cooperate with you. so we were able to get a lot of information on how the trump organization worked and weisselberg s role in it despite the fact that we did not have weisselberg s cooperation. we never even felt like we needed to bring him in as a witness because we had already had enough knowledge of everything that we didn t really need weisselberg but we were still able to find the trump organization liable and a lot of why the judge in the trump university case decided that trump organization was liable was because of weisselberg s very heavy-handed day-to-day control of the organization. very much he was the acting ceo. i would also say that he was basically the coo, the chief operating officer of the trump organization, a role which has never really been filled, at least not that i know of in the past 20 years. so the cfo, you know, they re the ones actually keeping the books and tracking the p & ls and seeing exactly what money is coming in, what money is going out and making
it s that kind of deal. so the family will be taken care of. okay, maybe i don t turn state s evidence and i take one for trump. i just don t that s how people think in this world and i don t know how we can rely on something other than that. yeah. no, i think that s the skepticism that s relevant and that brings us to the way that even when caught he s gotten out of things. our panel stays but i want to also mention some special reporting here on weisselberg s past depositions. there was the criminal probe of trump u. weisselberg described his relationship with trump as close and one-sided. i wouldn t go in and just chitchat but if i had a reason to discuss a business matter, we d have a conversation. this is context for a very special guest we have, tristan snell, a prosecutor who helped lead the investigation of trump u. thank you for joining us. trump u was famously a business that gave out business advice and ultimately went out of
that absent someone like his lawyer, it just it just seems to be one of those things that everyone just kind of sticks close to this guy. michael cohen is the only one who s really kind of gone out here and laid down a little bit of the inside on the inside, but, you know, others have not. i mean even those who are tangentially attached to trump haven t turned state s evidence to the degree, whether you re talking about the mueller probe or i think now with what s going on with weisselberg, i just want to sit back and assess this. i m skeptical that there s a lot there that weisselberg and others are just going to turn over. look, cut the deal. take care of my family, i got your back. it s that scene from the godfather when they visit what s his name in the jail. he asks how s my brother doing? we ll take care of your brother, don t worry about your brother.
he s never shown much loyalty to anyone that s worked for him. so we ll see. he could decide that he s going to use weisselberg as the scapegoat so i very much agree with that. professor? i think this all goes to the question of what the prosecutors are going to be able to prove here. as michael steele says, the fact that trump has managed to keep himself removed from the operation of all these businesses makes everything hinge on what allen weisselberg will provide by way of information and how much allen weisselberg is really willing to go to the mattresses to preserve his relationship with donald trump or to save his own skin. again, it depends on what the prosecutors know about weisselberg, what weisselberg is willing to turn over and ultimately how that connects, if at all, to former president trump. melissa murray, tristan snell and michael steele, thank you. president obama going at republicans over voting rights and obstruction. democrats going after mcconnell saying th
i think once he s indicted, we could see a very different situation arise. if he s indicted if he s indicted. if weisselberg is indicted, we could see a very different story. yeah. well, i m going to let michael respond to you, because the orator that he is i m sure he has rebuttal cooking. but weisselberg is someone that you dealt with in this manner. i m reading here and he oversaw the spending decisions at trump u., the online program and the deposition in the case speaks to that. there are experts here who say money man only scratches the surface. he was at times basically the acting ceo. what, if anything, can you tell us about that based on your knowledge and is that good or bad for him as he faces this heat? well, first off, you can find out a lot about an organization, about a company, about a target without actually having them