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Donald Trump.
- Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg was granted immunity by federal prosecutors, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
- That means two of the men closest to President Donald Trump's hush-money efforts were granted immunity by federal prosecutors.
- The other is American Media Inc. CEO David Pecker.
The man who for years managed President Donald Trump's books at the Trump Organization was granted immunity by Manhattan federal prosecutors in exchange for information about Michael Cohen, the president's former longtime lawyer, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
That means now two of the men who are closest to those payments - Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and American Media Inc. CEO David Pecker - received immunity in the investigation. Cohen, Trump's longtime lawyer, has pleaded guilty to breaking the law in helping coordinate those payments for what he says was the benefit of Trump's presidential campaign.
Weisselberg was summoned earlier this year to testify before a grand jury in the Cohen investigation, The Journal previously reported. It was not immediately clear what he told prosecutors about the payments.
"This is huge," tweeted Neal Katyal, the former acting solicitor general under President Barack Obama. "I wonder if that is why there was no coop agreement w Michael Cohen. May be that, due to Weisselberg coop," the Southern District of New York "doesn't need one."
The two payments under scrutiny included American Media Inc.'s purchase of former Playboy model Karen McDougal's story of an affair with Trump. The National Enquirer, owned by AMI, purchased the rights to McDougal's story for $150,000 in August 2016 but never published it. That practice is known as "catch and kill." Pecker is a longtime friend of Trump.
The second expenditure was the $130,000 hush-money payment Cohen facilitated to porn star Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, just days before the 2016 presidential election. Cohen made the payment to keep her quiet about her allegation of having a 2006 affair with Trump, which he has denied.
In information filed by prosecutors Tuesday, when Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court to eight counts of federal felonies, including two counts related to campaign-finance violations, they laid out how executives at Trump's business helped reimburse Cohen for "election-related expenses." According to the court filings, Cohen submitted an invoice in January 2017 requesting $180,000 - which included $130,000 for the payment he facilitated to Daniels and $50,000 for "tech services."
The Trump Organization officials listed in the filings inflated that total to $420,000, prosecutors said, which would be paid to Cohen in installments of $35,000, a monthly retainer fee throughout 2017.
The company accounted for those monthly payments as legal expenses, according to the court filing.
"In truth and in fact, there was no such retainer agreement, and the monthly invoices Cohen submitted were not in connection with any legal services he had provided in 2017," prosecutors wrote.
Though the two executives in the document were not named, many experts and observers pointed to Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's chief financial officer, as likely one of the two.
Last month, Weisselberg found himself dragged into the Cohen saga after Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, released an audio recording Cohen made of a conversation with Trump in September 2016. In the recording, which Cohen apparently made without Trump's knowledge, the two men discussed buying the rights to McDougal's story.
Cohen mentioned Weisselberg at a couple of key points during the recording, which was seized by the FBI in its April raids of Cohen's home, office, and hotel room as part of the investigation.
Thursday night, The New York Times reported the Manhattan District Attorney's office, unconnected to the federal prosecutors probing the payments, were weighing possible criminal charges against the Trump Organization and those two unnamed senior officials. It's unclear whether Weisselberg's immunity would apply to the state-level investigation.
The Weisselberg news comes a day after The Journal reported that Pecker too received immunity with the same prosecutors. It was later revealed that Pecker kept a safe full of documents related to the stories he killed on behalf of Trump.