Trump Org paid for CFO's grandchildren prep-school with Trump-signed checks: report

Trump Org paid for CFO's grandchildren prep-school with Trump-signed checks: report
Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg/Screenshot

More strange things are becoming known about the Trump Organizations' finances as the ex-daughter-in-law of CFO Allen Weisselberg continues to cooperate with prosecutors.

According to the Wall Street Journal, prosecutors have issued a new subpoena related to the Trump Organization's chief financial officer.

"The subpoena seeks information from Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, where grandchildren of Weisselberg are students," the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. "From 2012 to 2019, more than $500,000 of the children's tuition was paid for with checks signed by either Mr. Weisselberg or Mr. Trump, the two children's mother, Jennifer Weisselberg, told The Wall Street Journal. She is the former wife of Mr. Weisselberg's son, Barry."

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. and his investigators were told that Barry clearly understood that tuition was part of the compensation package from the Trump Organization. He was the man who ran the skating rink in New York City. Prosecutors began looking into the curious salary of Barry Weisselberg in April. He was paid more than $200,000 in salary for running the rink with $40,000 in annual bonuses. The $500,000 in tuition costs is being added to that salary.

"Columbia Prep is a private school of roughly 1,300 prekindergarten through high-school students on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Tuition this academic year ran more than $50,000," the report explained.

Former prosecutors explained to the Wall Street Journal that it's possible the DA office is looking into whether members of the Weisselberg family were evading taxes.

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen revealed in an interview that Weisselberg has the receipts on and while he's loyal to the former president, he's far more loyal to his family.

"He's not going to let his boys go to prison," Cohen told The New Yorker in March, "and I don't think he wants to spend his golden years in a correctional institution, either."

The president's niece Mary Trump also agreed, "Allen Weisselberg knows where all the bodies are buried."

So if it appears that Barry Weisselberg might be in legal trouble, he or his father may be willing to make a deal with Vance to avoid prosecution.

Read the full report at The Wall Street Journal.

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Democratic lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee are growing frustrated with chair Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) over his leadership — including “barely-veiled personal jabs” and other provocations — and are already "vowing they won't forget" if they reclaim the majority in the midterms, Punchbowl News reported Friday.

During a recent hearing in the committee attended by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Mast “cut off” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the top Democrat on the committee, during his opening statement. Back in March, Mast chastised Meeks over his attendance after the New York Democrat pushed to subpoena Trump administration officials regarding the U.S. war against Iran.

Regarding his opening statement being cut short, Meeks said it was “disrespectful” of Mast, Punchbowl News reported. Meeks also issued a vague warning to the Florida Republican, who once controversially appeared on Capitol Hill wearing an Israel Defense Forces uniform.

“It’s something I won’t forget when I become chair,” Meeks said.

Mast, according to Punchbowl News, dismissed Democratic criticisms directed his way.

“[They] can piss and moan about it all they want,” Mast said. “If they didn’t get to all of the Republican and Democrat members, then I would have had to hear them b------- about the fact that [Rubio] didn’t stay for everybody, so I started immediately on time.”

Mast has a storied history of sparking outrage in the House Foreign Affairs Committee for his leadership, including during a hearing earlier this month in which he refused to allow a Democratic member to reclaim lost time after being interrupted by Rubio.

“He is interrupting me!” Rep. Bill Keating (D-MA) told Mast.

“Do something about it," Mast responded, declining to intervene.

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Donald Trump built his political brand on the power of national pride — and it could have been the "fatal mistake" of his second administration, according to an analysis Friday.

The American leader can't seem to understand that other countries are patriotic too, Alexander Burns wrote for Politico.

That blind spot is unraveling Trump's second term — fracturing alliances with the global right, prolonging a costly war with Iran, and leaving his own Republican Party to absorb the political damage, Burns wrote.

The warning signs were hiding in plain sight.

