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Trump Organization’s Criminal Trial For Tax Fraud Starts—Here Are The Consequences It Could Face
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Topline
Jury selection begins Monday in the Trump Organization’s criminal trial for alleged tax fraud—which will only result in the company having to pay monetary damages if it’s found guilty, though a conviction could have more damaging knock-on effects for former President Donald Trump’s business.
The Trump Organization is going to trial on charges of criminal tax fraud after allegedly paying … [+]
Key Facts
The Trump Organization is on trial after being indicted on charges of criminal tax fraud, scheme to defraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records, with Manhattan prosecutors alleging the company “devised and operated a scheme to defraud” tax authorities by paying executives through gifts and other “off the books” compensation.
Weisselberg has already pleaded guilty to the scheme, through which he allegedly received approximately $1.76 million in indirect compensation between 2005 and 2021, but no other Trump Organization executives—including Trump or his family members—have been directly implicated in the criminal case.
If found guilty, the Trump Organization will only have to pay a maximum of approximately $1.6 million in fines, which CNN notes is the highest amount allowed under state law for this kind of crime.
A conviction would not result in any further direct consequences to the Trump Organization, including the dissolution of the company.
It could make it less likely that creditors or other business partners will be willing to work with the Trump Organization, however, legal experts cited by Bloomberg and NBC News noted, and Brooklyn Law School professor Miriam Baer told Reuters the trial alone “casts a pall of uncertainty over the company” that could affect its future business deals.
Legal experts cited by Insider also note a conviction could persuade the federal government to stop doing business with the Trump Organization—such as Secret Service agents being charged to stay at Trump properties—citing federal regulations that allow government contractors to be “debarred” if they’ve committed crimes like tax evasion or falsification of records.
Crucial Quote
“Is it definitive that a company convicted of a crime will be shunned by lenders and creditors? Not necessarily,” attorney Daniel Horwitz, a former prosecutor at the Manhattan district attorney’s office that brought the charges, told Bloomberg. “Is it a good thing if the Trump Organization is convicted of cheating the government of millions of dollars in taxes over the years? No, it’s not good.”
What To Watch For
Jury selection in the case is expected to last for approximately two weeks, Law360 reports, as attorneys in the case try to weed out potential jurors who have a strong political bias against Trump. The trial itself will then take approximately five to six weeks, New York State Judge Juan Merchan said ahead of jury selection Monday, which will include testimony from Weisselberg on the alleged tax fraud scheme.
Chief Critic
The Trump Organization has pleaded not guilty to the charges against it, and attorneys representing the company at trial told the New York Law Journal they’ll argue that even though Weisselberg pleaded guilty, there’s “no evidence” to show the company itself did anything wrong. “Our defense has always been that these corporate entities are not liable for things that employees do behind the corporation’s back,” attorney Michael van der Veen told the Journal. “The corporation received no benefit from the tax crimes.”
Key Background
The Trump Organization and Weisselberg were indicted in July 2021 following a years-long investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office into the company’s financials. (That investigation has so far not resulted in any other charges.) The indictment alleges the Trump Organization paid for Weisselberg’s Manhattan apartment, private school tuition for his family members and leases for Mercedes Benz vehicles for him and his wife, among other methods of indirect compensation, and the Trump Organization allegedly fraudulently misreported income to both Weisselberg and other unnamed executives to avoid paying higher taxes. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to the charges against him in August and will now serve only up to five months in prison, avoiding a potential 15-year sentence if he had been found guilty at trial. CNN reports the Trump Organization’s trial comes after the company and the Manhattan DA’s office discussed a possible plea deal a few weeks ago, which didn’t come to fruition. According to sources cited by CNN, the Trump Organization was only willing to plead guilty to committing a misdemeanor while the DA’s office wanted them to plead guilty to felony charges, and Trump himself was unwilling to let the company make any guilty pleas at all.
