On The Money — Five things to know about Weisselberg’s guilty plea

Tonight, we’ll be digging into the recent guilty plea from former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg. We’ll also look at new figures showing the rising cost of raising a child, a new government effort to help customers whose flights have been delayed or canceled and more.

But first, check out The Hill’s first on the ground report from Ukraine.  

Welcome to On The Money, your nightly guide to everything affecting your bills, bank account and bottom line. For The Hill, we’re Aris Folley and Karl Evers-Hillstrom. Someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here.

What to know about Weisselberg’s guilty plea  

Thursday’s guilty plea from former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg is a major development in New York officials’ multiyear investigation into the company led by former President Trump.  

Weisselberg pleaded guilty to 15 separate charges including grand larceny and criminal tax fraud in an indictment filed in New York state Supreme Court, admitting to what authorities described as a 15-year tax evasion scheme for skipping out on taxes due on $1.76 million in income that wasn’t reported to the IRS.  

He was promised a sentence of five months in New York City’s Rikers Island prison — although that could be shortened to a little over three months — as well as five years’ probation. He will also have to make full repayment of taxes, penalties and interest due to the New York City and New York state tax authorities totaling $1,994,321.  

Here are just a few things to know about Weisselberg’s plea deal: 

• The plea may be a consolation prize: The plea deal from a Trump Organization representative close to the former president may feel like something of a consolation prize for prosecutors who have been trying for a year to get Weisselberg to turn on Trump himself and not just Trump’s company.  
  
• The plea deal will factor into the trial of the Trump Organization: Weisselberg’s plea deal requires him to testify when the Trump Organization faces its own trial in October, and that could turn into a big win for prosecutors this fall as they go after Trump’s core business. 
  
• Weisselberg was not granted immunity from other crimes: Proper cooperation deals with federal prosecutors usually come with an immunity clause that says cooperating witnesses won’t be charged on other unrelated crimes. Weisselberg’s deal has no such clause.  

Check out the rest here from The Hill’s Tobias Burns. 

LEADING THE DAY

New estimate projects cost of raising a child at $310K 

New figures show the cost of raising a child is becoming more expensive as the nation grapples with rising inflation. 

A recent estimate conducted by the Brookings Institution projected the cost of raising a child for a middle-income two-parent married family with two kids to be north of $310,000.   

• The estimate assumes the youngest child would be born in 2015 and covers raising the child through the age of 17. It does not include the cost of sending the child to college. 
  
• Brookings uses a methodology from a previous report on child expenditures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). 
  
• The figure is roughly $80,000 more than the estimate USDA released in 2017, when it calculated the average child-rearing costs for a middle-income, married couple with a child born in the same year. 

To calculate the number, experts used an average inflation rate of 2.23 percent, similar to the rate used in the USDA report, to estimate the total cost from 2015 to 2020. But the new report also factors in a 1.77 percent increase in the rate for 2021 and subsequent years. 

Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, told The Hill the calculation was based on past trends in the nation’s inflation rates. 

Aris has more here. 

ON THE FLY

Buttigieg announces DOT dashboard for delayed, canceled flights 

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a letter to CEOs in the airline industry the Department of Transportation (DOT) will be launching a dashboard to help customers determine what they are owed if a flight is delayed or canceled.  

Buttigieg chastised the airlines for “unacceptable” delays and cancellations Americans have experienced this summer, saying customers “deserve clear and transparent information on the services that your airline will provide, to address the expenses and inconveniences resulting from these disruptions.” 

• To help with that process, Buttigieg said the DOT website will launch a dashboard before Labor Day weekend, on Sept. 2, where customers can find information about what each airline carrier offers in the event of a delay or cancellation. 
  
• “The Department is creating an interactive dashboard that provides air travelers with a single venue where they can locate easy-to-read, comparative summary information on the services or amenities that each of the large U.S. airlines provide when the cause of a cancelation or delay was due to circumstances within the airline’s control,” Buttigieg told the CEOs. 

The Hill’s Lexi Lonas has the details here.  

NEW DEMANDS 

Democrats press social media platforms over FBI threats

House Democrats asked social media platforms to turn over information about threats to federal law enforcement officials and how they combat the violent posts, according to letters sent to eight companies Friday.  

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and
Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) demanded Meta, Twitter, TikTok, Truth Social, Rumble, Gettr, Telegram and Gab respond with details about their policies and data on the threats.  

• The request comes after researchers have identified an uptick in violent posts targeting FBI agents since the search at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. 
  
• In the letter, the Democrats cited incendiary posts from their GOP colleagues that have accused the Department of Justice of being “weaponized” against Trump and called to “defund” the FBI. 

The Hill’s Rebecca Klar breaks it down here. 

Good to Know

The Biden administration is proposing to restore chemical safety regulations that were loosened under the Trump administration.  

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to reimpose certain safety requirements that apply to facilities including agricultural supply distributors, chemical manufacturers and distributors, food and beverage manufacturers and oil refineries.  

Here’s what else we have our eye on: 

• A Louisiana judge issued a permanent injunction against the Biden administration’s moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on federal lands Thursday night, a day after another court tossed an earlier injunction against it.
   
• AP: “A smaller dose of the monkeypox vaccine appears to still be effective and can be used to stretch the current supply by five times, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said Friday, echoing a recommendation made earlier this month by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).” 

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading and check out The Hill’s Finance page for the latest news and coverage. We’ll see you Monday. 

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