WEISSELBERG: THE KEY TO THE PRISON DOOR

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OK, fantasy time for those of us who are obsessed with the current challenge to our democracy, but who know nothing except the tiny hints gleaned from the Mueller and SDNY indictments and the public Cohen testimony. (And remember, there might be more Mueller indictments in that unusually large trove of sealed filings in the D.C. District Court.)

I do know a bit about RICO, however. So does the President of the United States. Once upon a time, he asserted a RICO claim against my client. Trump lost. Badly. (Read the book,The Client Decides. I know the author!)

Okay, here's my current RICO theory:

The key is not Cohen. He just hinted at what I suspect the SDNY already knows.The witness who can actually turn the lock on the Trump Crime Family prison door, is Alan Weisselberg, the long-time Controller of the Trump Organization. He is said to be involved in every expenditure, including, it seems, pay-offs to porn stars, Peckerish publishers, and others. Indeed, Weisselberg and Donald Jr. are co-trustees of the Trump Organization, and legally at least, run the company while Donald is President.

But let us not lose our focus here: aside from hush money payments that may involve campaign finance crimes, the Trump Organization has been involved in the building trades in New York City for decades. The company has dealt with union leaders, contractors, city agencies, building inspectors, etc., in projects involving hundreds of millions of dollars. What are the odds that there was no exchange of illicit payments to facilitate any of the foregoing activities? Of course we all would be shocked to learn any such illegal payments had occurred. Shocked. But if that had happened, who would have signed off on or approved the expenditures?

Also if there were Trump Organization insurance frauds, bank frauds, tax frauds, as Cohen suggested, who, besides Donald Senior would have known about and facilitated them?

Weisselberg certainly knew about the illicit money payments to Stormy Daniels (he signed one of the checks!). He also had key information about the Pecker catch-and-kill scheme, because he apparently gave important information to the SDNY about that fraud under the cloak of what has been described as "limited immunity."

I know nothing about the limits of that arrangement, but the description suggests that Weisselberg's immunity cloak is not all encompassing. If it were, that would almost certainly mean that he was already obliged to tell the SDNY everything about every subject the prosecutors inquired about. Everything.

We know from Cohen's testimony that the SDNY is hard at work on Trump, and that Cohen's goal now is to provide them with "substantial assistance" to one or more of their investigations. Translation: that is lawyer-speak for providing evidence leading to the indictment of someone else.

The effectiveness of the SDNY is classic.  They got Weisselberg to rat out Cohen on the hush money payments, so Cohen copped a plea and is probably now ratting out Weisselberg on everything else.

What would it take to persuade Weisselberg to tell everything about everything? Not much, I suggest. He is 71 years old, and so far as we know, his back bears neither a tattoo of Richard Nixon nor of Donald Trump. My take on Cohen's testimony was that he was clearly suggesting that Weisselberg is involved in wrongdoing well beyond the hush money payments. If the SDNY prosecutors have evidence of that, Weisselberg will almost certainly fold under the pressure of possible criminal charges that could put him in prison for all, or most of all, of the rest of his life. 

(By the way, New York State has its own version of RICO, which in some respects is even broader than the federal statute. A Trump pardon cannot spring an inmate from Attica.)

With the floodgates open, what is the likelihood the SDNY (and the NYAG) would fail to find that the Trump enterprise engaged in a pattern of racketeering?

Isn't that what the SDNY is working on now?

A bientot.

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