Today, Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg surrendered himself to authorities in connection to a hefty 15 different criminal charges resulting from the investigation into the former president’s organization — a move that many believe is an effort by prosecutors to encourage the Trump Organization official to flip on the former president to help lighten the load of his charges.
Thus far, Weisselberg has unsurprisingly pleaded not guilty to the array of charges against him and nothing is indicating yet that he plans to flip on Donald Trump. But, if you ask Michael Cohen, Weisselberg better reconsider how he wants this to go down while he still has the chance.
Trump’s former personal attorney and “fixer” made an appearance on CNN today to discuss the developments in the Trump Organization investigation and had some sage advice for the CFO — if you’re smart, you’ll cooperate.
CNN host Alisyn Camerota kicked off the segment expressing her shock that there were checks actually signed by Trump himself. But Cohen was quick to point out, once again, that nothing happens at the Trump Organization with Trump knowing about it.
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“I don’t know how many more times I could possibly say the same thing, you know, every single thing, whether it was the acquisition of paperclips, light bulbs, furniture, mattresses, you name it, Allen Weisselberg’s kids’ payments, rent, everything would have a Donald Trump signature on it or his initial,” Cohen said. “There are other people at the Trump Organization who additionally received these same sort of perk-benefits that Allen Weisselberg did, including the chief foreign operating officer Matthew Calamari. There are so many people who received these types of benefits. The question is how did they treat it on their taxes? And why and how is it that it was done and booked by the Trump Organization?”
The former Trump fixer went on to explain that the ex-president doesn’t have email and refuses to put anything in writing so that he can claim plausible deniability on anything and everything when the shoe finally drops. Cohen fully expects the ex-president to turn on whoever he needs to in an effort to make it look as though he has nothing to do with the finances or the taxes within the business; he’s got people for that. And, in this case, that’s Allen Weisselberg.
“Do you think there are going to be other people to step up to the plate and provide all of the additional testimony that corroborates the documentary evidence that they already have?” Cohen asked rhetorically.
The CNN host noted that Trump has a long-standing tradition of skirting the law and any real accountability for his crimes, but Cohen says the jig is up this time.
“Well, you know the expression, the cat has nine lives. I think his nine lives have expired because the documentary evidence that’s in the hands of the prosecutors is so significant and so spot-on that there’s no way anybody’s getting out of it,” the former attorney explained. “Again, neither Allen Weisselberg or Calamari or anybody are the keystones here, because the documents speak for themselves and there are more than enough people that are capable in testifying to what went on.”
Ultimately, Cohen told Weisselberg through the segment that he’ll turn state and cooperate if he knows what’s good for him.
“Like I was saying to you early on for Allen Weisselberg, the memories don’t go away, so you may want to smarten up and think about providing the information that they already have and corroborating it,” he stated. “If not, I’m sure we’ll talk about it 20 years from now.”
You can watch the clip here:
Featured image via screen capture
