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It’s easy for him to be overlooked with all the bombshells on the tape-it makes it clear Trump knew about the McDougal payment in advance, that the concern was clearly about the election-Trump’s own words are the most damning in clearly establishing the issue is the election.

REASON #4: THE AUDIO ESTABLISHES MOTIVE. CNN edited the audio to exclude some inculpatory moments—notably, Trump telling Cohen, of damning info on his past relationships, "all you've got to do is delay it for [inaudible]." That helps establish this as an *election*-related plot.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) July 25, 2018

But, as usual, it’s even worse than that as what they were specifically discussing at that moment was the possible resurfacing of Trump’s first wife Ivanna’s accusation from the early 1990s of marital rape. The record of this had been sealed for years but in 2015 some reporters discovered it-this was when Cohen made his disgusting threat to ‘do something disgusting’ to a DailyBest reporter and take away every penny you still don’t have if he dared put the words ‘Mr. Trump’ and ‘rape’ in the same sentence.

Let’s go to the video tape:

TRUMP: All you’ve got to do is delay for —

All you’ve got to do is delay for… Delay for what? Obviously until after the election.

COHEN: Even after that, it’s not ever going to be opened. There’s no, there’s no purpose for it. Um, told you about Charleston. Um, I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, David, you know, so that — I’m going to do that right away. I’ve actually come up and I’ve spoken —

FN: It’s pretty clear at this point the David in question was AMI’s David Pecker who has some brand new problems with Bezos’ revelations.

No doubt Cohen is confident that it will never be opened-after all the threats he made. And it’s true-the marital rape story has totally fizzled. Until now.

https://lastmenandovermen.com/2018/07/25/the-truth-is-not-the-presidents-friend-and-im-not-talking-about-marginal-issues-michael-cohen/

So with all this, you will be forgiven if the name  Allen Weisselberg hit you like something of an afterthought. After all, his name has not been previously widely known and if there were any chance for his part in this to get any traction it was effectively over once news that Cohen says he witnessed Donald Jr. tell Donald Sr. about the proposed #TreasonMeeting firsthand.

UPDATE: This allegation Cohen was allegedly willing to make remains in a kind of information purgatory. Cohen’s own then lawyer, Lanny Davis, later seemed to somewhat distance himself from the story admitting he was one of the sources-though CNN points out there were other sources and they are standing by the story.

Much of the rest of the media has-as usual-given ‘President Trump’ the benefit of the doubt and assumed it’s not true as Davis did walk back-a little-and there hasn’t been anything else that corroborated it-as well there’s no mention of it in Cohen’s sentencing memo. This is another bad MSM tendency-to presume absence of-further-evidence is evidence of absence.

But Weissleberg’s name did come up and this is potentially the biggest news of all on the tape. Weisselberg is the accountant-for 40 years, he was Trump’s racist Dad Fred Trump’s accountant too. Tim O’Brien-the one man who saw Trump’s tax returns, after Trump’s lawsuit against him for writing a book that alleged he may well not be a billionaire failed, says that Weisselberg-not Cohen-is the biggest fish of them all-he knows where all the bodies are buried.

Let’s go back to the transcripts:

COHEN: And, I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with …

TRUMP: So, what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?

COHEN: … Funding . . . Yes. Um, and it’s all the stuff.

TRUMP: Yeah, I was thinking about that.

COHEN: All the stuff. Because — here, you never know where that company — you never know what he’s —

TRUMP: Maybe he gets hit by a truck.

COHEN: Correct. So, I’m all over that. And, I spoke to Allen about it, when it comes time for the financing, which will be —

TRUMP: Wait a sec, what financing?

COHEN: Well, I’ll have to pay him something.

TRUMP: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] pay with cash.

So here Trump clearly says to make the payment in cash not ‘No-that would be wrong.’ Or ‘payment for what? There was no affair!’

COHEN: No, no, no, no, no. I got it.

TRUMP: Check.

So Weisselberg was involved in the payment-and logically as the Trump family’s accountant of 40 years he must have been intimately involved with all such payments Trump made to shut up women-and there are many-too many to count in one sit in. Indeed, on Friday morning, Michael Avenatti announced he was representing three more women who allege they had affairs with Trump-one who claims she was impregnated. 

