Allen Weisselberg, Donald Trump's CFO who is currently behind bars at Rikers Island Prison, could ultimately become part of the New York grand jury probe into the Stormy Daniel hush money payments. While former lawyer Michael Cohen took the fall for the payment, he testified to Congress in 2019 that Weisselberg was involved in the plot. In fact, Cohen claims he has a recording of Trump telling the two men to work out the plan.
Speaking to MSNBC's Joy Reid on Monday, Trump biographer David Cay Johnston said he expects Weisselberg is going to be hauled into this case and that his problems aren't over yet. Reid asked if this was going to be nothing more than a misdemeanor campaign finance piece. It's something that former FBI counsel Andrew Weissmann explained can be a felony if this is shown to have been a plot used more than once.
Cay Johnston explained that the district attorney could bump the charges to felonies by alleging falsification of business records.
It's a statute that "says if you falsify your business records to further another crime or to conceal it, that itself can be a felony, and that underlying crime does not itself have to be a felony," he said. "So, it's one of these one plus one equals two situations. I have speculated one of the crimes they might be looking at is the one you just cited. It's not a conventional campaign finance violation, rather it's about a group of people coming together to promote somebody's election through unlawful means. I have speculated those unlawful means are Michael Cohen's bank fraud. He got a home equity loan to pay off Stormy Daniels that's fraudulently detained."
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Trump and his lawyers have tried to claim that this was all personal and not related to the campaign. The problem is that they were paid in the month before the election. If it wasn't for the election, there would not have been a sense of urgency to handle it before the election. Even Trump's claim that he was scared of Melania, the accusation is that if she left him ahead of the election, it would have been detrimental to his campaign as well.
"Allen is a wholly owned subsidiary of Donald's mind and has been for 50 years," quipped Cay Johnston. "I think the reason that the Justice Department didn't pursue the Michael Cohen case, which looked like a slam dunk, is that they didn't see it as being the biggest case to bring if you're going to go after a former president. On the other hand, Alvin Bragg decided not to go the RICO route, which I thought was a very smart move."
The comment is a reference to the possibility that Trump's payments were part of a racketeering plot, which some legal analysts debated could have been.
"Now he's come back with using the New York state business laws, which could be very effective," Cay Johnston continued. "Two misdemeanors, you get a felony, and his own efforts now by Trump's lawyers are going to be to say, 'Oh, this is all illegitimate the laws are murky. We don't know what we're doing here.' And it may be a broader case than that Weisselberg is right now in jail he has an agreement that he has to fully and faithfully testify. I don't think he did that in his own trial, the one for the Trump Organization and himself but he didn't flake out either completely I'm sure there's been a serious effort to say to him, 'You're going to have to be candid about what happened here and bringing in other witnesses like Jeff McConney, suggest that there's other evidence that Allen Weisselberg knew about these illicit payments."
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McConney was the finance guy under Weisselberg. Reid asked if pressure on the Trump Org. is the way they get to Donald Trump.
"It seems to me, if you and I agree, that if I'm going to rob a bank and give you the money, we're both supposed to go to jail, not just me," she said.
Cay Johnston explained that Bragg is working on getting the Trump staff, most of whom are still on his payroll, and get them to face off against "the evidence that they cannot escape."
Trump never uses text messages or email and he tears things up to keep things hidden. So, the information will come from his staff.
See the full conversation below or at the link here.
Trump biographer walks through how Allen Weisselberg will become part of the New York grand jurywww.youtube.com
