The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is preparing to open the door on the investigation of a criminal campaign in connection with the Donald Trump Organization
The district attorney has referred to the inquiry into the Trump business as a zombie theory, an idea that just won’t die, since it has come up there frequently in recent years.
The first visible sign of progress for Mr. Bragg came this month when Mr. Cohen appeared at the district attorney’s office in Lower Manhattan to meet with prosecutors for the first time in more than a year. Now, he is expected to return for at least one additional interview with the prosecutors in February, one of the people said.
The Trump Organization reimbursed Cohen after he made a payment to Daniels. The company’s executives authorized payments to him totaling $420,000 to cover his original payment and tax liabilities, and reward him with a bonus, according to federal prosecutors. The company was accused of deceiving the auditors about the payments being legal expenses in their books.
Mr. Weisselberg is currently serving time in the Rikers Island jail complex after pleading guilty to a tax fraud scheme unrelated to the hush money deal, a case that also led to the conviction of the Trump Organization in December. Although he was the star witness for the district attorney’s office in that case — testifying against the company that had employed him for decades — he has never implicated Mr. Trump in any wrongdoing.
In 2018, when Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance charges stemming from his role in the hush money payments, he pointed the finger at Mr. Trump, saying the payout was done “in coordination with, and at the direction of” the president. Federal prosecutors agreed that Donald Trump was behind the deal but never charged him with a crime.
The Manhattan District Attorney is presenting evidence to a grand jury that former President Donald Trump may have committed crimes in connection with hush money payments to an adult film actress in 2016, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
The grand jury can consider an indictment in about six months. If jurors indict Trump, he will have to go to criminal court in New York to enter a plea.
The former president said in a social media post that this is “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time” and that he never had an alibi.
While it’s not known if Mr. Trump will ever be charged with a crime, the approach he has taken in fighting investigations seems less effective than it used to be.
Mr. Trump has referred to the district attorney in Georgia as a racist.
The prosecutor who brought the fraud prosecution against Mr. Trump and his company was vicious in his attacks on the Justice Department.
Investigating the Cohen-Daniels-Hush-Matrix-Donalds-Danbury-Avenatti Correspondence
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On Monday, Mr. Trump filed suit against the journalist Bob Woodward, saying that Mr. Woodward had released recordings of interviews with him as an audiobook without his permission. Mr. Woodward and his publisher, Simon & Schuster called the suit a waste of time and money.
“You can wear down a private party if they do not have the same resources as you, or you can settle a civil case and make it go away, but criminal cases are not about money,” said Chuck Rosenberg, a former U.S. attorney and F.B.I. official. It is difficult to wear down federal prosecutors and make them go away, since criminal cases are about liberty and justice.
“Most recently, they asked for my cell phones because they want to be able to extract from it the voice recordings that I had had with Keith Davidson, former attorney to Stormy Daniels before Michael Avenatti, as well as a bunch of emails, text messages and so on,” Cohen told CNN’s Don Lemon on Wednesday.
Multiple sources familiar with the matter say he replied to the release of a video of a deposition Trump gave in August, in which he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights more than 400 times and refused to answer questions.
“Donald cannot keep track of the lies that he tells, and so, what better way to stop a fool from being deposed and hurting himself further than to tell him to plead the Fifth at least 400 times,” Cohen said.
Cohen’s disclosure on Wednesday is the latest in a series of signs that Manhattan prosecutors’ efforts to investigate the Daniels incident are heating up.
CNN has reported that former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker was set to meet with prosecutors this week as part of the probe. The district attorney’s office also reached out to Davidson, who represented Daniels in the hush money deal, in recent weeks.
Some of the attorneys on the case were not sure that a federal election violation charge would survive a legal challenge, according to people familiar with the investigation.