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Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.s criminal investigation of the Trump Organization is scrutinizing the actions of one of the presidents oldest and most trusted deputies, ProPublica has learned.

The focus on Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, a 72-year-old accountant now running the business with Trumps two adult sons, stems from his involvement in arranging a payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump (which Trump has denied).

Federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, or SDNY, contended that the Trump Organization had improperly booked reimbursements for the hush-money scheme as legal expenses, with the aid of sham invoices. They granted legal immunity to Weisselberg and later closed their 18-month investigation with the guilty plea of one Trump associate, Michael Cohen. But Weisselbergs immunity deal applied only to federal proceedings.

Now Vances state grand jury is examining whether Weisselberg, among others and even the Trump Organization should face state criminal charges for falsification of business records, according to a source familiar with the investigation. Neither Weisselberg nor the Trump Organization responded to requests for comment. Vance, through a spokesman, declined to comment.

A handful of lawyers and investigators from Vances office, led by Chris Conroy, chief of the DAs major economic crimes bureau, traveled to the federal minimum-security prison camp in Otisville, New York, on Oct. 30 to meet for the third time with Cohen, who is serving a three-year prison sentence, according to two sources knowledgeable about the matter. Much of the discussion involved Weisselberg.

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Neither the president nor his sons appear to be in Vances crosshairs at this point in the investigation, which is at an early stage, according to the source familiar with the investigation. But, the source added, New York prosecutors are far from ruling that out.

The investigation is playing out amid an unusually public conflict between the offices of the Manhattan DA and the U.S. attorney, which are headquartered across the street from each other in Lower Manhattan.

Vance originally launched his investigation back in August 2018, after Cohens guilty plea and public testimony revealed the Trump Organizations deceits.

But when one of Vances staffers placed a courtesy call to inform the federal prosecutors of their investigation, according to the source familiar with the investigation, the DA was asked to stand down. The reason: The U.S. attorneys office said it was still investigating the Trump Organization, pursuing additional targets. (A spokesperson for the SDNY declined to comment.) Vance agreed to put his investigation on hold.

As late as May 2019, federal prosecutors told U.S. District Judge William Pauley that their investigation was ongoing. For months before that, the SDNY seemed to be gathering evidence for possible charges against people beyond Cohen. At least, that was the public impression created by the prosecutors decision to grant immunity and non-prosecution agreements, respectively, to Weisselberg and executives with the National Enquirer, who collaborated with Cohen on a second hush-money payoff, to former Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal. (Trump denied that relationship, too.)

Vances probe remained on hold for nearly a year until July 18, 2019 when Pauley revealed that federal prosecutors had informed him their investigation was effectively concluded.

With that, the Manhattan DA quickly restarted his state investigation. On Aug. 1, a grand jury subpoenaed an array of records from the Trump Organization involving the hush-money payments and Cohens work for Trump. The DA contended that the subpoena applied to Trumps tax records.

Over the next few weeks, Trumps business turned over 3,376 pages of documents, court filings show. Those documents did not include tax records. A subsequent filing by the DA asserted that approximately two-thirds of those 3,376 pages consisted of non-substantive Google alerts.

On Aug. 29, the DA subpoenaed Mazars USA, Trumps accounting firm, demanding Trumps personal and business tax returns dating back to 2011, as well as work papers and financial statements. Lawyers for the president then filed suit in federal court on Sept. 19 to quash the Mazars subpoena.

The U.S. Department of Justice intervened in the case, backing Trumps request to keep the dispute in federal, rather than state, court. The DOJ supported further delays to consider Trumps claims in federal court, but it did not then take a position on the merits of the underlying dispute.

The DOJ pleadings were co-signed by the SDNY. Privately, SDNY representatives, wary of appearing to do Trumps bidding, insisted that their offices role was limited, likening it to merely serving as local counsel.

Thats when the tensions between the federal and state prosecutors surfaced but they were largely ignored by the press, which focused on the bigger issue of whether the president can quash the subpoena for his taxes. Vances office bristled at the DOJs unusual decision to jump in with support from the SDNY.