What We Don’t Know
What other punishments Trump and his company may face outside of this trial. New York Attorney General Letitia James has separately sued the Trump Organization, Trump, his children and other business associates for allegedly fraudulently inflating the company’s assets. That case could have much more significant impacts for the Trump Organization if they lose in court, including having its business certificates canceled in New York, Trump and his children being barred from leading New York businesses and a heftier $250 million fine. While that litigation is a civil lawsuit, James said her office has also found evidence Trump and his business violated criminal laws, including federal ones, and has thus referred its findings to the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service. That means it’s possible Trump could be prosecuted in federal court as well. The former president is also facing multiple investigations from the Justice Department over him bringing White House documents back to Mar-A-Lago and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, are also separately probing Trump’s post-election scheme.
Further Reading
Trump Org. criminal tax fraud trial kicks off Monday (CNN)
Trump Firm’s Tax Fraud Trial Promises Ex-CFO as Star Witness (Bloomberg)
5 Takeaways From The Trump Organization’s Indictment (Forbes)
Allen Weisselberg—Longtime Trump Organization CFO—Pleads Guilty In Tax Scheme (Forbes)
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Alison Durkee, Forbes Staff
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Cardi B wins California jury trial in art copyright infringement case
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A jury sided with Cardi B on Friday in a copyright infringement case involving a man who claimed the Grammy-winning rapper misused his back tattoos for her sexually suggestive 2016 mixtape cover art.
The federal jury in Southern California ruled Kevin Michael Brophy did not prove Cardi B misappropriated his likeness. After the jury forewoman read the verdict, the rapper hugged her attorneys and appeared joyful.
Cardi B thanked the jurors, admitting she was “pretty nervous” before hearing the verdict.
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to lose or not,” she said after leaving the courthouse. She was swarmed by several reporters, photographers and more than 40 high schoolers who chanted her name. One fan held up a sign asking if she could take him to his homecoming dance, to which she replied “Yes, I’ll see what I can do.”
“I told myself if I win, I was going to cuss Mr. Brophy out. But I don’t have it in my heart to cuss him out,” she said. In the courtroom, Cardi B had a brief, cordial conversation with Brophy and shook his hand.
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Brophy filed the lawsuit a year after the rapper’s 2016 mixtape was released. He called himself a “family man with minor children,” and said he was caused ” distress and humiliation ” by the artwork – which showed a tattooed man from behind with his head between the rapper’s legs inside a limousine. The man’s face cannot be seen.
“At the end of the day, I do respect you as an artist,” Brophy said to Cardi B.
Brophy’s lawyer, A. Barry Cappello, said photo-editing software was used to put the back tattoo, which has appeared in tattoo magazines, onto the male model featured on the mixtape cover.
But Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, disputed the allegations during her testimony earlier in the week – and had such an intense exchange with Cappello that the trial was briefly halted by U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney.
Cardi B said she felt Brophy hadn’t suffered any consequences as a result of the artwork. She said Brophy has harassed her legally for five year – and even at one point said she missed the “first step” of her youngest child because of the trial.
Cardi B said an artist used only a “small portion” of the tattoos without her knowledge. She had previously said the cover art – created by Timm Gooden – was transformative fair use of Brophy’s likeness.
Cappello said Gooden was paid $50 to create a design, but was told to find another tattoo after he turned in an initial draft. He said Gooden googled “back tattoos” before he found an image and pasted it on the cover.
Cardi B’s lawyer, Peter Anderson, said Brophy and the mixtape image are unrelated, noting the model did not have neck tattoos – which Brophy does.
“It’s not your client’s back,” Cardi B said about the image, which featured a Black model. Brophy is white. The rapper pointed out that she posted a photo of the “famous Canadian model” on her social media.
“It’s not him,” she continued. “To me, it doesn’t look like his back at all. The tattoo was modified, which is protected by the First Amendment.”
Cardi B said the image hasn’t hindered Brophy’s employment with a popular surf and skate apparel brand or his ability to travel the world for opportunities.
“He hasn’t gotten fired from his job,” said the rapper, who implied that the mixtape was not a lucrative one for her. “He hasn’t gotten a divorce. How has he suffered? He’s still in a surf shop at this job. Please tell me how he’s suffered.”
Last month, Cardi B pleaded guilty to a criminal case stemming from a pair of brawls at New York City strip clubs that required her to perform 15 days of community service. Earlier this year, the rapper was awarded $1.25 million in a defamation lawsuit against a celebrity news blogger who posted videos falsely stating she used cocaine, had contracted herpes and engaged in prostitution.