Three additional women. All paid hush money through various means. Time for Michael Cohen and Donald Trump to come 100 percent clean with the American people. All the documents, all the tapes, NOW. No more lies or lip service. #Basta

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) July 27, 2018

“The documents, part of the FBI’s investigation of a hush-money scheme, show agents gathered evidence that Trump participated in an effort to pay off Stormy Daniels, the adult-film actress who claimed to have had an extramarital affair with him years earlier. Authorities laid out a timeline of emails, text messages and phone calls – some involving Trump himself – that “concerned the need to prevent” Daniels from going public with her story.”

Let’s try not to be naive. These payments we know about or that have been widely discussed are not the only payments. Obviously this has been how Trump has conducted himself systematically for 30 years. Payments to quiet women he had an affair with-or who was in some way inappropriate with are simply one of  his costs of doing business, the cost of being Donald Trump.

So now we know of three more-but those aren’t the last three that he paid off, there just the latest three we, the public, are now aware of. I know people-friends of mine-who were honestly surprised when they learned about Stormy Daniels-they honestly believed Trump had stopped cheating simply because he was married to Melania(!)

FN: Avenatti has long since faded from the landscape in disgrace. We know of course of hush money payments Michael Cohen paid on behalf of and at the direction of Trump to Avenatti’s original client, Stormy Daniels, as well as Karen McDougal. It certainly would’t be surprising to discover there were more such payments though nothing has come out publicly.

In July, 2019 the investigation into Cohen’s hush money payments was officially ended and transcripts from the trial were released. 

Here’s one pretty interesting revelation in the transcripts.

“A day after the public heard Donald Trump boasting about grabbing women’s genitals in a leaked “Access Hollywood” outtake, the Republican presidential candidate and some of his top aides began an urgent effort to silence a pornographic actress, according to court records unsealed Thursday.”

So the payments were clearly political-it was not coincidence but directly in response to Hollywood Access.

End of FN.

In any case the much larger point than even, yes, the man’s a pig-and the cases where he had consensual extramarital sex and then paid them off to quite them are the more innocent cases-there are also many cases of nonconsensual encounters and, it was striking that even Stormy Daniels, in her interview stated that, while she believed it was consensual, she also said had sex with him even though

1. She didn’t find him attractive

2. She didn’t want to have sex with him

Yet she describes this encounter as consensual. 

But the big picture is that every time Trump puts together one of these payments, all the payments he must make every year, that he has made yearly for 30 years have been facilitated by his loyal family accountant-Allen Weisselberg.

Tim O’Brien-aka the one man who has seen Trump’s tax returns. 

“Cohen, of course, already is reportedly being investigated by federal prosecutors in New York for possibly engaging in bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations. To the extent that his legal travails spill over onto the president, it’s worrisome to the White House. But campaign finance violations aren’t likely to be as threatening to Trump as more serious transgressions such as, for example, obstruction of justice or exchanging policy favors for financial gain.”

“Moreover, Cohen has only worked for Trump since 2006, and he never operated as a traditional lawyer. Instead, he brought potential licensing deals to the president’s attention for years and also worked with the career criminal and Trump business partner Felix Sater on a proposal for a Trump project in Moscow. (Sater and Cohen, childhood friends, also paired up to push an initiative to end economic sanctions against Russia imposed because of its military annexation of part of Ukraine;.”

UPDATE: In Cohen’s eventual conviction his lies to Congress on when the Trump Tower Moscow project finished was among the charges.

FN: The latest is the huge Felix Sater email dump

Then O’Brien lets go of another little bombshell:

“Putin, according to my Bloomberg News colleagues, reportedly discussed a plan to resolve the conflict in Ukraine during his private meeting with Trump in Helsinki last week.)”

This corroborates something Seth Abramson has argued-that the fake peace plan conspired on between Russia, the UAE and the Trump WH-facilitated with the help of Steve Bannon, Eric Prince, and brought to the WH by Michael Cohen and his childhood friend, Felix Sater, was never quashed-quite the opposite-it continues to move apace.