The Manhattan DAs office argued in court that the delay caused by the SDNYs request to stand down has harmed its ability to bring a case. The clock is now running out on the DAs ability to bring misdemeanor false-records charges. Because the last disguised reimbursement payment, signed by Trump, is dated Dec. 5, 2017, the two-year statute of limitations expires next month. (Convicting a person of a misdemeanor fake-records charge requires proving an intent to defraud, according to lawyers. The charge can also be prosecuted as a felony, which has a five-year statute of limitations. Proving the felony requires not only establishing an intent to defraud, but also that the intention was aimed at committing or concealing a second crime, such as claiming improper deductions on a tax return or making a false representation on a financial statement.)

At a hearing in federal court on Sept. 25, Carey Dunne, general counsel for the DAs office, complained that the feds were aiding Trumps efforts to run out the clock: It is what they want in the end. What that means, if they get further delay, basically they win and we lose, without an adjudication by this court, and thats not what should happen today.

Dunne made a similar argument in an Oct. 3 letter to the federal judge overseeing the subpoena battle. As he put it, delaying enforcement of the subpoena will likely result in the expiration of the statutes of limitation that would apply to some of the transactions at issue in the grand jury investigation. Dunne called the DOJs involvement all the more audacious in view of the fact that, until quite recently and for more than a year, DOJ prosecutors in this very district conducted a highly publicized grand jury investigation into some of the very same transactions and actors that have been reported to be at issue in this matter.

Federal district and appeals courts quickly rejected Trumps claim of blanket immunity from criminal investigation, and he has now petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his case. If the court refuses to hear it, Vances investigators could be combing through Trumps tax records by year-end. A decision to hear the case would push any resolution well into 2020.

The scrutiny of Weisselberg stems from his reported role in hiding the hush-money payments. Cohen gave congressional committees a detailed account of how, at Trumps direction, he strategized with Weisselberg in October 2016 about how to fund the $130,000 payment to Daniels.

The adult-film actress was then threatening to go public. It was a fraught moment, immediately after the broadcast of the Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump talked about grabbing women by their genitals, and just one month before Election Day.

Cohen testified that he and Weisselberg argued over which one of them should come up with the hush money. Eventually, Cohen tapped a home-equity line of credit, a funding source that would be hidden from his wife. According to government filings, it was decided the Trump Organization would reimburse Cohen through monthly payments disguised as a legal retainer, and Cohen submitted sham invoices to paper over the deceit. Along with Donald Trump Jr., Weisselberg signed two of the monthly checks for Cohen. Trump signed six others.

Prosecutors said Cohen carried out his actions in coordination with and at the direction of Trump, who they identified in filings as Individual-1. Those filings identified two other Trump Organization figures Executive-1 and Executive-2 as processing Cohens phony monthly invoices. Those two executives were the Trump Organizations controller, Jeff McConney, a 32-year veteran of the company, and Weisselberg, according to a source familiar with the matter. (Previous published reports incorrectly identified Weisselberg as Executive-1 and McConney as Executive-2.) McConney did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

One of Cohens lawyers later released a surreptitious recording Cohen made of a September 2016 conversation with Trump discussing the arrangement to pay McDougal. In it, Cohen is heard telling Trump: Ive spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up.

Cohen was the only identified participant in the scheme to be charged in the federal investigation. (In addition to federal tax and false-statement crimes, he pleaded guilty to illegal campaign contributions for the payoffs, which benefited Trumps campaign by silencing the women through Election Day.) A DOJ policy memo barring federal prosecution of a sitting president protected Trump.

That shield, however, doesnt apply in state court, making the president, Trump Organization executives including Weisselberg (whose federal immunity, as noted, also doesnt apply in state proceedings) and even the Trump Organization itself potential targets.

A company can be charged if a high-ranking officer with authority to bind the business engages in illegal conduct, according to Adam Kaufmann, a white-collar attorney and former investigations chief for the Manhattan DAs office.

