The Trump Organization and its longtime finance chief each pleaded not guilty Thursday to tax crime charges arising from a two-year investigation into former president Donald Trump's company.

It is the first criminal case New York authorities' probe has yielded. According to the indictment filed Wednesday and unveiled Thursday, from 2005 through this year Weisselberg and the company cheated the state and city out of taxes by conspiring to pay senior executives off the books.

Prosecutor Carey Dunne described a 15-year scheme "orchestrated by the most senior executives," including CFO Allen Weisselberg, that was "sweeping and audacious."

Trump himself was not charged at this stage of the investigation, jointly pursued by Vance and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both Democrats, and Dunne asserted politics played no role in the decision to bring charges.

"Politics has no role in the jury chamber and I can assure you it had no role here," Dunne said.

Weisselberg, 73, was photographed walking into a building that houses both the criminal courts and the Manhattan district attorney's office around 6:20 a.m. Thursday. He was led into court in the afternoon with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Weisselberg's lawyers, Mary Mulligan and Bryan Skarlatos, said in a statement before his appearance that the executive would "fight these charges in court." Skarlatos later said Dunne's remarks were misleading in regard to his client.

A lieutenant to generations of Trumps, Weisselberg has intimate knowledge of the former president's business dealings and the case could give prosecutors the means to pressure him into cooperating with an ongoing probe into other aspects of the company’s business.

So far, though, there's no sign that the man regarded by Trump's daughter Ivanka as a "fiercely loyal" deputy who's "stood alongside my father and our family" for decades will suddenly turn on them.

In a statement Thursday, the Trump Organization defended Weisselberg, saying the 48-year employee was being used by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s office as "a pawn in a scorched-earth attempt to harm the former president."

"This is not justice; this is politics," the Trump Organization said, arguing that neither the IRS nor any other district attorney would ever think of bringing such charges over employee benefits.

Trump, a Republican, did not respond to reporters' shouted questions about the case as he visited Texas on Wednesday. Earlier in the week, he blasted New York prosecutors as "rude, nasty, and totally biased" and said his company's actions were "standard practice throughout the U.S. business community, and in no way a crime."