Jennifer Weisselberg said she gave investigators probing Trump's finances 7 boxes of documents she got in her divorce from the Trump Org CFO's son
- Jennifer Weisselberg says she gave prosecutors looking into Trump seven boxes of documents.
- The Trump Organization documents came from a divorce case with the CFO's son.
- The Manhattan DA got a fuller picture of the company's finances after a subpoena in February.
Prosecutors learned details about the Trump Organization's finances after a key employee tried to withhold them in his divorce case, that employee's ex-wife told Insider.
But the judge in the divorce case forced him to sit for a deposition and hand over the documents as part of a subpoena, Jennifer Weisselberg said.
Weisselberg, now a cooperating witness in investigations into former President Donald Trump's finances, said she ultimately got seven boxes of financial documents and gave them to investigators last fall.
"They picked up documents many times. They ended up taking seven boxes of my documents and scanning them, going through them," she told Insider, adding that "they took depositions, they took checks, routing numbers, bank-account [information], and things like that."
Prosecutors in the New York Attorney General's Office and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office are running parallel investigations into Trump's and his company's finances, looking into whether they distorted financial information in tax and loan documents. The district attorney's office subpoenaed the Trump Organization for millions of pages of documents in February, gaining a fuller picture of the company's financial affairs.
But investigators got a peek at those finances in September when Weisselberg handed over her documents. Weisselberg was married to Barry Weisselberg, the son of Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's chief financial officer, from 2004 to 2018. Barry Weisselberg is also a key employee of the Trump Organization, managing the Wollman Rink in Central Park in Manhattan.
Barry initially withheld financial information from Jennifer during divorce proceedings, she said. The divorce judge recognized that the perks he received from the Trump Organization - like their shared apartment - could have monetary value and should be considered during divorce negotiations, she said.
"The judge said there was a lot of imputed money," Jennifer Weisselberg said. "They subpoenaed a lot of things after Barry's deposition."
An attorney representing Barry Weisselberg didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
'I don't think they realized that I had that stuff'
Donald and Melania Trump gave Barry and Jennifer Weisselberg an apartment in the Trump Parc East in Manhattan as a wedding gift. It was part of many perks the Trump Organizations offered members of the Weisselberg family, as Bloomberg's Caleb Melby reported in November.
After that article, investigators in the New York Attorney General's Office expressed renewed interest in the documents Jennifer Weisselberg had given them, she said.
"Since the Bloomberg article came out - I don't think they realized that I had that stuff," Weisselberg told Insider. "The AG came and they started picking up more boxes."
Weisselberg said the perks the Trump Organization offered, like the apartment and payments for their children's tuition, were in lieu of normal salary raises. They functionally allowed the company to exercise a measure of control over their lives, she said.
"It's so controlling," she continued. "Because if you want to leave and make the same money - you live there. If you want to leave, where are you going to live?"
Weisselberg said she was glad to have left Trumpworld.
"I don't want anything to do with them," she said. "I don't want their money. I'm good."
Prosecutors in the district attorney's office are now interested in "flipping" Allen Weisselberg to guide them through the millions of documents they've obtained, The Washington Post reported. They are looking into whether perks like the apartment broke tax laws, according to Bloomberg.
The office recently hired Mark Pomerantz, who has experience as a prosecutor pursuing mob bosses. It also sent a forensic accountant with experience analyzing mob finances to review Jennifer Weisselberg's documents, she said.
Representatives for the Trump Organization didn't immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. Representatives for Allen Weisselberg, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, and the New York Attorney General's office declined to comment.