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Paul Flores found guilty of first-degree murder in the 1996 disappearance and death of Kristin Smart
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The last man seen with Kristin Smart was convicted Tuesday of killing the college freshman, who vanished from a California campus 26 years ago.
Jurors unanimously found Paul Flores guilty of first-degree murder, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reported. A jury in a separate trial found his father, Ruben Flores, not guilty of charges of being accessory to murder after the fact for allegedly helping to conceal the crime.
The conflicting verdicts were read moments apart in the same courtroom.
Smart disappeared from California Polytechnic State University over Memorial Day weekend in 1996. Her remains were never found.
Prosecutors maintain the younger Flores, now 45, killed the 19-year-old during an attempted rape on May 25, 1996, in his dorm room at Cal Poly, where both were first-year students. He was the last person seen with Smart as he walked her home from an off-campus party where she became intoxicated.
His father, now 81, was accused of helping to bury the slain student behind his home in the nearby community of Arroyo Grande and later digging up the remains and moving them.
Monterey County Superior Court Judge Jennifer O’Keefe thanked the jurors for their service after the guilty verdict in the murder case was announced.
“I wish to express to you the appreciation and that of the parties for your service in this case,” she said. “It is a great personal sacrifice to serve as a juror. … You have been very attentive and conscientious throughout this case.”
The son’s defense attorney, Robert Sanger, had tried to pin the killing on someone else — noting that Scott Peterson, who was later convicted at a sensational trial of killing his pregnant wife and the fetus she was carrying — was also a Cal Poly student at the time.
Daniel Dreifuss / AP
During his closing arguments, the son’s defense attorney, Robert Sanger, told jurors that no attempted rape occurred and he cast doubt on testimony from witnesses, including a student who was in Smart’s dorm who testified to seeing Flores in Smart’s room.
He also referred to forensic evidence offered by the prosecution as “junk science.”
“This case was not prosecuted for all these years because there’s no evidence,” Sanger said. “It’s sad Kristin Smart disappeared, and she may have gone out on her own, but who knows?”
Paul Flores had long been considered a suspect in the killing. He had a black eye when investigators interviewed him. He told them he got it playing basketball with friends, who denied his account, according to court records. He later changed his story to say he bumped his head while working on his car.
However, the father and son were only arrested in 2021 after the case was revived.
Investigators conducted dozens of fruitless searches for Smart’s body over two decades but in the past two years they turned their attention to Ruben Flores’ home about 12 miles south of Cal Poly in the community of Arroyo Grande.
Behind latticework beneath the deck of his large house on a dead end street, archaeologists working for police in March 2021 found a soil disturbance about the size of a casket and the presence of human blood, prosecutors said. The blood was too degraded to extract a DNA sample.
The trial was held in Salinas, 110 miles north of San Luis Obispo, after a judge granted a defense request to move it. The defense argued that it was unlikely the Flores’ could receive a fair trial with so much much notoriety in the city of about 47,000 people.
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“That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson on trial on 3 rape charges
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Danny Masterson, former star of the long-running sitcom “That ’70s Show,” is about to face three women in court who say he raped them two decades ago at a trial whose key figures are all current or former members of the Church of Scientology.
Opening statements could begin as early as Tuesday in the Los Angeles trial of the 46-year-old Masterson, and while a judge has expressed her determination not to have the church become the center of the proceedings, it will inevitably loom large.
Masterson is charged with raping the women between 2001 and 2003 in his home, which functioned as a social hub when he was at the height of his fame. Masterson has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
One of the women had been Masterson’s longtime girlfriend. Another was a longtime friend, and the third a newer acquaintance.
All three were members of the Church of Scientology, as Masterson still is. All three accusers have since left, and they said the church’s insistence that it deal internally with problems between members made them hesitant at first to go to authorities.
“This is not going to become a trial on Scientology,” Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo asserted at a pre-trial hearing. But she said she would allow its discussion as a reason why the women delayed reporting to authorities.
Testimony at a preliminary hearing last year to determine whether Masterson should go to trial last year included frequent use of Scientology jargon that lawyers had to ask the witnesses to explain. And the trial’s witness list is full of members and former members of the church, which has a strong presence in Los Angeles and has counted many famous figures among its members. The list includes former member Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley and former wife of Michael Jackson.
