Weisselberg's limited immunity

Allen Weisselberg was handling the books when Fred Trump ran the company in the early 1970s. He was handling them when his son Donald made his mark with Trump Tower in the early ’80s, then teetered on personal bankruptcy in the ’90s. And he was there when Trump transformed the business around his TV celebrity in the new millennium and went on a global licensing spree.

Now the private and loyal Weisselberg is in the spotlight as the latest Trump confidant, and perhaps the most significant, to strike a deal with federal investigators for protection and to tell what he knows. Federal prosecutors have granted the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer immunity in the federal probe of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.

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Two people with knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press about the deal Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. One of them said the immunity agreement was restricted to Weisselberg’s grand jury testimony last month in the Cohen case, specifically the allegations that Cohen paid hush money to two women who claimed affairs with Trump.

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Weisselberg is believed to be one of two Trump executives mentioned in court documents who reimbursed Cohen and falsely recorded the payments as legal expenses.

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Whether the 71-year-old is continuing to help prosecutors was unclear. Asked if Weisselberg was cooperating further, one of the sources declined to comment.

  AP

I'll take that as a yes.

Weisselberg’s deal comes on the heels of several media reports Thursday that Trump’s longtime friend David Pecker, the CEO of National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc., has also been granted immunity in the Cohen probe, as well as the company’s chief content officer, Dylan Howard.

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Weisselberg, an intensely private, loyal numbers-man for Trump, was mentioned on an audiotape that Cohen’s lawyer released in July of Cohen talking with Trump about paying for Playboy model Karen McDougal’s silence in the months leading up to the election. Cohen says on the tape that he’d already spoken about the payment with Weisselberg on “how to set the whole thing up.”

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[A]s a long-serving employee in the Trump family business, he is rich repository of knowledge, and the idea of him answering questions to investigators under oath poses a new danger for the president as federal prosecutors in Washington and Manhattan dig deeper into the president’s business affairs.

From his first job helping with the books for Trump’s father, Fred, in 1973, the Pace University graduate has gotten his fingers into nearly every aspect of the family business — vetting deals, arranging financing, auditing, managing cash — eventually rising to oversee all finances of its far-flung operations.

And aside from Trump, he is perhaps best qualified to answer two of the big questions about the businessman-turned-president over the years: Is he really worth $10 billion, as he claims, and what’s in his tax returns?

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In addition to his title as chief financial officer, Weisselberg holds executive positions at many Trump entities, including director of the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which is being sued by the New York state attorney general for allegedly tapping donations to settle legal disputes among other illegal uses.

Mr. Weaselberg is no doubt up to his eyeballs in Trump sleaze and criminality. He'll have lots of reason to cooperate.

Asked about what he thought of a last-minute order by Trump to catch a flight to Iowa to tend to some business during the campaign, Weisselberg said in one deposition that “it doesn’t matter what I thought. He’s my boss. I went.”

He added that it was a rare trip for him. “I have never gone anywhere with Donald.”

Sad!

Weisselberg is the key to understanding Trump's finances. He may well be the only person who could possibl[y] understand and explain the full scope of Trump's financial life. And now, he has been granted immunity to talk about at least a small part of that world with prosecutors in New York.

That fact has to scare Trump. But, if Weisselberg's immunity deal extends beyond what he knew about the Cohen and Daniels' payments, look out. That would be the biggest domino -- by far -- to fall in the broadening investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

  CNN

Even if the immunity was for only a limited area pertaining to the Cohen trial, that's not the end of investigations into Trump's nefarious affairs. I expect there will be other deals to be made with Mr. Weisselberg. It remains to be seen how loyal he is.