It’s been quite the week for a certain resident of Mar-a-Lago. “The legal stakes have just skyrocketed for former President Donald Trump and his business.” That’s according to USA Today opinion columnist Barbara McQuade. In her column on Friday, McQuade points out the revelation that there is now a “criminal capacity” in the New York investigation should be especially worrisome for Trump:
Among the various investigations and lawsuits against Trump, ranging from defamation to election fraud to his role in inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, these business frauds are the ones that should concern Trump the most. That’s because they are what prosecutors refer to as “paper” cases, meaning they are built not on eyewitness testimony but on documents. The objective evidence in the form of documents makes for particularly strong cases. Whereas witnesses can sometimes have faulty memories, poor opportunities to observe or biases that can be exposed, documents don’t lie and they don’t forget.
The other big worry should be the involvement of Allen Weisselberg. He may be the lynchpin for investigators probing Donald Trump; the longtime Chief Financial Officer of The Trump Organization is intimately familiar with the former president’s finances. In recent days, it’s come to light that prosecutors in New York are working to flip the 73 year-old. So the key question becomes – will Weisselberg turn state’s evidence?
His former daughter-in-law thinks so.
Appearing on CNN Thursday night, Jennifer Weisselberg was asked by anchor Erin Burnett “Will Allen Weisselberg flip on Trump?”
Jennifer quickly said ‘yes.’ Elsewhere in the interview, she added that Barry Weisselberg – her ex-husband – sometimes diverted money from non-profit entities to his own bank account.
She also claimed that the Trump Organization often provided fringe benefits to employees – including school tuition – to avoid paying taxes. “There’s nothing legal going on there,” she said.
Jennifer has been cooperating with investigators for months and has handed over “boxes and boxes” of documents.
Flipping Allen Weisselberg would be a major coup for prosecutors – but perhaps not the splashiest in the Trump family’s legal troubles. Michael Cohen, the former Trump fixer, predicted that that Donald Trump himself would turn on his kids if it meant staying out of jail.
Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI agent and current MSNBC columnist, writes:
While we have no idea what the future will hold, we do know that what this all means is that — if they haven’t already — it’s time for members of the Trump family who served as organization employees to each retain experienced criminal defense lawyers.
Figliuzzi adds:
Importantly, because the Trump Organization case is now criminal, individual employees and officers of that organization can face criminal charges for their specific roles in any corporate wrongdoing. Donald Jr. and Eric still serve as executive vice presidents of the organization, a title that Ivanka Trump previously also held. And, of course, before his presidency, their infamous father was at the helm of the organization.
During my FBI career, including my time leading one of the largest white-collar crime branches in the field, and later, as a corporate security executive, I saw corporate employees mistakenly think that their companies’ attorneys represented them, too, in cases of corporate malfeasance. Big mistake. A company attorney represents the company, not the individual employees or executives
