Update: The Long Arm Of the Law Is Closing In On The Trump Crime Family

Update to The Long Arm Of The Law Is Closing In On The Trump Crime Family (Feb. 25, 2021).

The Manhattan District Attorney ‘s office has had a team of forensic auditors working on the Trump Organization’s tax documents and financial records for over a month now. Prosecutors are putting the screws to the Trump Organization’s CFO, Allen Weisselberg, to get him to flip by focusing on his son, Barry Weisselberg, who also had business dealings with the Trump Organization.

Unfortunately for Barry Weisselberg he has an ex-wife, Jennifer, who is happily a cooperating witness for the Manhattan District Attorney ‘s office. (Pro Tip: The ex-wife will do you in every time).

Business Insider reports, Jennifer Weisselberg said she gave investigators probing Trump’s finances 7 boxes of documents she got in her divorce from the Trump Org CFO’s son:

Prosecutors learned details about the Trump Organization’s finances after a key employee tried to withhold them in his divorce case, that employee’s ex-wife told Insider.

But the judge in the divorce case forced him to sit for a deposition and hand over the documents as part of a subpoena, Jennifer Weisselberg said.

Weisselberg, now a cooperating witness in investigations into former President Donald Trump’s finances, said she ultimately got seven boxes of financial documents and gave them to investigators last fall.

“They picked up documents many times. They ended up taking seven boxes of my documents and scanning them, going through them,” she told Insider, adding that “they took depositions, they took checks, routing numbers, bank-account [information], and things like that.”

“They picked up documents many times. They ended up taking seven boxes of my documents and scanning them, going through them,” she told Insider, adding that “they took depositions, they took checks, routing numbers, bank-account [information], and things like that.”

But investigators got a “sneak peek” at those finances in September when Weisselberg handed over her documents. Weisselberg was married to Barry Weisselberg, the son of Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, from 2004 to 2018. Barry Weisselberg is also a key employee of the Trump Organization, managing the Wollman Rink in Central Park in Manhattan.

Barry initially withheld financial information from Jennifer during divorce proceedings, she said. The divorce judge recognized that the perks he received from the Trump Organization — like their shared apartment — could have monetary value and should be considered during divorce negotiations, she said.

“The judge said there was a lot of imputed money,” Jennifer Weisselberg said. “They subpoenaed a lot of things after Barry’s deposition.”

The rental value of the “gifted” apartment should have been declared as an addition to income on the couple’s taxes. If it was not, they’ve got you for tax evasion, Barry.

Donald and Melania Trump gave Barry and Jennifer Weisselberg an apartment in the Trump Parc East in Manhattan as a wedding gift. It was part of many perks the Trump Organizations offered members of the Weisselberg family, as Bloomberg’s Caleb Melby reported in November.

After that article, investigators in the New York Attorney General’s Office expressed renewed interest in the documents Jennifer Weisselberg had given them, she said.

Weisselberg said the perks the Trump Organization offered, like the apartment and payments for their children’s tuition, were in lieu of normal salary raises. [It is an addition to income.] They functionally allowed the company to exercise a measure of control over their lives, she said. [Just like the mafia.]

“It’s so controlling,” she continued. “Because if you want to leave and make the same money — you live there. If you want to leave, where are you going to live?”

* * *

Prosecutors in the district attorney’s office are now interested in “flipping” Allen Weisselberg to guide them through the millions of documents they’ve obtained, The Washington Post reported. They are looking into whether perks like the apartment broke tax laws, according to Bloomberg.

The office recently hired Mark Pomerantz, who has experience as a prosecutor pursuing mob bosses. It also sent a forensic accountant with experience analyzing mob finances to review Jennifer Weisselberg’s documents, she said.

Prosecutions for tax fraud, bank fraud, and insurance fraud are known as “paper cases.” Prosecutors and their forensic accountants have now had access to all of the paper records for some time now. They know what the evidence they have contains. They are now working on lining up the witnesses to explain those documents in a narrative to the jury and to establish mens rea, the intention or knowledge of wrongdoing that is an element of the crime.

Vanity Fair reports, Prosecutors Are Lining Up Witnsses To Explain Donald Trump’s Many Alleged Crimes To A Jury (excerpt):

Currently, the ex-president is the defendant in approximately 29 lawsuits, according to The Washington Post, though likely more worrisome to him are the criminal investigations he’s at the center of, particularly the one being led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. In the last several months, the D.A. has brought on the attorney, Mark Pomerantz, who put John Gotti and other white-collar criminals behind bars, has reportedly been working to flip the Trump Organizations longtime CFO, and, most crucially, obtained Trump’s much sought-after tax returns, documents that the Queens-born real estate developer has gone to such extreme lengths to keep secret that some people have gotten the impression they contain extremely incriminating information. Now, Vance’s office has taken the next step in its criminal investigation: finding people who can explain to a jury why Trump is a possible crook.

