Ex-prosecutor explains what Trump CFO Weisselberg will reveal to investigators after they offer him immunity
Sitting on a large MSNBC panel on Saturday morning, a former federal prosecutor said investigators in the Michael Cohen case moving forward in the Southern District of New York, will likely offer Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg immunity from prosecution if he will spill the beans on Trump's finances.
Speaking with host Joy Reid, former prosecutor Nick Akerman agreed with Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Cay Johnston that Weisselberg will plead the 5th to avoid incriminating himself, only to be offered a deal if he is willing to talk about where Trump's money comes from and goes.
"This is all one piece. Trump's not a detail person. he issues directives. Weisselberg with the Trump family goes back to when Fred Trump was running the organization, business writer David Cay Johnston explained, before noting Trump's father had a business partner who was "identified in law enforcement reports as a front for the Gambino and Genovese Mafia families."
"All the money, in and out. Whatever payments took place, whatever contracts had to go, Weisselberg will know about those," Johnston continued. "He may be in a position when he's called to testify to invoke the 5th Amendment right. I'm sure prosecutors and you can talk about this, would in a moment give him transactional immunity because we don't care about him. He's not the focus of this. but he knows where the money went and where the money came in and where it went out, which is critical to understanding what is going on here."
Asked by host Reid who he would give immunity to, ex-prosecutor Akerman singled out the recently subpoenaed CFO.
"Weisselberg is clearly one of those people," Akerman explained."He was involved in every single one of Donald Trump's tax returns. There is no doubt in my mind that [special counsel Robert ] Mueller has those tax returns."
"But when you look at returns you see different entries and different companies," he added. "You can't really look at the returns themselves and understand what happened without having a tax preparer actually explain the entries and take you through the flow of money and flow of information that goes from the underlying records, whatever those may be, into the returns."
"So, in a sense, Weisselberg is extremely important witness with respect to understanding how the money came from Russia, went into the Trump organization how it was reported, what companies were used to hide that money, who was responsible for that, and then what happened to that money," he detailed. "So it's not just a matter of we have all his returns, but you really need somebody who can really explain to you what those numbers mean and the significance of everything that appears on those returns."
You can watch the video below via MSNBC: