Friday, August 24, 2018 NEW YORK -- U.S. prosecutors granted immunity to longtime Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg in the investigation of former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen, sources tell ABC News.
The veteran Trump Organization employee was subpoenaed earlier this year to appear before a grand jury hearing a case presented by federal prosecutors in New York's Southern District, as ABC News previously reported.
Weisselberg's testimony related solely to the Cohen investigation, providing information in both documents and testimony earlier this year in exchange for legal immunity, sources familiar with Weisselberg's agreement with federal prosecutors say.
Weisselberg, 71, is one of the longest-serving employees of President Donald Trump, having worked for Trump's father, Fred, before joining the company decades ago.
Word of immunity for Weisselberg came a day after reports that federal prosecutors have granted immunity to National Enquirer chief David Pecker, potentially laying bare his efforts to protect his longtime friend Trump.
Trump ex-lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty this week to campaign finance violations alleging he, Trump and the tabloid were involved in buying the silence of a porn actress and a Playboy model who alleged affairs.
The National Enquirer kept a safe containing documents about hush-money payments and damaging stories it killed as part of its cozy relationship with Donald Trump leading up to 2016 presidential election, people familiar with the arrangement told The Associated Press.
Several people familiar with the Enquirer's parent, American Media Inc., who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they signed non-disclosure agreements, said the safe was a great source of power for Pecker, the company's CEO.
The Trump records were stored alongside similar documents pertaining to other celebrities' catch-and-kill deals, in which exclusive rights to people's stories were bought with no intention of publishing to keep them out of the news. By keeping celebrities' embarrassing secrets, the company was able to ingratiate itself with them and ask for favors in return.
With the revelation by prosecutors on Wednesday that a tabloid publisher admitted to paying off a Playboy model, key participants in two hush-money schemes say the transactions were intended to protect Donald J. Trump’s campaign for president.
That leaves Mr. Trump in an increasingly isolated and legally precarious position, according to election law experts. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments made in 2016 to keep two women silent about alleged affairs are now firmly framed as illegal campaign contributions.
The news about the publisher, the parent company of The National Enquirer, came on the same day that Mr. Trump’s former lawyer Michael D. Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in part for his involvement in the payments. “I blame myself for the conduct which has brought me here today,” Mr. Cohen said, “and it was my own weakness and a blind loyalty to this man” — a reference to Mr. Trump — “that led me to choose a path of darkness over light.”
Mr. Cohen said the transactions were an effort to cover up the president’s “dirty deeds,” a claim that was buttressed when federal prosecutors announced that the tabloid publisher, American Media Inc., said it had bought one of the women’s stories to ensure she “did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate.”
“A.M.I. further admitted that its principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election,” prosecutors said in a statement announcing they had struck a deal not to charge the company in exchange for its cooperation. As part of the deal, dated in September but previously kept private, the company also agreed to train employees in election law standards and appoint a qualified lawyer to vet future deals that may involve paying for stories about political candidates.
The cascading disclosures marked a turning point in the multiple investigations related to Mr. Trump and the campaign he led. Until recently, the inquiries had produced numerous guilty pleas and indictments but no direct accusations of illegality by the president. That changed with Mr. Cohen’s assertions, outlined in detail by prosecutors, that his own crimes were done “in coordination with and at the direction” of Mr. Trump.
Where the investigations go from here is not clear. The prevailing view at the Justice Department is that a sitting president cannot be indicted, though prosecutors in Manhattan could consider charging him after leaving office.
Investigators have continued to scrutinize what others in the Trump Organization may have known about the crimes described by Mr. Cohen, including its chief financial officer, according to people briefed on the matter. Prosecutors have met with campaign officials and asked how the campaign interacted with Mr. Trump’s company, which shared office space and employees.
Establishing a nexus between Mr. Cohen’s efforts to silence the women and Mr. Trump’s campaign is central to making a criminal case of election law violations. That is why A.M.I.’s admission carries so much weight, said Richard L. Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California, Irvine.