Masterson’s initial attorney in the case,Thomas Mesereau, emphasized his client’s Scientology connections, saying his arrest was the result of anti-religious bias from police and prosecutors. The lawyer attempted unsuccessfully to subpoena alleged communications between the accusers and actor Leah Remini, a former Scientologist who has become on of the church’s foremost detractors, authoring a book and hosting a documentary series.
Masterson’s lead attorney for the trial, Phillip Cohen, appears to be taking the opposite approach, seeking in a pretrial motion to minimize mentions of the institution, which has garnered much negative publicity in recent years because of prominent dissidents like Remini. Some potential jurors have been dismissed based on their opinions of the church.
“I think leaving the Church of Scientology out of it is a good plan,” said Emily D. Baker, a former Los Angeles County prosecutor who now works as a legal analyst and podcaster. “I don’t think the general public has an overwhelmingly positive view, I think there is a lot of skepticism.”
Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller, the lead prosecutor, may want to tread carefully on the subject too.
“It can feel heavy handed when you have the government bringing someone’s religion into a prosecution,” said Baker, who is not involved in the case. “I think there is a careful line to be considered. The church is not on trial, you don’t want to give jurors a sense that you’re going after it.”
Masterson is charged with three counts of rape by force or fear, which could mean up to 45 years in prison if if he’s convicted.
At last year’s preliminary hearing, one woman testified that they were five years into a relationship when she woke to Masterson raping her one night in 2001.
Another, a onetime friend of Masterson’s who had been born into Scientology, testified that, in 2003, he had taken her upstairs from the hot tub at his Los Angeles home and raped her in his bedroom.
The third woman said Masterson raped her on a night in 2003 after texting her to come to his house. She testified she had set boundaries and was clear there was to be no sex.
One of the women, Masterson’s friend, unhappy with the way the Scientology ethics board handled her complaint about him, filed a police report in 2004 that didn’t result in charges. In 2016, she connected and shared stories with the woman who says she was raped while in a relationship with Masterson. Each would file a police report that year. Masterson’s former girlfriend said she did so after telling her story to her husband, who helped her understand that she had been raped. The third woman went to police in 2017.
Masterson’s then-attorneys suggested in their cross-examination of the women that all had retroactively reframed consensual sex as rape, and said the age of the incidents made accurate memories impossible.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they were victims of sexual abuse unless they come forward publicly.
Masterson was one of the first Hollywood figures to be prosecuted in the #MeToo era. His is one of several high-profile sexual assault cases that have gone to trial around the fifth anniversary of the reporting of accusations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, which transformed the #MeToo movement into an international reckoning.
Weinstein’s second rape and sexual assault trial — he’s already been convicted in New York — is happening simultaneously, just down the hall from Masterson’s. In New York, civil trials have begun for actor Kevin Spacey and for screenwriter and director Paul Haggis, who are both being sued for sexual assault.
Haggis is himself a Scientology dissident, and the judge in that case is allowing him to argue that the church is behind the allegations against him.
From 1998 until 2006, Masterson starred as Steven Hyde on Fox’s “That ’70s Show,” which made stars of Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis and Topher Grace and is getting an upcoming Netflix reboot with “That ’90s Show.”
Masterson had reunited with Kutcher on the Netflix comedy “The Ranch” but was written off the show when an LAPD investigation was revealed in December 2017.
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Parkland prosecutors seek probe into alleged juror threat
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Parkland prosecutors seek probe into alleged juror threat – CBS News
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Harvey Weinstein’s Los Angeles sexual assault trial set to begin
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Five years after women’s stories about him made the #MeToo movement explode, Harvey Weinstein is going on trial in Los Angeles, the city where he once was a colossus at the Oscars.
Already serving a 23-year sentence for a conviction for rape and sexual assault in New York, the 70-year-old former movie mogul faces different allegations, including several that prosecutors say occurred during a pivotal Oscar week in L.A. Jury selection for an eight-week trial begins Monday.
Weinstein has been indicted on four counts of rape and seven other sexual assault counts involving five women, who will appear in court as Jane Does to tell their stories. He has pleaded not guilty. The alleged sexual assaults span from 2004 to 2013, and most occurred in hotel rooms in L.A. and Beverly Hills, prosecutors said.