Weisselbergs employment dates back to the era of Fred Trump, the presidents father, and he has a reputation as the ultimate company man. In deposition excerpts filed by the New York attorney general in her case against the Trump Foundation which resulted in its shutdown, admissions of wrongdoing and an order to pay $2 million to charity Weisselberg, who served as the foundations treasurer, was questioned about Trumps use of the charity for a political event before the Iowa presidential primary.

He described receiving a phone call one morning in January 2016, as he was preparing for a dental appointment, asking him to fly to Iowa that night to write some checks. What did he think about this request to bring the checkbook, an assistant attorney general asked. It doesnt matter what I thought, Weisselberg replied. Hes my boss. I went.

As for Cohen, he has been attempting to insert himself into the investigation as a witness. His lawyers have been laboring to reduce his three-year term, offering the carrot of Cohens cooperation regarding what they claim is a litany of Trump Organization crimes. Recently, word was conspicuously leaked that he had stories to tell about his own contact with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, the Rudy Giuliani associates indicted for using foreign funds to influence U.S. elections.

Federal prosecutors, who last year declined to urge a major reduction in the range for Cohens projected prison term, citing a pattern of deception that permeated his entire life, among other things, have rebuffed repeated entreaties from Cohens lawyers to reengage. Cohens lawyers had hoped such cooperation would prompt federal prosecutors to request a special post-sentence Rule 35 reduction in his prison term before the one-year window for such a request expired.

The Manhattan DAs team, with different targets and no power to urge a sentence reduction, has been more receptive. At the teams last meeting with Cohen and his lawyers, they discussed the possibility of obtaining a trove of evidence that federal agents seized in the raids on Cohens apartment, office and hotel suite in April 2018. The feds recently returned a flash drive containing the evidence including files, contracts, notes and tape recordings to Cohens legal team.

Cohens legal team, which includes Lanny Davis, has also urged congressional leaders to intervene on his behalf. Cohens team is promoting a new, albeit improbable, image for the man who once was proud to call himself Trumps fixer: the John Dean of his generation.

See the article here:
Prosecutors Investigating the Trump Organization Zero In on Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg - ProPublica

Photo: Mark Wilson (Getty Images)

You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump.

Even if you know a baboon with a head injury or have an uncle who dropped out of school in the first semester of kindergarten to pursue a career in the lucrative glue-eating sector, I can guarantee that they are not as rockheadedly dumb as Americas barren-brained embarrassment of a president.

On Wednesday, supplemental visual and written evidence of Donald Trumps addle-minded stupidity came in the form of photographs taken as the president stopped to deliver a nonsensical rant before boarding Air Force One and heading wherever stupid people go to do stupid things. Probably Narnia. Or Mississippi.

Oh, wait. It was an Apple factory, according to NBC:

President Donald Trump, departing the White House on his way to Texas to visit an Apple factory, stopped in front of reporters to defend himself amid U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondlands testimony Wednesday by reading from hand-written notes insisting he did not want a quid pro quo.

Trump began reading notes of what he says he spoke about during an early September phone call with Sondland, who was trying to figure out whether the roughly $400 million in military aid was being linked to whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy would publicly announce investigations into the Bidens and a debunked conspiracy involving Democrats and the 2016 election.

At least some of Trumps talking points were captured by a Reuters photographer outside the White House.

Yes, this dumb motherfucker lies so much that he needs crib notes! Lets examine them for a minute because 5 things really stand out.

Here is the full text of Trumps notes:

Ambassador Sondland says: What do you want from Ukraine? I keep hearing all these different ideas and theories. What do you want? It was a very short abrupt conversation. He was not in a good mood. He just said: I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. Tell Zillinsky (sp) to do the right thing. This is the final word from the president of the United States.

Also, The Root was able to get this actual footage of Trump preparing his talking points.