“It’s looking a lot like an illegal and unreported in-kind corporate contribution to help the campaign, exposing the Trump campaign and Trump himself to possible criminal liability,” Mr. Hasen said.
A.M.I., run by Mr. Trump’s longtime friend David J. Pecker, had previously claimed it had paid $150,000 to the model, Karen McDougal, to secure the rights to publish her story of an alleged affair with Mr. Trump. But the company never published it, and people familiar with its operations had said it was part of a longstanding practice, known in the tabloid trade as “catch and kill,” to suppress damaging stories about favored people.
Prosecutors said that Mr. Cohen had intended to reimburse A.M.I. for its payment to Ms. McDougal by arranging a bogus $125,000 fee to an A.M.I. affiliate for “advisory services.” Although Mr. Pecker signed off on the deal, he later contacted Mr. Cohen and called it off. He also instructed Mr. Cohen to tear up the paperwork, prosecutors said.
In addition to McDougal, Mr. Cohen said he arranged a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film actress, to squelch her story of an alleged affair with Mr. Trump. He said that he used his own money, but that Mr. Trump had agreed to pay him back, with the reimbursement eventually being couched as legal fees billed to the Trump Organization.
A.M.I. was also involved in the early stages of Mr. Cohen’s dealings with Ms. Daniels. Rather than pay her, as it did with Ms. McDougal, the company notified Mr. Cohen that she was trying to sell her story.
Until this week, it was largely Mr. Cohen’s word against the president’s denials. That is why the admission by A.M.I. is “highly significant, because it goes to corroborate” Mr. Cohen’s testimony, said Jeff Tsai, part of the prosecution team that accused Senator John Edwards of campaign finance violations when he arranged for payoffs to a pregnant mistress during his 2008 presidential campaign.
“In any future prosecution, Mr. Cohen’s credibility is squarely at issue — as it should be — and that is where you see the nature of corroboration, either in the form of witnesses or documents, become such a pivotal factor in a prosecution,” Mr. Tsai said.
The Edwards case — which ended in an acquittal and mistrial — has been invoked by Trump allies as an example of prosecutorial overreach. Central to Mr. Edwards’s defense was that the payments were intended not to help his campaign but to hide the affair from his wife — that they were personal, not political.
Mr. Trump seemed to hint at this strategy in a tweet responding to Mr. Cohen’s admissions, in which he made an oblique reference to a “simple personal transaction” that was being wrongly called “a campaign contribution.”
Given the president’s stance, the disclosure of A.M.I.’s understanding that the efforts were campaign-related — and its promise of future cooperation — shows that potential witnesses against Mr. Trump go beyond Mr. Cohen.
Indeed, the A.M.I. agreement with prosecutors said there was at least one other person associated with Mr. Trump’s campaign involved in an initial discussion in August 2015, attended by Mr. Cohen and Mr. Pecker, in which they agreed that the publisher would help the campaign by identifying negative stories about Mr. Trump’s relationships with women “so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.”
But many details remain hidden. Among them, the statement did not say whether the other campaign member was Mr. Trump himself — identified by prosecutors last week as attending a similar meeting — or some other person. A.M.I. had no comment on Wednesday.
Mr. Pecker had been steadfast in his support of Mr. Trump, equating any attack against him as an attack against A.M.I. But one associate of Mr. Pecker’s, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Pecker felt betrayed when the president’s legal team failed to push back against revelations in July that Mr. Cohen had recorded a conversation with Mr. Trump discussing the McDougal payment. The recording seemed to support the notion that A.M.I. was complicit in an illegal campaign finance scheme.
In admitting to the scheme, Mr. Pecker, his lieutenant Dylan Howard and A.M.I. are now protected from criminal prosecution.
Benjamin Protess and Rebecca Ruiz contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 13, 2018, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Tabloid Publisher’s Deal In Hush-Money Inquiry Adds to Trump’s Danger. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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