Reuters reports that investigators are “combing through millions of pages of newly acquired records with an eye toward identifying witnesses who can bring the documents to life for a jury,” according to people familiar with the matter. Some of the individuals expected to testify are already well known and likely include the 45th president’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, who has met with prosectors eight times. (In February 2019, Cohen told lawmakers that Trump regularly inflated and deflated his assets “when it served his purposes,” whether it was to reduce his tax bill or obtain loans. Last year, he said in an interview that Trump should go to prison for 360 years.) In addition, there’s Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization employee who has described himself as Trump‘s “eyes and ears” at the company and would seemingly know if his boss had committed fraud, whether of the bank, insurance, or tax variety. But according to reporters Jason Szep and Peter Eisler, “a growing universe of people, institutions, and agencies are being scrutinized” by Vance’s team. Per Reuters:

Prosecutors are looking to gather information and testimony from bankers, bookkeepers, real estate consultants, and others close to the Trump Organization who could provide insights on its dealings, according to interviews and court filings. The process of identifying all witnesses and targets could take months. “The next phase is identifying targets” for subpoenas and testimony, said one person familiar with the case…. Vance’s investigators need insiders who can provide the narrative behind any conflicting numbers on Trump’s financial records and testify to Trump’s knowledge and intent, said former prosecutors of white-collar fraud cases. “Even in the most heavily document-dependent case, you need witnesses to tell the story,” said Reed Brodsky, a longtime white-collar defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor.

Several potential key figures in Vance’s investigation are current or former employees of outside companies—from financial and real estate consultants to legal advisers—with inside knowledge of Trump’s dealings, according to court filings and the two people familiar with the investigation. Some performed crucial roles for many years, such as Mazars accountant Donald Bender. His signature is on the tax returns of the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which was dissolved in 2018 after a probe by the New York attorney general found that the Trump Organization misused charitable funds. Trump was ordered to pay more than $2 million in damages.

In addition to real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield, which did years of work for the Trump Organization and appraised a property Trump used to obtain a tax easement—a tool ProPublica described as “a much-abused deduction exploited by wealthy investors” that has cost the U.S. Treasury billions of dollars—Vance has spoken to and requested records from Ladder Capital Corp. and Deutsche Bank AG, two of the former president’s biggest creditors. (Trump currently owes Deutsche Bank some $340 million and there is no love lost between him and the German lender, which could foreclose on the properties he used to personally guarantee his loans.) But according to Reuters, Vance’s investigation will “likely rely heavily on Trump’s closest associates—people who can address the key question of what Trump was thinking when he made the financial claims now under scrutiny.”

Only a core group of Trump’s confidantes can address that state-of-mind question, which is critical to proving criminal intent. They include Allen Weisselberg, 73, who began working for Trump’s father, Fred, in 1973. Legal experts and a source familiar with the investigation say prosecutors’ apparent goal is to convince Weisselberg to cooperate. Also under scrutiny are Weisselberg’s adult sons – one who has worked for the Trump Organization. The other son worked for Ladder Capital, though there’s no evidence he was involved in Ladder’s loans to Trump.

Jennifer Weisselberg—the former wife of Allen’s older son, Barry Weisselberg—told Reuters that she has spoken with Vance’s office five times since November. The day after the first interview, she said, D.A. investigators visited her to retrieve tax and financial records for her and her former husband. She acknowledged that prosecutors have shown interest in an apartment in a Trump-owned building where she and her former husband lived rent-free for seven years—an arrangement that could have legal implications if it represented compensation not properly reported in tax filings…. Jennifer Weisselberg said she believed her father-in-law would never testify against Trump voluntarily. She envisions Allen Weisselberg flipping only if he or his sons are facing prosecution. But no one, she said, knows more about Trump’s finances.

As for Michael Cohen, whose credibility will surely be challenged by whatever lawyers Trump manages to scrounge up, said that “unfortunately for Trump, I have backed up each and every question posed by the district attorney’s office [with] documentary evidence.” If Vance’s team can corroborate Cohen’s testimony, Brodsky told Reuters, that would be “very powerful before a jury.” The government, he said, “loves people who plead guilty to crimes, take the stand and say,…‘I participated in a crime with that person sitting right there at the defense table, Donald J. Trump.’”

Virtually every criminal prosecution that I have ever seen.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office is closing in on the Trump crime family. The only question is whether the Fulton County District Attorney in Georgia will indict Donald Trump for election fraud before the Manhattan District Attorney’s office can indict him. It is a race as to who will be first to indict.