Originally posted here:
Here Is the Full Text of Donald Trump's Sharpie Lies for the Press - The Root

President Donald Trump regularly struggles to "remember what he's said or been told," an anonymous senior government official behind a new expos on the inner workings of the White House has claimed.

Much of the nearly 260 pages of the anonymous official's tome, A Warning, which hit bookshelves on Tuesday, has been dedicated to sounding the alarm about Trump's alarming behavior.

While the anonymous author, who is described only as a "senior official in the Trump administration" admits they are not "qualified to diagnose the president's mental acuity," they can say that "normal people who spend any time with Donald Trump are uncomfortable by what they witness."

"He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but with regularity," the official warns.

Often, they say, "the president also can't remember what he's said or been told."

"Americans are used to him denying words that have come out of his mouth," the senior official writes. "Sometimes this is to avoid responsibility."

However, they say it often "appears Trump genuinely doesn't remember important facts."

One clear example of that, the official recalls, is when the president claimed he was not sure if he had "ever even heard of a Category 5" hurricane, despite having been briefed on at least four other Category 5 hurricanes during his time in office.

"Was he forgetting these briefings?" the author questions. "Or more problematic, was he not paying attention at all? These are events that affect millions of Americans, yet they don't seem to stick in his brain."

The official writes that while Trump has often claimed to be highly intelligent, they say they have "seen the president fall flat on his face when trying to speak intelligently" on a number of topics on which he claims to be an expert.

"You can see why behind closed doors his own top officials deride him as an 'idiot' and a 'moron' with the understanding of a 'fifth or sixth grader,'" the unnamed senior official says.

In addition to questioning Trump's ability to recall basic terms that he has said or heard, the anonymous author also accuses the president of an "astounding" level of "intellectual laziness."

Asserting that Trump barely reads and has required that briefings be shorter and include fewer words and more pictures, the senior official says they are "bewildered how anyone could have run a private company on the empty mental tank President Trump relies upon every day to run the government."

"On television, a CEO-turned-showman can sit around a desk and bark orders at subordinates and then go to commercial," they write. "In real life, a successful CEO has to absorb a lot of information, about the economic climate, about his or her competitors, about product and consumer trends."

"How can you manage a sprawling organization if you won't read anything?" the author questions. "Not very well, it turns out.

While the anonymous official says some Trump defenders might be tempted to write their warnings off "as the musings of Never-Trumpers," they say, "that is not the case."

Anyone who has spent time with Trump and "would claim otherwise" of their account, the official says, is "lying to themselves or to the country."

Read the original here:
Trump Regularly 'Can't Remember What He's Said or Been Told,' White House Insider Says - Newsweek

For a while now, Mike Pompeo has been rumored to be weighing a 2020 Senate runsomething that would require him to leave his post at the State department in the spring. But with an impeachment inquiry swirling around Donald Trump, Pompeo may be looking for a way out sooner. Three prominent Republicans told Time that the Secretary of State is searching for a graceful way to leave the Trump administration before he suffers permanent political damageand before his relationship with the president, which has been strained in recent weeks, goes south. If Pompeo was thinking he would cruise across the finish line on Trumps coattails, one Republican told the outlet, he might want to rethink that assumption.

The State Department denied that Pompeo has been discussing his resignation, telling Axios that the story is completely false. Pompeo is 100% focused on being President Trumps Secretary of State, a spokesperson for the department said. But the rumor mill has been churning about Pompeos status in the administration since at least January, when it was reported that Mitch McConnell was working to recruit him to run for Senate in Kansas. Politico reported at the time that he had yet to make up his mind, but even then it was suggested that it may be in his best interest to extricate himself from the chaos of the Trump administration.

That seems even more true now, as witness testimony draws Pompeo into the Ukraine scandal that has engulfed Trump. In an appearance before the House Intelligence Committee last week, former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch told lawmakers that Pompeo and the State department eventually abandoned her as Rudy Giuliani and others conducted a smear campaign that paved the way for her ouster. In a highly-anticipated testimony Wednesday, European Union ambassador Gordon Sondland is expected to tell representatives that he kept Pompeo apprised of his pressure campaign in Ukrainetestimony that will draw the Secretary of State deeper into the mess.

