The former daughter-in-law of Allen Weisselberg said on Thursday that she believes the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization whom she has known for years, will flip as investigators dig deeper into his personal and financial dealings.
When asked Thursday by CNN anchor Erin Burnett whether her ex-husband’s father whom she’s known for decades would “flip” amid a sweeping criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump and his family business, Jennifer Weisselberg delivered a one-word answer: “yes.”
Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg's former daughter-in-law, Jennifer Weisselberg, says without hesitation that he will flip on former Pres. Trump.
She also says she has hard evidence that Trump paid for her kids’ tuitions. https://t.co/Q2gmbIkmIX pic.twitter.com/0TpfonDLdC
— OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) May 21, 2021
Her response predicting that investigators would succeed in securing cooperation from Weisselberg against Trump, come after a multiple reports on Thursday indicated that New York attorney general Letitia James’s office has been criminally investigating Allen Weisselberg for months over tax issues.
That investigation likely heaps additional pressure onto the trusted financial officer, who has worked for Trump’s family business for decades. Weisselberg has not been accused of wrongdoing.
Manhattan district attorney Cy Vance’s office has reportedly also been seeking to secure his cooperation for months in its own criminal inquiry into Trump and his company related to potential bank and tax fraud. It was recently revealed that the two offices would collaborate in the criminal inquiry as James’s office notified the Trump Organization that information sought in its separate civil probe could be used in a “criminal capacity.”
Jennifer Weisselberg, who was married to Allen’s son Barry for 14 years, and has been cooperating with investigators, said that she had provided documents in the probe that show the former president had paid for the tuition of one of the couple’s children at a Manhattan private school that Trump’s son Barron had previously attended.
She told the Wall Street Journal that she and her ex-husband had never paid their children’s tuition when it reported last week that prosecutors have subpoenaed a Manhattan private school for records related to the CFO’s grandchildren.
“I have records of Donald Trump paying for one of my children’s tuition at her private school, and specifically saying in terms of control that they couldn’t go to another,” Weisselberg said during the CNN interview Thursday. “It looks like it was compensation tax benefits for the Trump Organization or for Donald Trump himself.”
“It’s basically all about tax strategies,” she added.
According to WSJ, more than $500,000 of the students’ tuition had been paid for with checks signed by either Allen Weisselberg or Trump which Jennifer Weisselberg reportedly told the paper she understood to part of Barry’s compensation package for his work at the Trump Organization.
Jennifer Weisselberg said on Thursday that she believed investigators were examining potential tax issues with the tuition payments, which have reportedly drawn scrutiny among other perks the couple received amid her ex-husband’s work for the company.
“There’s nothing legal going on there,” she added.
At what point does the Biden administration start to view all these investigations, looming trials, recriminations, and everything else generated by the Trump crime family to be a distraction and liability to their agenda? And if that is a viewpoint they hold, or will come to hold, will Biden or someone lean on NY and the DOJ to turn the boil down on it all and somehow just make it go away?
I certainly hope the answer is NEVER
This is why it’s so significant that the investigation is being spearheaded by the New York State Attorney General’s office. Sure, the MAGA crew will whine and say that “Democrats” are persecuting the two-time loser of the Presidential popular vote, but that won’t really stick to the Biden Administration or require them to expend political capital.
I was naive enough to think an indicted or convicted criminal could never attain the Presidency, but I’ve been disabused of that quaint notion.
Trump’s play is probably two-fold: to stoke violence against the prosecution team, and if that fails, to drag things out long enough so he can run, and perhaps win the Presidency to pardon himself. And, yes, I’ve also been disabused of the idea you can’t self-pardon, because you clearly can when you’re a Republican president.
Something tells me, though, he won’t pardon Weisselberg. Something for him to mull over.