The Trump Organization stands trial this week in what prosecutors allege was a 15-year scheme to compensate top executives of former President Donald Trump’s company “off the books” to help them avoid paying taxes — with the company's former chief financial officer appearing as the prosecution's star witness.Jury selection began Monday, with potential panelists likely to be questioned intensely about whether they can be impartial in a case that involves the former president and his eponymous company.Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has said Weisselberg had used his position at the company “to bilk taxpayers and enrich himself,” and that his “plea agreement directly implicates the Trump Organization in a wide range of criminal activity and requires Weisselberg to provide invaluable testimony."The company said in a statement at the time of Weisselberg's plea that he was an “honorable man who, for the past four years, has been harassed, persecuted and threatened by law enforcement, particularly the Manhattan District attorney, in their never ending, politically motivated quest to get President Trump.”Merchan, who is presiding over the trial in New York state Supreme Court in Lower Manhattan, shot down almost all the arguments presented by attorneys for the Trump Organization and Weisselberg in August, ruling that the evidence that was presented to the grand jury “was legally sufficient to support the charges in the indictment,” and that those proceedings were properly conducted and their “integrity unimpaired.”The felonies that the indictment alleges the company committed include conspiracy, scheming to defraud, criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records.New York Attorney General Letitia James, who assisted the Manhattan district attorney's office with its probe of the Trump Organization, filed a separate lawsuit against Trump and the company, charging they had overstated the company's financial assets by billions of dollars."