UPDATE: The recent earth shaking revelations in Ukraine if you’re listening put these previously known facts in even sharper relief-it must be remembered that even if holding back Ukraine aid was Trump’s leverage in trying to force them to investigate Biden it clearly benefits Putin.

Speaking of benefitting Putin

Hundreds of Ukrainians have protested after President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had backed an agreement that would bring elections to territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists.”

It’s clear in Trump’s call with President Zelensky he wasn’t furthering American interests. It’s clear who’s interests have been furthered during Trump’s term-Russia’s.

End of UPDATE.

UPDATE: The importance and centrality of the Moscow Trump Tower deal, the  ‘peace plan’ as well as sanction relief is now in even sharper relief after the recent comments by Mueller’s prosecutor Jordan Weismann in court recently. 

Indeed, the larger plot is coming into sharper relief-Russian interference on the Trump campaign’s behalf in exchange for sanctions relief, and giving Russia what it wants in the Ukraine and Syria-Putin’s gotten exactly what he wanted in Syria. By the way, one thing I’ve heard in the MSM a lot recently-including, alas Rachel Maddow-is being puzzled why Flynn felt he had to lie about talking to Kisylak on December 26, 2016. The answer seems pretty obvious to me-he knew it looked very bad politically-the public was just becoming aware of the allegations that Russia interfered in the election to help Trump.

Remember Flynn told his lies-I still don’t get how everyone, evidently even Mueller, presumes Pence didn’t know Flynn was a Turkish agent as Pence was the transition guy-at a time where the intel agencies had just made their report on Russian interference public. Maddow has expressed puzzlement on numerous occasions-along with the rest of the MSM; normally she’s ahead of the pack-as to why Flynn had to lie-there was nothing wrong with speaking to Kisylak about changing relations with Russia.

FN: Everyone including Mueller has taken Pence’s claims of being lied to at face value-though, again, he was the transition guy and should have known. But finally Pence himself has gotten tied up in Trump’s mess-he spoke to Ukraine on Trump’s behalf-pushing Zelensky to investigate Biden. Pence claims he didn’t know about Biden-he just asked the Ukrainian President to crack down on ‘scandal.’

But it was also revealed that Pence’s aide was on Trump’s call with Zelensky. 

End of FN

Normally this would be true. But this was prior to Trump taking Office-so much for one President at a time-and the sanctions had been put in place as punishment for Russia’s interference on behalf of the Trump campaign. And now the Trump team-before even getting into Office, indeed, the day after the sanctions are imposed, call up the Russians and say Don’t worry about it?! 

And why was it so urgent that Flynn had to call them the very next day? The timing further suggests maybe there was a quid pro quo. Add to the picture this latest Washington Post scoop and the basic elements are falling into place.

The above is covered in the afterwords:

Congratulations to the WaPo which, unlike the NYT, can report that the polling handoff happened at the same meeting Manafort was talking sanctions relief. https://t.co/A3FpMat5g4

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) February 12, 2019

So in the same meeting they discussed the campaign and the same meeting Manafort handed this Russian intel operative campaign polling data they also discussed sanctions relief. This has all the basic elements of collusion-the quid-election interference help; the polling data-and the quo-sanctions relief. Then there’s Roger Stone. We now know that he asked Jerome Corsi to find out what else Wikileaks had after receiving an email from a Trump senior aide to find out. As Seth Abramson argues, it’s very plausible that this senior campaign aide in question is: Paul Manafort considering the 40 year relationship between Stone and Manafor-then 36 year.

As Abramson says, however, the media has been slow to consider this as they have decided that any talk of a Manafort-Assange connection is FAKE NEWS-Chapter A for more.

Back to O’Brien:

“As I noted in a column in April, the press and others have sometimes characterized Cohen as the man who knows all of Trump’s secrets or even, errantly, as someone who ran the Trump Organization with the president’s children. Not so.”

