weisselberg, it wouldn t be don or eric, it would be allen weisselberg. interesting. we re trying to get to the bottom of how valuable weisselberg is to investigators. given what you know about how the trump organization works and it s a little unorthodox, it s not like a lot of corporations. some of it feels like a corporation, some of it feels like something else what s your sense of how the reimbursement to michael cohen would have worked? obviously as you say weisselberg would have been involved but would he have had to get approval from someone else? would there have been more people involved? well, there s only at this time, january and february 2017 there were only three people really who had authority over the trust that donald trump put his business into. remember, donald trump still owns his business but the administration of it is left to this trust which is run by eric, don, and allen weisselberg. so, allen weisselberg to me is not somebody who typically does thin
moment for the embattled ag. it started, as do so many things related to donald trump, with a tweet storm early this morning. quoting sessions himself, trump writes, department of justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations. jeff, this is great. what everyone wants, so look into all of the corruption on the other side, including deleted e-mails, comey lies and leaks, mueller conflicts, mccabe, strzok, page or open the papers and documents without redaction. come on, jeff, you can do it. the country is waiting. and then a few minutes later, ex-nsa contractor to spend 63 months in jail over classified information. gee, this is small potatoes compared to what hillary clinton did. so unfair, jeff. double standard. that is warning sign number one for jeff sessions. warning sign number two, well, we got a flashback for that,
your first reaction to allen weisselberg, the trump organization s cfo, being given this immunity? what s your first reaction as somebody who has been at the other side of the deal on this where you ve given people immunity. why? so typically you give immunity because you re hoping to provide information or testify against someone who is higher up on the food chain than they are. you don t use a big fish to eat a smaller fish. my read is that he gets immunity in the hope that he can provide help with someone else and cohen doesn t look like the big fish that sdny would be going after here. so the implication is there s a bigger fish, we re trying to figure out who that is. the obvious choice is donald trump sr. but it could be donald trump jr. or eric. those are the only possibilities of somebody who s more senior to weisselberg in the organization. would that be true? at least in the organizations. and it s important that when you give someone immunity and try to
was convicted of eight criminal felonies, he s facing a decade in prison with another trial ahead. any other story that would have been the front page but look on the left of your screen. it was pushed to the side in the relatively humble font by this pleading guilty, cohen implicates president. the president s person lawyer saying he committed eight different felonies with two of those felonies, quote, in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office. we know that to be donald trump. there is reason this headline is in all caps. there s a reason it stretches the entire length of the newspaper and seems to be screaming at you at the top of its newspaper lungs. this is the sitting president basically being called an unindicted co-conspirator to a crime as an active participant in an illegal hush money payment by michael cohen to boost trump s chances of becoming president this is trump s long time personal lawyer, this guy
the trump trust from which weisselberg ordered the cohen reimbursements be paid, they re both named trump. where are prosecutors going to go next? joining us now is david fahrenthold, washington post reporter, winner of a pulitzer prize for his coverage of the workings of the trump foundation and organization. david, great to have you with us. thank you for being with us. thank you for your reporting. i don t know if we can overstate how important allen weisselberg is to the trump organization to the trump foundation and donald trump. it s a name not everybody knew about more than a few weeks ago after we heard the tape from michael cohen but this guy has been with trump from the beginning. donald trump treated all points of his personal empire personal expenses, company, charity as one big pot of money and the person who oversaw all that pot of money was allen weisselberg. he would bring in checks individually for donald trump to sign. he didn t have a lot of executive respons