Top Trump exec granted immunity in federal probe
A federal investigation that led President Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer to implicate Trump in two campaign finance crimes this week also secured the cooperation of one of the top-ranking executives at Trump’s private company.
Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer for the Trump Organization, was granted immunity by federal prosecutors in New York who were investigating Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen, according to people familiar with the probe.
On Tuesday, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felonies, including two counts related to hush money paid to women who alleged affairs with Trump. Cohen admitted he violated campaign finance law with the payments, which he said he made at Trump’s direction.
The president has denied knowing about the payments when they were made.
Weisselberg, who began working with the Trump family in the 1970s as an accountant for the president’s father, real estate magnate Fred Trump, was one of the executives who helped arrange for Cohen to be reimbursed $420,000 for money paid to keep adult-film star Stormy Daniels quiet, according to a person with knowledge of his role.
The decision to grant the 70 year-old Weisselberg immunity gave prosecutors access to one of the highestranking figures inside the president’s private company.
Over the decades, Weisselberg rose from serving as an accountant to the keeper of Trump’s personal books.
After Trump’s election, he was appointed to help run the trust that controls the president’s assets, along with two of the president’s sons, Donald Trump Jr., a fellow trustee, and Eric Trump, chairman of the trust’s advisory board
“He was really the guy in charge of the money, and that’s always a position of honor,” said one person close to the Trump Organization who requested anonymity to describe the company’s internal dynamics.
In 2000, he was named chief financial officer of the company. Weisselberg has been at the center of a financial operation that covered all parts of Trump’s life — his corporation’s finances, his personal accounts and his personal charity.