Government

NY Prosecutors Invite Trump's Accountant To Testify Against His Boss, Sweeten Offer With Subpoena For His Personal Finances

They're gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.

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(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Last night, the New York Times broke the news that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. has subpoenaed personal financials from Allen H. Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime accountant, in an attempt to convince him to testify against his boss.

Vance is also putting the squeeze on Weisselberg’s sons, getting the skinny on the family finances from the accountant’s former daughter-in-law Jennifer Weisselberg, who is in the middle of an ugly divorce from his son Barry, who manages the Trump Wollman Rink in Central Park.

Prosecutors: They’re just like everyone else. Only meaner.

Weisselberg, who has kept the Trump family’s books for close to 50 years, has long been the white whale for Trump watchers. If there are bodies buried in the books, he knows where they are. And according to former Trumpland fixer Michael Cohen, it’s a whole graveyard.

Cohen says that the former president routinely submitted false valuations on his properties, depending on whether he was seeking a mortgage or a lower tax bill. And indeed Vance’s office appears to be focused on these, with a new round of subpoenas to Trump’s lenders and for internal Trump Organization valuations of various properties.

Which is not to say that Vance has abandoned his original quest to discover how the company accounted for the $130,000 Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels to keep her mouth shut about an alleged sexual relationship with then-candidate Trump. Cohen pled guilty to making an illegal campaign contribution and not disclosing it, since the money was clearly intended to benefit Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. World’s Greatest Lawyer Rudy Giuliani explicitly admitted it on national television, when he was explaining to Sean Hannity how the Trump Organization grossed the $130,000 up to $420,000 to cover taxes and overhead, relabeled it a “retainer,” and “funneled it through a law firm” to Cohen in monthly checks of $35,000.

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This would be appear to be a binary issue: Either they deducted it as a business expense on the company’s 2016 return, or they didn’t. Curiously, Trump spent four years fighting to keep that return private, going all the way to the Supreme Court.

HUH.

Whether Weisselberg is inclined to talk, though, is another matter. As Jennifer Weisselberg told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, “His whole worth is ‘Does Donald like me today?’ It’s his whole life, his core being. He’s obsessed. He has more feelings and adoration for Donald than for his wife.”

That was the article which contained the memorable anecdote about Trump  passing around naked photos of women on his yacht at the shivah for Weisselberg’s mother. Stay classy!

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Asked if her former father-in-law would ever turn on his boss, Jennifer Weisselberg responded “I don’t know. For Donald, it’s a business. But for Allen it’s a love affair.”

On the other hand, he’s done it before — twice. Weisselberg was granted a limited immunity agreement in 2018 to testify to the Southern District of New York about the Stormy Daniels payoff during the Mueller investigation. And Weisselberg’s testimony to the New York Attorney General about self-dealing at the Trump “charity” got the family’s foundation disbanded and resulted in a $2 million fine. And yet the Trump family refuses to fire him.

HUH, AGAIN.

So, while past performance does not guarantee future results, it’s a safe bet that the accountant’s not going to go to jail to protect the Trump family. Looks like someone might be digging up that graveyard pretty soon.

N.Y. Seeks Trump Insider’s Records, in Apparent Bid to Gain Cooperation [NYT]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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