There’s a point on the taped conversation between Donald Trump and his then-attorney Michael Cohen where Cohen explains that, in setting up a scheme to have National Enquirer owner David Pecker pretend to purchase and kill the story of one of Trump’s multiple infidelities, he’s dealing with Allen Weisselberg to work out the financing of the plot. That moment is just one of many where Weisselberg, the longtime CFO of the Trump Organization, has had to step in to apply dollars to cover up Trump’s disasters.
From the beginning, insiders have indicated that to find out where Trump’s darkest secrets are buried, the go-to guy is not Cohen, but Weisselberg. And now it appears that U.S. prosecutors for the Southern District of New York are going to have both.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, Weisselberg has already appeared before a federal grand jury and has now been granted immunity by prosecutors in the Cohen investigation. While Cohen may have been Trump’s attorney for a decade, Weisselberg has managed Trump’s purse strings for decades, through multiple bankruptcies and “miracle” recoveries.
With Trump already railing against witnesses who “flip” on higher ups and suggesting that such deals “should be illegal,” the decision to hand immunity to Weisselberg is likely to raise the temperature at the White House to white hot.
Weisselberg has essentially been in charge of the Trump Organization since the election, with Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump acting more as figureheads.
Cohen has pled guilty and signaled his willingness to tell all, David Pecker has been given immunity, and now Weisselberg. The scope of the immunity given to Weisselberg and Pecker may be limited to discussions of the schemes to hide Donald Trump’s affairs by using the National Enquirer to “catch and kill” stories under the pretense of publishing them. So it’s not clear that Weisselberg’s presence in the investigation means that all Trump’s dirty laundry will come out.
But it’s another sign that no one … no one … wants to be on Donald Trump’s side when all the information comes out.