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View Full Version : Trump Org CFO granted immunity in Cohen investigation: report




Zippyjuan
08-24-2018, 11:12 AM
National Enquirer executive also given immunity. They bought the story for purposes of burying it. The Enquirer supposedly has a safe full of stories they have buried.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/403443-trump-org-cfo-granted-immunity-in-cohen-investigation-report


Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, has been granted immunity by federal prosecutors working on the criminal investigation into Michael Cohen, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Weisselberg testified before a federal grand jury earlier this year as prosecutors investigated Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer.

Cohen pleaded guilty on Tuesday to eight counts of bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign finance violations relating to the hush-money payments provided to women who alleged affairs with President Trump during the 2016 campaign.

Weisselberg has served as the executive vice president and chief financial officer for the Trump Organization. He has controlled the company’s financial assets with the president’s two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, since Trump took office.

Weisselberg didn’t respond to The Wall Street Journal’s request for comment. The Hill has reached out to the Trump Organization for a comment.

A lawyer for Trump also declined to comment.

Weisselberg is the second ally of Trump in two days to reportedly receive immunity in the Cohen probe.

David Pecker, the chief executive of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, was also granted immunity, according to reports on Thursday.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Pecker met with prosecutors to discuss Cohen’s arrangement of nondisclosure payments to two women — adult-film star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal — who claimed to have had affairs with Trump.

The Enquirer reportedly paid McDougal $150,000 for a story about the alleged affair in 2006, but never published it. She has since filed a lawsuit against the American Media Inc., the Enquirer’s publisher.

CNN released audio last month that Cohen had recorded of he and Trump discussing a payment related to McDougal.

Cohen tells Trump in the clip that he needs “to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David,” likely referencing Pecker.

The Enquirer endorsed Trump’s run for office and Pecker has reportedly been on friendly terms with him for many years.



https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/trump-investigation-grants-australian-journalist-dylan-howard-immunity-20180824-p4zzhb.html


The National Enquirer kept a safe containing damaging stories it killed as part of its cozy relationship with Donald Trump leading up to the 2016 presidential election, people familiar with the arrangement have said.

The detail comes after reports US federal prosecutors have granted immunity to National Enquirer chief David Pecker and Australian editor Dylan Howard, potentially laying bare their efforts to protect Trump.

Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty this week to campaign finance violations, claiming he, the President and the tabloid were involved in buying the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels. The actress alleges she had an affair with Trump in 2006.

Several people familiar with the National Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc, who spoke to The Associated Press on the 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 favours in return.

But after The Wall Street Journal initially published the first details of Playboy model Karen McDougal's catch-and-kill deal shortly before the 2016 election, those assets became a liability. Fearful that the documents might be used against American Media, Pecker and Howard – the company's chief content officer – removed them from the safe in the weeks before Trump's inauguration, according to one person directly familiar with the events.

It was unclear whether the documents were destroyed or simply were moved to a location known to fewer people. American Media did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



Court papers in the Cohen case say Pecker "offered to help deal with negative stories about [Trump's] relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided".

The Journal reported Pecker shared with prosecutors details about payments that Cohen says Trump directed in the weeks and months before the election to buy the silence of McDougal and another woman alleging an affair, porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels was paid $US130,000 ($179,197), and McDougal was paid $US150,000 ($206,803).

While Trump denies the affairs, his account of his knowledge of the payments has shifted. In April, Trump denied he knew anything about the Daniels payment. He told Fox News in an interview aired Thursday that he knew about payments "later on".

In July, Cohen released an audio tape in which he and Trump discussed plans to buy McDougal's story from the Enquirer. Such a purchase was necessary, they suggested, to prevent Trump from having to permanently rely on a tight relationship with the tabloid.


Former Enquirer employees who spoke to the AP said that negative stories about Trump were dead on arrival dating back more than a decade when he starred on NBC's reality show "The Apprentice."

In 2010, at Cohen's urging, the National Enquirer began promoting a potential Trump presidential candidacy, referring readers to a pro-Trump website Cohen helped create. With Cohen's involvement, the publication began questioning President Barack Obama's birthplace and American citizenship in print, an effort that Trump promoted for several years, former staffers said.

The Enquirer endorsed Trump for president in 2016, the first time it had ever officially backed a candidate. In the news pages, Trump's coverage was so favourable that the New Yorker said the Enquirer embraced him "with sycophantic fervour".

Positive headlines for Trump, a Republican, were matched by negative stories about his opponents, including Hillary Clinton, a Democrat. An Enquirer front page from 2015 said "Hillary: 6 Months to Live" and accompanied the headline with a picture of an unsmiling Clinton with bags under her eyes.