georgia. significant because they can now get testimony from people who refused to cooperate but we ve all lived through two trump impeachments and the like. listen to preet brara. he says this is a big deal. but criminal legal jeopardy. they d say we ve been down this road before. where particular prosecutors or enforcement agencies open up investigations of people up to and including the president and we all follow it and we think it means sometimes more than it means. the skepticism there jumps out because there are a lot of people left of center who think this is the investigation that s going to get trump. and now they say, well, maybe not. well, that s always the case because what trump is going to do is he s going to call it political and he s going to fight them every step of the way. he s going to take do every bit of legal maneuvering possible under the sun to try to slow it down. and so far he s been successful with that with those strategies. we ll continue to
will allen weisselberg flip on trump? yes. reporter: former president trump has previously denied any wrongdoing. this is a continuation of the witch hunt. reporter: saying in a statement tuesday, it began the day i came down the escalator in trump tower and it s never stopped. a former prosecutor tells cnn it would be very rare to convene a special grand jury in manhattan that didn t at least consider charges, but it is important to note that there is no guarantee based on what we know now that the former president or anyone at all will be charged in this investigation. wolf? paula reid, thanks for that update. let s discuss with our senior legal analyst, the former u.s. attorney preet brara and maggie haberman, washington correspondent for the new york times. what does it signal to you that at least one witness has been told to prepare for grand jury testimony? well, as the report said, it signals, you know, what people say often in these
for office and always engaged in politics, which he has been for a long time, then you can say this is, therefore, a political effort against me. it s not a surprise he s doing this. a lot of his advisers expected that s what he s going to say. that doesn t mean he s going to run but you ll see him try to tar this investigation by talking about that. as to how concerned he is, he s quite anxious about the investigation, according to a number of people who have spoken with him. so are people at the trump organization. so are people in the trump family. they don t know what any of this means. they don t know what to expect. there have been you know, a number of investigations over the last five years. they didn t end up ultimately touching the trump family. this could be different. to preet s point, there s a clock now because the likelihood is that vance will get this done in terms of charging before he leaves office. it s worth noting, so is the fact that there is an election for a n
something that vance s office is mindful of as they are going forward. i m sure they are. preet, we ve also learned that prosecutors are closely examining their longtime trump organization cfo chief financial officer allen weisselberg. he s a numbers guy. not a big personality like, let s say, the former lawyer michael cohen. what does that say about the possible implications of this grand jury for trump? look, what we know so far is that allen weisselberg has not pled guilty, and as far as we know is not cooperating pursunts to an agreement with prosecutors. now the question is, will he cooperate? is there enough pressure being brought to bear on him to spill all the secrets of the trump organization that he knows everything about, particularly from the financial side, which is what the basis of the investigation is. are they engaging in a grand jury investigation in part initially to file charges against weisselberg to convince him to cooperate?