Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg was reportedly granted immunity in exchange for his testimony in the federal criminal probe into longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty this week to tax and bank fraud, and two counts of campaign finance violations.
The news further escalates the pressure on President Trump, who is already facing legal crises on several fronts.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Weisselberg, who was subpoenaed in July, gave federal prosecutors information on Cohen, who served as Trump’s fixer and who has admitted to making hush-money payments to several women who claim they had affairs with Trump.
Cohen testified during his plea hearing this week that Trump had ordered him to make the payments in order to influence the outcome of the election — implicating the president as an un-indicted co-conspirator in a federal crime.
According to the Journal, it’s unclear whether Weisselberg gave prosecutors testimony that backed that claim.
Weisselberg has been a fixture within the Trump Organization for decades, serving first as an accountant under Fred Trump, President Trump’s father, and later rising through the ranks to become CFO and executive vice president of Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts. Notably, he also served as treasurer of the president’s now-dissolved charitable organization, the Trump Foundation, which is currently the focus of an investigation by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, over allegations of financial fraud and additional campaign finance violations.
Cohen was subpoenaed this week to testify in that probe.
Weisselberg also has a history of handling the Trump family finances, and reportedly arranged the $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who claims she had an affair with Trump in 2006. He was also named in an audio recording of a conversation between Cohen and Trump during the 2016 election, in which the two discuss a similar payment to American Media Inc., the parent company of The National Enquirer, to purchase the story of former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also says she had an affair with Trump.
AMI — whose CEO, David Pecker, is a close friend of Trump’s — had paid McDougal $150,000 for exclusive rights to her story just prior to that conversation, in August 2016, only to bury it using an industry practice known as catch-and-kill.
Pecker was also granted immunity in exchange for his testimony in the Cohen probe. The CEO reportedly told federal prosecutors Trump knew of the payment arrangement between AMI and McDougal before it took place, and said he had offered to run interference for Trump’s campaign, killing any negative stories about Trump that came his way.
With legal woes mounting, Trump has begun using increasingly antagonistic language to attack anyone he deems disloyal, such as Cohen.
Since registering his guilty plea Tuesday, Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, has been making the rounds with various news outlets, saying Cohen is ready to speak with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, and obstruction by the president.
“I can tell you that Mr. Cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel, and is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows,” Davis said on MSNBC Wednesday evening.
During an interview with Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt Thursday, Trump took aim at Cohen, suggesting it should be illegal for those accused of a crime to “flip” on others in exchange for lesser sentences — or in Weisselberg and Pecker’s case, immunity.
“If somebody defrauded a bank and he is going to get 10 years in jail or 20 years in jail, but… you can say something bad about Donald Trump, and you will go down to two years or three years […], I have seen it many times,” he said. “I have had many friends involved in this stuff. It’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal.”