Four more women will be allowed to take the stand to give accounts of Weinstein sexual assaults that did not lead to charges, but which prosecutors hope will show jurors he had a propensity for committing such acts.
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In February 2020, a Manhattan jury found Weinstein guilty of third-degree rape for sexually assaulting an actress in a New York City hotel room in 2013, and one count of a criminal sex act for forcing oral sex on a former production assistant in 2006.
In August, a New York judge granted Weinstein’s application to appeal the conviction.
In June, British prosecutors also charged Weinstein with sexually assaulting a woman back in 1996.
Starting in the 1990s, Weinstein, through the company Miramax that he ran with his brother, was an innovator in running broad and aggressive campaigns promoting Academy Award nominees. He had unmatched success, pushing films like “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Artist” to best picture wins and becoming among the most thanked men ever during Oscar acceptance speeches.
Miramax and its successor, The Weinstein Co., were based in New York, where Weinstein lived and did business, but that didn’t diminish his presence in Hollywood.
“He was a creature of New York, but he was also a creature of Los Angeles,” said Kim Masters, editor at large for The Hollywood Reporter and a longtime observer of the movie industry. “He had this huge Golden Globes party that was always well beyond capacity when he was in his heyday. He was the king of Hollywood in New York and L.A.”
It was during Oscars week in 2013, when Jennifer Lawrence would win an Academy Award for the Weinstein Co.’s “Silver Linings Playbook” and Quentin Tarantino would win for writing the company’s “Django Unchained,” that four of the 11 alleged crimes took place.
Like most of the incidents in the indictments, they happened under the guise of business meetings at luxury hotels in Beverly Hills and L.A., which Weinstein used as his California headquarters and where he could be seen during awards season and throughout the year. He was treated as more than a VIP. At a pre-trial hearing, the chauffeur who drove Weinstein around Los Angeles testified that even he was allowed to take as much as $1,000 in cash in Weinstein’s name from the front desk of the hotel where the mogul was staying.
By the time stories about him in The New York Times and The New Yorker in October of 2017 brought about his downfall, Weinstein’s power to seemingly will films to win awards had diminished, and his company had fallen into financial trouble.
“His stature changed, he was no longer the king of Oscar, which was really what made him vulnerable,” Masters said.
The Los Angeles trial is likely to be far less of a spectacle than the New York proceedings, and not merely because it’s a sequel and Weinstein is already serving a long sentence.
Foot traffic is sparse and there is no grand entrance at the downtown L.A. courthouse that’s hosting the trial. Weinstein will not be visible to any media horde or protesters outside as he was in Manhattan, as he’ll be ushered into the courtroom straight from jail – once he’s changed from his prison garb into a suit – across a short hallway where no cameras are allowed that could capture him.
Only a dozen reporters, including two sketch artists, will be allowed into the small courtroom each day, compared to several dozen in New York.
Weinstein will also be represented by different lawyers in Los Angeles, Alan Jackson and Mark Werksman. They have expressed worries that the movies may play a role in trial.
The film “She Said,” which fictionalizes the work of two New York Times reporters and their bombshell stories on Weinstein, is set to be released midway through the trial, on Nov. 18.
Weinstein’s lawyers lost a bid to have the proceedings delayed over the film, with the judge rejecting their argument that publicity surrounding it would prejudice a potential jury against him.
“This case is unique,” Werksman said at a pretrial hearing. “Mr. Weinstein’s notoriety and his place in our culture at the center of the firestorm which is the #MeToo movement is real, and we’re trying to do everything we can to avoid having a trial when there will be a swirl of adverse publicity toward him.”
Weinstein’s trial is one of several with #MeToo connections that have begun or are about to begin as the fifth anniversary of the movement’s biggest moment passes, including the rape trial of “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson just down the hall from Weinstein’s, and the New York sexual assault civil trial of Kevin Spacey.
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Judge vacates 67-year-old Sioux City man’s guilty verdict for enticing a minor
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SIOUX CITY — A judge has vacated a jury verdict in which a Sioux City man was found guilty of offering a 14-year-old girl $600 for sex, ruling there was not enough evidence presented at trial to show the man knew the girl was underage.
