Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

WASHINGTON — Not so long ago, President Donald Trump's longtime lawyer Michael Cohen hadn't implicated him in federal court.

The public didn't know that close Trump associates Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of Trump's company, and David Pecker, CEO of American Media, had been given immunity to provide evidence in that case.

And Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, hadn't been convicted of eight counts of bank and tax fraud in the first of his trials.

That was Monday.

Before then, the scandals engulfing his presidency were abstract and static. Now, they are as real as the walls of an industrial-strength garbage compactor closing in on him.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The man who knows “where all the financial bodies are buried” in President Donald Trump’s namesake organization may now lead prosecutors in the Southern District of New York directly to them.

Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer who also serves as the treasurer of the Trump Foundation, has been granted immunity by prosecutors in their ongoing investigation of Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen.

The significance of his flip, paired with Cohen’s recent plea deal, cannot be overstated: It took slightly more than a year for two of the president’s longest-serving employees, considered by many to be the last who would ever turn on him, to cooperate with federal investigators—and, in Cohen’s case, directly implicate Trump in a crime. But the news also marked a turning point in the legal assault on Trumpworld: SDNY prosecutors may now pose a more immediate threat to the president than Special Counsel Robert Mueller does.

That Weisselberg would be offered immunity is not shocking; he was called to testify in the case before a grand jury earlier this summer. But his acceptance is another matter. Earlier this week, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts including campaign-finance violations tied to hush-money payments he claimed to have made to two women “in coordination and at the direction of” Trump for the purpose of influencing the 2016 presidential election.

Also this week, news reports revealed that two other longtime Trump associates had been granted immunity in the case: David Pecker, the CEO of American Media (AMI) and a longtime friend of the president’s, and Dylan Howard, AMI’s chief content officer. AMI controls the National Enquirer, a tabloid reportedly involved in burying the women’s stories.

Taken together, SDNY seems to be homing in on Trump—and former prosecutors told me its latest steps are reminiscent of processes in organized-crime cases.

“This is a classic move in investigations of a criminal organization,” said Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor who was part of the team that convicted the Gambino family boss John Gotti. “They’re moving up the ladder. Peripheral characters are given immunity, witnesses testify, but they’re ultimately keeping their eye on the prize.”

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

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[xy5jn0]

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[Michael Scally MD]

 

[xy5jn0]

 

[xy5jn0]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Weisselberg’s cooperation is a potentially momentous turn of events for the president. Depending on how prosecutors proceed, it may take the federal tax- and bank-fraud investigation of Cohen — and, more important, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe involving Russian interference in the 2016 election — out of some of the relatively low-stakes legal issues in play so far and into the heart of the Trump Organization and the president’s business and financial dealings.

...

Weisselberg is deeply familiar with the Trump Organization’s financial housekeeping. Trump — a man who rarely trusts anyone — confided in Weisselberg and relied on him to sign off on details of the company’s most significant deals. Weisselberg oversees the trust that Trump set up to manage his interests in the Trump Organization while he’s in the White House, and also had a prominent position inside the president’s troubled charitable foundation. In short, he was privy to decisions at the Trump Organization that Cohen was never allowed to take part in.

That kind of knowledge is gold to federal investigators. Mueller’s team signaled long ago that it might take a closer look at the president’s business dealings as part of its examination of Russia’s assault on the presidential campaign. It’s likely that the probe is exploring whether Trump or others on his business and campaign teams — including members of his family — discussed exchanging policy favors (lifting economic sanctions on Russia, for example, or shifting the U.S. stance on Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine) in exchange for financial or political quid pro quos.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[xy5jn0]