance chief Allen Weiselberg or chief operating officer Matthew Calamari Sr., two of Trump’s most trusted, loyal lieutenants . . “I thought if I started denying or fighting back, I would probably lose my job,” McConney said near the end of a sometimes contentious fourth day of testimony — a long warm-up for Weisselberg’s impending turn as the prosecution’s star. “Allen was my boss. Who would I tell? I wasn’t going to face him. I wasn’t going to argue,” McConey said at another point in his testimony. “I was going to do what he told me to do.” Judge Juan Manuel Merchan declared McConney a hostile witness after prosecutors complained he was being too responsive to defense questions despite being granted immunity to testify as a prosecution witness. McConney, who still works for the Trump Organization and has a company-paid lawyer, acknowledged on the witness stand Monday that he had been talking to company lawyers about his deposition when court was not in session. He said he even did some tax calculations for them on Sunday night. “I think it’s pretty clear to the average observer, he’s very helpful to you (the defense),” Merchan said. “On the other hand, he seems to have a very hard time understanding people’s questions and has a hard time, frankly, giving reliable answers.” McConney is scheduled to return to the witness stand Tuesday. As a hostile witness, he could be questioned for several more hours as prosecutors try to flatten his earlier trial testimony and answers to questions during eight grand jury appearances in recent years. The Trump Organization, the holding company for the former president’s various assets — including buildings, golf courses and hotels — is accused of helping some top executives avoid income taxes on compensation they received in addition to their salaries. The company, which could be fined more than $1 million if convicted, has denied wrongdoing. His lawyers claim that Weisselberg came up with the plan on his own, without Trump or the Trump family’s knowledge, and that the company did not benefit from his actions. Weiselberg, 75, pleaded guilty to $1.7 million in off-the-books restitution and agreed to testify as a prosecution witness at trial, possibly as early as Tuesday, in exchange for a five-month prison sentence. Trump Organization lawyer Susan Necheles turned part of McConney’s cross-examination into a preemptive attack on Weisselberg — eliciting testimony that he secretly tried to enrich himself with the company’s money. McConney said Weisselberg and Calamari Sr. relied on it over the years to hide payroll records to hide extras like Manhattan apartments and Mercedes-Benz cars from their taxable income, in part undercutting their wages due to the cost of those perks and issuing fake W – 2 forms. McConney said Weiselberg, his boss, once gave his wife a one-time paycheck of $6,000 for no-show work at the company so she could qualify for Social Security benefits. He said Weiselberg warned him not to tell others at the company what they were doing. “Allen Weiselberg didn’t want other people in the company to know this secret,” McConey said. Trump signed off on some salary adjustments — which McConney said Weiselberg claimed was his way of paying the company back for perks — but it’s unclear whether he knew they weren’t paying taxes. Neither Trump nor any of his children who have worked as Trump Organization executives have been charged or accused of wrongdoing. Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass seized on McConney’s reluctance to tell Trump by questioning him in what’s known as reexamination — a chance for him to ask more questions after the defense cross-examines him. “You falsified W-2s, invented an employee and gave her a W-2 for work she didn’t do,” Steinglass asked. “Did you ever bring this to Donald Trump’s attention and say, ‘the CFO is making me commit fraud … I feel uncomfortable doing that.’ “No,” McConey said. Also Monday, the judge in the New York attorney general’s fraud suit against Trump and the Trump Organization appointed former Manhattan federal judge Barbara Jones as an independent monitor overseeing the company’s business dealings. Jones recently served as a special counsel in two other high-profile Trump-related cases. He reviewed materials seized in FBI raids on Trump’s personal lawyers — Michael Cohen, in an investigation into hush payments, and Rudy Giuliani, in an investigation into his dealings in Ukraine.
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