Trump CFO sent to Rikers facility that holds inmates with contagious diseases: records
Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg Wednesday was sent to the Rikers Island facility that houses inmates with contagious diseases, city records show.
Weisselberg’s new address at the West Facility appeared on New York City’s Correction department website hours after he was sentenced following a guilty plea to two counts of felony perjury.
The lock-up at 16-06 Hazen St. in Queens “houses inmates with contagious diseases” as part of the Correction department’s Communicable Disease Unit, multiple city records show.
The West Facility also includes single-cell units separate from the ward, according to the department. It features in a recent NY1 report about one detainee’s report on conditions to Rikers Island’s oversight board.
Virgil Carter reportedly said he was housed in the Communicable Disease Unit for “solitary confinement purposes.”
Jennifer Parish, of the Urban Justice Center, told NY1 detainees are locked in West Facility units for up to 24 hours a day.
Christopher Boyle of the New York County Defender Services, said of solitary Rikers units, “There [are] rats…There [are] mice droppings. There are insects all around. They are screaming for attention from the officers, who are basically ignoring them.”
In December, one West Facility detainee appeared in a New York Daily News report about accusations that he’d crept out of his locked cell, smashed a female officer’s body camera and bit her wrists.
Weisselberg, who served as the Trump family’s accountant, previously was sentenced to five months for tax evasion as part of the criminal investigation into the Trump Organization’s accounting last year. He was released after serving three months.
According to a Business Insider report from January 2023, this will be a return visit to the West Facility for Weisselberg.
“He’s in the safest and the nicest area to serve in Rikers,” jail-reform advocate Five Mualimmak-Ak told Business Insider at the time.
The report notes, “Like all inmates there to serve a sentence, Weisselberg will be required to work, most likely in the West Facility’s kitchen or bakery.”
Weisselberg received another five months Wednesday after pleading guilty to lying under oath in Trump’s civil fraud trial, in which he falsely claimed he had not been involved in evaluating the square footage of Trump Tower.
Source:
