Manhattan DA Getting Closer And Closer To Trump, Like Chompy 'Jaws' Shark!
DUN-DUN! (That is how you type the Jaws music. And also the "Law & Order" music. Oh well, both work fine for this post.)
Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance has Trump's tax returns and financials in hand, after the Supreme Court said he could have them. The latest news, reported last night by the New York Times, is that the investigation is getting a lot closer to Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg. They might just end up squeezing him to cooperate, if they find that he did what's legally known as bad shit. Reportedly investigators have also asked a witness about Weisselberg's kids, Barry and Jack. We don't know specifically why they'd be asking about them, but we are just guessing it might have something to do with squeezing the kids to get to Daddy and then squeezing Daddy to get to Big Daddy.
Thoughts and prayers for all investigators tasked with squeezing Big Daddy, that would be pee yew gross. #washyourhands #wearamask
Vance's investigation into Trump appears to cover a lot of ground, starting with the porn peener payoffs at the end of the 2016 campaign and expanding into all kinds of other possible financial frauds. Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen memorably testified about how Trump had this one weird trick when it came to valuing his properties and holdings, depending on whether he wanted to make it look like he was very very rich or very very poor. Want a big loan? Hooray, all his properties are worth eleventy billion diamond-encrusted American dollars! Want to do something involving PAYING money, like perhaps taxes? That's different. Allegedly.
And the thing is, Allen Weisselberg was around for ALL OF IT. The Times makes clear that he hasn't been accused of doing any bad shit, but back when Trump was under investigation in the Southern District of New York, before then-Attorney General Bill Barr successfully (we think) shut that shit down, and back when Cohen testified for Congress, the answer to literally everything was "Ask Allen Weisselberg." Because again, he was around for ALL OF IT. He's been with the Trump Organization for going on 8,000 years, ever since the Fred Trump days, and we imagine he knows where literally all the bodies are buried.
As Wonkette once wrote:
Want to know about the plan to launder the Stormy Daniels payment through the Trump Organization? That is, after they'd discussed routing the payment through a padded invoice for one of the clubs or getting a club member to pay Daniels or Cohen directly, to keep it off the books. (OMG, WTF kind of company is this?!?!?) Ask Executive 1, aka Allen Weisselberg, since he and Executive 2, aka Don Jr., were the ones who signed 10 of the checks to pay Michael Cohen off after the fronted the cash. [...]
Want to know if Trump submitted false financial statements to Deutsche Bank when he was seeking financing to buy the Buffalo Bills? Ask Allen Weisselberg, who likely prepared them or gave the outside accountant the massaged underlying data.
And so many other things. "I've spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up," Michael Cohen said to Donald Trump on tape about the porn peener payoff to Karen McDougal. Weisselberg ran the grifty-ass Trump Foundation. He clearly has a lot of stories to tell. He may have told a lot of them to SDNY. He may be ready to spill to Cy Vance.
Oh yeah, and those kids of his we mentioned, about whom investigators have also been asking questions? Wonder what THEY do for a living:
Barry Weisselberg has been the property manager of Trump Wollman Rink in Central Park, and Jack works at Ladder Capital, one of Mr. Trump's biggest lenders.
Well then! Might they also have stories to tell? Only Cy Vance knows.
Toward the end of Donald Trump's loser presidency, there was discussion about whether Weisselberg might be the lucky recipient of a preemptive federal pardon from the president. If there was, it wasn't released publicly.
But this is state shit, so guess it doesn't matter, womp womp, "Law & Order" DUN-DUN, Jaws theme DUN-DUN, and so forth, the end.
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