Former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg dumped his Trump-funded attorneys, according to reports from Newsweek and WNBC, the surest sign yet that he’s flipped on the failed former president and is ready to cooperate with prosecutors investigating alleged wrongdoing at the company.
The timing of Weisselberg parting ways with his Trump lawyers has resulted in suggestions he may have been about to, or already has, flipped on the former president, so the 75-year-old doesn’t end up spending more time in prison. Weisselberg already agreed to testify in The Trump Organization fraud trial in exchange for his potential jail sentence being reduced from 15 years to five months, but he didn’t implicate the former president.
Karen Agnifilo, former chief assistant district attorney of the Manhattan D.A.’s office, told MSNBC the move by Weisselberg is a significant development.
“It can mean one of two things. Number one, the case is over and doesn’t need lawyers anymore, they were just representing them on that one case,” Agnifilo said. “Or, more likely, is there was this pressure campaign put on him saying while he’s in Rikers, ‘do you like being there? Because we’re about to bring other charges.’
“If he testified in the grand jury, you wouldn’t necessarily know it because he’d be brought into the backdoor because he’s incarcerated,” Agnifilo added. “So unlike the other people Michael Cohen, or [attorney] Bob Costello, who told people that testified and we know about them because we see them going in and out of the building. You wouldn’t necessarily see Allen Weisselberg. So it’s possible he’s already testified, we just don’t know.”
The move by Weisselberg may also explain why a grand jury empaneled by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg hasn’t yet indicted Trump. Bragg could be planning to have the former Trump Org. CFO testify before the panel as a way of strengthening the case against the one-term ex-president.