When Alberta Premier Danielle Smith — a populist with deep ties to the American right who once hosted Tucker Carlson in Western Canada — visited Mar-a-Lago after Trump's second election win, she looked every bit a MAGA diehard. But when pressed last fall at a Toronto policy summit about Trump potentially meddling in Alberta's volatile politics, the admiration stopped.

"I don't want any foreign influence in our politics here," Smith said flatly.

Sovereignty, it turns out, cuts both ways, Burns wrote.

Trump launched his political career as a hard-edged nationalist, demanding tougher borders and American sovereignty above all else. He cheered Britain's 2016 Brexit vote and crowned himself "Mr. Brexit." He understood, viscerally, what it meant for a people to refuse outside domination.

But that instinct has deserted him, Burns wrote.

"In his second term, Trump’s grasp of nationalist politics has slipped. He has underestimated the power of patriotism and national pride in countries other than his own," he wrote.

"This serial miscalculation has undermined Trump’s trade wars and military adventures, aggravated the cost-of-living crisis, weakened the Republican Party and battered Trump’s bonds with the global right."

His tariff threats and belittling taunts against Canada didn't break Ottawa's will, but instead triggered patriotism that swept a new prime minister, Mark Carney, into power on a platform of resisting American economic domination. His attempted humiliation of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office — dressing him down while grabbing for Ukraine's mineral wealth — was such a naked affront to Ukrainian sovereignty that Zelenskyy faced zero political consequences for telling Trump to get lost.

Dispatching Vice President JD Vance to campaign in Hungary's election didn't save Viktor Orbán from a landslide defeat. Attempts to meddle in judicial decisions in Brazil, commandeer British and Spanish airfields, and dictate military strategy to Israel all went similarly nowhere.

And then there was Iran.

Trump's expectation that he could decapitate the Islamic Republic's leadership, bomb the country into submission, and install a compliant proxy government — all without ground troops — produced a monthslong stalemate that sent energy prices soaring and ground down the global economy.

It shouldn't have surprised anyone, Burns wrote.

Even Trump's ideological admirers abroad have noticed the drift.

Jordan Bardella, the likely presidential nominee for France's far-right National Rally and once a Trump enthusiast, told Politico that second-term Trump was barely recognizable. The United States, he said, was now behaving more like an "empire." Trump himself had become "extremely unsteady and constantly shifting."

And like Smith, Bardella wanted nothing to do with a Trump endorsement. "We don't need to accept or open the door to any form of interference," he said.

President Donald Trump is exhibiting a clear pattern that shows just how badly his cognitive abilities have slipped from what they used to be, MS NOW political analyst John Heilemann said on Thursday's edition of "Deadline: White House."

Heilemann's observation came after a general discussion in which he and Nicolle Wallace outlined what they saw as the president's incompetence and lack of concern for the American people.

"Forget about your politics. Forget about which which party you prefer," said Wallace. "In normal times, he doesn't care about your pain. He doesn't care about your problems. He doesn't care about your anxiety. He doesn't care about your future. He doesn't care about your kids."

Heilemann agreed — and for starters, he pointed to his failure to pull off a simple beautification of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

"I was in Washington this week ... I went down to the Reflecting Pool," he said, and added that he'd need "malaria pills" and "mosquito netting" to be safe there, given "that swamp situation is so bad, and it's such a great metaphor for the whole Trump administration ... he was told that, you know, people were like, this is gonna be a problem. He didn't listen to them."

Between that and the Iran war, he continued, America is facing "amateur hour incompetence of everything."

As for the proof of Trump's decline, Heilemann said, "just hover on the nicknames for a moment" — specifically, the creativity of the nicknames that Trump gives to his political opponents.

"Little Marco, Low-Energy Jeb, Lyin' Ted, those were good nicknames," said Heilemann. "I think these new nicknames, Marjorie Taylor Brown, that you had that kind of explain it. Dumocrats. And now the third strike, Jon OssJerkoff. There is no clearer sign of Trump's cognitive decline than the decline in the quality of his nicknames."

"These are just bad nicknames, man," he added. "It's time to hang it up."

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