District Judge Jeffrey Neary granted a defense motion for a judgment of acquittal, found Danny Beard not guilty of the charge of enticing away a minor and dismissed the case.
Beard
A jury in August found Beard, 67, guilty at the conclusion of a two-day trial in Woodbury County District Court. He had faced a five-year prison sentence for the Class D felony.
Neary, who presided over the trial, focused his ruling on the fourth element of the crime: that at the time of the Nov. 14 incident, Beard “reasonably believed (the girl) was under 16.”
In his ruling, Neary said his review of the trial transcript and video exhibits and recollection of the evidence led him to conclude the prosecution presented no definitive evidence Beard knew the girl’s age prior to the incident.
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“It is clear to the court on this evidence that the age of (the girl) was not clear at the time of the incident and further that nothing in this evidence would indicate that (she) was under the age of 16 at the time of the incident,” Neary wrote.
Beard was accused of pulling up next to the girl in his pickup truck as she was walking in the parking lot of her grandmother’s apartment complex, asking what a “pretty girl” like her was doing out so late and then asking, “You want to come with me?” before saying, “I’ll give you 500 (dollars).”
Beard, who lived in the same apartment complex, parked his pickup and approached the girl as she was entering the apartment building and offered the girl $500 to come up to his apartment, then raised his offer to $600. The girl went to her grandmother’s apartment, and her grandmother filed a police report.
Beard later told an investigator he thought the girl was someone else and that his offer of money was for cleaning his apartment, not for sex. He told police he did not know the girl’s age until after the incident.
In his resistance to the defense’s motion for a new trial, Assistant Woodbury County Attorney James Loomis said the evidence should be taken together in context rather than singled out. Video surveillance, he said, showed not only what Beard said to the girl, but how he said it, leaving viewers to conclude he was offering money for sex. The girl also visited her grandmother several times a week and often encountered Beard, who was familiar with her and would have “reasonably known” she was under age 16.
Neary said in his ruling that in the video and during her trial testimony, the girl appeared mature for her age, and he himself would have guessed she was between age 16-18. Neary also said it was dark at the time Beard encountered the girl, who, the judge said, resembles her older sister who was living with their grandmother.
The prosecution’s evidence, Neary said, did little more than “raise suspicion, speculation and conjecture” that Beard would have reasonably known the girl was under age 16.
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Oath Keepers trial begins as January 6 committee postpones hearing
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Oath Keepers trial begins as January 6 committee postpones hearing – CBS News
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Jury selection begins in electric vehicle startup Nikola founder’s fraud trial
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Jury selection began Monday in the fraud trial of Trevor Milton, the founder and former executive chairman of Nikola Corp accused of lying about the electric truck startup’s vehicles.
Milton was indicted last year on charges of securities fraud and wire fraud. Authorities have accused Milton, of Oakley, Utah, of making false claims about the company’s technology, and said it led to some investors losing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Milton pleaded not guilty, and has been free on $100 million bail.
Prosecutors allege that Milton’s false claims included saying an early prototype of an electric truck could be driven when it only came close because company engineers rolled it down a hill for a commercial.
A 2020 report from Hindenburg Research claimed the company’s success amounted to “an intricate fraud” and based on “an ocean of lies,” including stenciling the words “hydrogen electric” on the side of a vehicle that was actually powered by natural gas.
The Securities and Exchange Commission filed separate civil charges.
Milton started Nikola in 2015 and announced that its stock would be publicly listed in 2020.
He resigned in September of that year after the company had signed a $2 billion agreement with General Motors and following a report making allegations of fraud. At that time, Nikola said the report was filled with misleading statements and accusations.
GM exited its equity stake in the startup in 2021 after Nikola shares cratered, reported Reuters at the time. Nikola’s stock reached a high of nearly $66 in mid-2020, but have since fallen to less than $6.
The company paid $125 million last year to settle a civil case against it from the SEC. Nikola didn’t admit to any wrongdoing in making that agreement.
In January, the Nikola dropped a $2 billion patent lawsuit in which the EV startup alleges Tesla stole the design of its Nikola One electric truck for the Tesla Semi, which was unveiled in 2017, reported Bloomberg.
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