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Defense attorneys in the New York tax fraud trial of former President Donald Trump’s international real estate company revealed their strategy for the case Monday — not to indict the former president and anyone else named Trump. Prosecutors in the high-profile trial taking place in New York Supreme Court in lower Manhattan allege the Trump Organization implemented a 15-year scheme to deceive tax authorities by giving top executives substantial compensation in the form of tax-free “perks” such as luxury cars and apartments Trump-branded rent-free. Trump Organization attorney Susan Necheles told jurors during opening statements Monday that the fraud scheme “started with” former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg “and ended with Allen Weisselberg.” Weiselberg pleaded guilty to the tax evasion scheme over the summer. He agreed to testify truthfully about his own role as part of a plea deal. Under the deal, Weisselberg must serve five months in prison and pay $2 million in restitution. But he and two other key prosecution witnesses are still on Trump’s payroll and coordinating with Trump’s lawyers. All three are expected to back Trump’s defense line on the witness stand: that the tax evasion scheme was a conspiracy by rogue Trump Organization executives who held the top of the company, including Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and the former president — owner and sole proprietor — in the dark. “Donald Trump did not know that Allen Weiselberg was cheating on Allen Weiselberg’s personal tax returns,” Neteles told the four women and eight men on the jury. “The evidence will be crystal clear on this one.” “Allen Weiselberg does not own the Trump Organization,” he stressed. Another Trump Organization lawyer, Michael van der Veen, turned it into something of a mantra. “Weisselberg did it for Weisselberg,” he repeated four times in his own openings. Van der Veen likened Weisselberg to a “prodigal son,” whose greedy scheming betrayed his “family” — the Trump family. Weiselberg, the “son,” was nevertheless kept in the family, van der Veen said, using a biblical analogy to explain a sticky situation: Weiselberg and other prosecution witnesses are still being paid salaries, and even their legal defenses are covered by the Trump. It was out of charity and forgiveness that Weisselberg was kept on the payroll, van der Veen suggested. “He made mistakes,” the lawyer said. “Serious mistakes that put his freedom at risk … crimes that hurt his company,” he added, countering prosecutors’ insistence that the Trump Organization clearly benefited from a scheme that kept its top executives happy and bailed on their contributions. Medicare. “He has stepped down from his position as CFO,” van der Veen continued. “But his ability to financially support his own [own] the family has not stripped him.” He added: “The meat of our defense is that Allen Weiselberg did not act at all to benefit the Trump payroll company.” The Trump Corporation is the Trump Organization subsidiary that directly employs its top executives, including Weisselberg. Trump Payroll Corporation is the subsidiary that manages payroll. Both operate as the Trump Organization and both are defendants in the case. Weiselberg admitted to earning $1.7 million tax-free over 15 years, including luxury Mercedes-Benz cars for him and his wife, free use of Trump-branded apartments on Manhattan’s Hudson River and tuition for his grandchildren’s private schools. The scheme saved him nearly a million dollars in taxes over 15 years, prosecutors said. But while “Weisselberg did it for Weisselberg” was the defense’s mantra, the prosecution’s mantra — that Weisselberg was a “senior management agent,” a three-word phrase repeated in prosecutors’ opening statements — was a little less catchy. Prosecutors must show that Weisselberg and a second executive who answered to him, former controller Jeff McConney, took actions on behalf of the company and were both “senior executives” under the law, meaning they were so high in company that can be equated with the company itself. “The plan was executed and approved … at the highest level,” Susan Hoffinger, the Manhattan district attorney’s chief of investigations, said during opening statements. He promised jurors Donald Trump’s personal financial ledger entries and a signed check linking him to the scheme. “This case is about greed and deception,” he told jurors. “Tax fraud”. Trump’s company paid Weiselberg about $1.76 million in perks over the past 15 years, Hofiger told them, “and even paid him in cash for his personal holiday gifts.” “We’re going to focus on the paper,” he promised, including W2 forms and other tax documents he said were falsified to hide the benefits from the IRS. “Why not just give Allen Weiselberg a raise?” he asked rhetorically, before replying, “because doing it legally would cost the Trump Organization more.” That included Weisselberg paying more in income taxes and the company paying more in withholding taxes and Medicare contributions, he said. The company was also able to “keep its trusted CFO by paying him more,” he said. “Everybody wins here,” he said. “Allen Weiselberg and company… The problem with this is that it’s not legal.”