Weisselberg indictment creates new questions about Trump kids' hidden compensation: John Heilemann
During a panel discussion on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," regular contributor John Heilemann suggested that investigators might want to investigate if Trump Organization CFO Alan Weisselberg -- who was indicted for keeping a separate set of books for the company, among other charges -- might be doing the same for Donald Trump's children who are also employed by the company.
Speaking with co-host Joe Scarborough, the political analyst said he would be interested in hearing about the Trump kids.
"What now happens with this investigation?" Heilemann began. "The reporting now out of the investigation itself is that, you know, the prosecutors are making very clear this is the first stage of an ongoing investigation and that the next phase of the investigation turns itself more directly to Donald Trump than what we've currently seen, so there's a question about whether Weisselberg ends up flipping when it starts to get more serious for him, looking like he's facing jail time, will he become a cooperator?"
"We've seen it before, Michael Cohen saying he'd take a bullet for Donald Trump and then, facing jail time and no, 'now that I'm looking at jail time I'm going to help prosecutors,'" He continued. "That's one question: what's Donald Trump's legal jeopardy? Really the case is much more serious than it had been portrayed prior to its unveiling."
"What we saw yesterday in the indictment was, this is a massive serious tax fraud case, in which the company was apparently keeping, essentially, separate books," he explained. "These are not perks getting paid and taxes not appropriately paid; this is millions of dollars of compensation in a large-scale organization-wide scheme to evade federal taxes, state taxes and city taxes. So the case itself is much more serious and it's raised a lot of questions. If Allan Weisselberg was keeping a separate set of books for Allan Weisselberg, is it possible that he wasn't keeping a separate set of books for Donald Trump's children? That's a good question. We don't know the answer yet but that's one way in which the Trump family could be implicated going forward."
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