“Weisselberg, on the other hand, has worked for the Trump family since the 1970s, and knows more about the Trump Organization’s history and finances than nearly anyone. Almost 71 years old, he joined the company after graduating from college and worked for the president’s father, Fred, as an accountant. He has since become the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer and one of the president’s closest business confidants (alongside Jason Greenblatt, who was Trump’s in-house legal counsel before the president named him as a special diplomatic envoy to the Middle East).”

“Weisselberg also served as treasurer of the president’s troubled philanthropy, The Donald J. Trump Foundation, which the New York State Attorney General has sued for allegations involving “extensive and persistent violations of state and federal law.” The suit says the foundation routinely and willfully broke the law by engaging in self-dealing that ultimately came to include illegal coordination with Trump’s political campaign. Weisselberg hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing.”

So Weisselberg would know all about, say, for example-just one example, there are many, many more, many that aren’t public knowledge, most are not-that payment Trump made to Pam Bondi when she was Florida AG to somehow make Florida’s Trump U lawsuit magically disappear in a way that would make David Coppperfield himself green with envy.

In fact, O’Brien-aka the man who saw Trump’s tax returns-interviewed Weisselberg himself for his 2005 book-that Trump brought his failed libel suit against.

In terms of temperament, Weisselberg is the opposite of Trump and his kids-and Cohen for that matter, he’s the opposite of ostentatious.

“Unlike the Trump family, Weisselberg has preferred to remain out of the spotlight over the last few decades, quietly tending to the Trump Organization’s operations. Now that he has surfaced in one of the most high-profile political and business investigations ever conducted in the U.S., that may be about to change.”

Tim O’Brien gives some background on his interview of Weisselberg.

“Trump Loyalist’s Subpoena Is Momentous Turn.”

Of course, $5 billion would still mean Trump’s a billionaire. It seems that whatever math Weisselberg supplied for O’Brien didn’t persuade the judge.

“Weisselberg’s math and his memory will have to improve, quickly. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that a grand jury subpoenaed him to testify in the federal investigation of Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen.”

“While Cohen and Weisselberg are now intertwined legally, and know each other from their years together at the Trump Organization, they couldn’t be more different. Cohen, blunt and talkative, joined the Trump Organization in 2006 and operated essentially as a fixer-for-hire until his relationship with Trump soured and then decayed. Weisselberg, more reserved and observant, has been a member of the Trump Organization since the 1970s and worked his way up from being an accountant to the CFO’s perch.”

Weisselberg got the kind of place with Trump Cohen never could because he is blunt and talkative. Weisselberg is one of those folks who can go far because they know how to keep their mouth shut.

“Cohen has never received the kind of respect and trust from Trump that he hoped for and his loyalty to the president is now in play — as is the possibility that he may cooperate with federal and state investigations of Trump. Weisselberg has been a Trump family loyalist for decades and his allegiance to the president may be harder for prosecutors to crack.”

But the reward for cracking him is great and for that reason there may be great pressure on him coming.

“On the other hand, Weisselberg has extensive knowledge of the Trump Organization’s operations. Trump’s trust in him was deep enough that he regularly had Weisselberg prepare his personal tax returns and sign off on the financial details of the company’s deals. He also had a prominent position inside the president’s troubled charitable foundation. And he, along with the president’s two eldest sons, oversees the trust that Trump set up to manage his interests in the Trump Organization while he’s in the White House.”

“That kind of knowledge is likely to be of great interest to investigators, who long ago signaled that they might take a closer look at the president’s business dealings. They may be inclined to put the kind of pressure on Weisselberg that would strain his loyalties to Trump.”

I mean as loyal as Weisselberg has always been to the Trump family is he willing to be G. Gordon Liddy-Paul Manafort ‘loyal’?

For more on Manafort as serving the role for Trump G. Gordon Liddy served for Nixon see my earlier chapter. 

If Mueller brings Manafort like pressure to him-threatening him with hardcore prison tie will Weisselberg’s loyalty begin to disintegrate just as did Cohen’s?

UPDATE: Events would go on to show most certainly not, it turned out that it wasn’t too hard for Mueller to get Weisselberg to flip on his 40 year client. 

For more see Chapter A