Meanwhile, testimony by diplomats has reportedly made Pompeo a target of Trumps displeasure, with the president blaming him for hiring officials who have become thorns in his side. It would be really great if the people within the Trump Administration, all well-meaning and good (I hope!), could stop hiring Never Trumpers, who are worse than the Do Nothing Democrats, Trump tweeted in October. Nothing good will ever come from them! He dropped the veil in comments to reporters soon after, criticizing Pompeo by name for making a mistake in hiring Bill Taylor, the current top diplomat in Ukraine. Trump just felt like, rein your people in, a senior White House staffer told NBC News on Monday. All this can be read as an ominous sign. Pompeo was first in his class at West Point, one Republican source told Time. He knows that with Trump, loyalty only flows upstream.

If Trump is frustrated with Pompeo, however, it goes both ways. As he seeks to please the president and maintain control of a large department dissatisfied with his leadership, the Secretary of State is reportedly feeling stretched thin. Pompeo feels under siege, an official told NBC. If the past is any indication, such frustrations in Trumpworld can turn quickly to bitternessand personnel changes.

More Great Stories From Vanity Fair

The strangely familiar nightmare of impeaching Trump Clues to the identity of Anonymous, who wrote the explosive White House op-ed Former Fox News staffers demand to be released from their NDAs Why crypto-crooks have their sights set on Iceland A sustained booing reveals Trumps true face From the archive: A portrait of Kim Jong Un, part man, part myth

Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story.

See the rest here:
Mike Pompeo Could Be Getting Ready to Bail on Trump - Vanity Fair

Two of Mr. Buttigiegs rivals pushed back more or less gently, channeling in a tentative way the frustration across the Democratic field with the rise of a 37-year-old mayor with no experience in national government. Mr. Booker, a onetime wunderkind mayor of Newark, described himself as the other Rhodes scholar mayor on this stage perhaps his most pointed expression of feeling overlooked in the race.

But it was Ms. Klobuchar who most effectively pivoted from her past criticism of Mr. Buttigieg, whom she has described as benefiting in the race from being male, into a forceful plea to the country to elect a female president.

Women are held to a higher standard, otherwise we could play a game called name your favorite woman president, Ms. Klobuchar said, brandishing one of her favorite lines from the campaign trail: If you think a woman cant beat Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi does it every single day.

The Democrats met just hours after the administrations ambassador to the European Union, Gordon D. Sondland, offered perhaps the most damaging testimony against Mr. Trump yet in the House impeachment proceeding. The inquiry, centering on whether Mr. Trump linked American financial and political support for Ukraine to a promise to investigate Mr. Biden, has worried some Democrats about the former vice presidents viability in a general election.

Yet that is only one factor that is making an already volatile race more fluid than ever.

Since the debate last month, former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts has entered the primary contest, and former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York has taken steps to do the same. They have been lured into the campaign in part over their concerns about the leftward drift in the party, and also because there is still no clear front-runner with just over two months until the Iowa caucuses. It remains far from certain that they will be able to catch on so late in the race, but both have made clear that they are trying to win over more moderate voters.

If there is an opening for them, it is because Mr. Biden has not been able to consolidate support from center-left Democrats. Voters and donors from this wing of the party are uneasy with him mainly because of his lackluster fund-raising and campaign performances, and less because of Mr. Trumps false claims that he acted improperly with Ukraine when his son Hunter was on the payroll of an energy company there.

More broadly, though, the race remains unsettled because Democratic voters are splintered across racial, ideological and generational lines. Mr. Buttigieg surged in Iowa and New Hampshire in recent weeks, taking the lead in a new Des Moines Register-CNN survey of Iowa caucusgoers. But he has not made similar gains beyond the two heavily white states that kick off the nominating process.

Excerpt from:
Democratic Debate Has Early Focus on Trumps Conduct and Impeachment - The New York Times