The former daughter-in-law of Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg said her attorney provided “additional” documents to investigators.
This comes after multiple reports on Tuesday that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. convened a grand jury to consider evidence in the criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump‘s business dealings. The panel will sit for three days a week for the next six months to consider matters outside of the Trump inquiry.
Jennifer Weisselberg, who was married to Barry Weisselberg from 2004 to 2018, claimed her lawyer submitted paperwork last Friday as investigations in New York took a significant turn.
“My attorney provided additional documents last Friday,” she said Wednesday on MSNBC’s The Beat. “I have to provide any financials that come up in the other civil case I’m involved in, so there are some parameters to the grand jury subpoena.”
MANHATTAN PROSECUTOR CONVENES GRAND JURY IN TRUMP INVESTIGATION
The development shows Vance’s investigation, which began in 2018, is reaching its final stages as his team examines whether the former president or his businesses engaged in fraud. Time is also a factor, as Vance announced in March he will not seek reelection this year.
Jennifer Weisselberg said she was “rocked” by news of the grand jury.
“Yesterday, I was rocked by the news,” she said. “It took my breath away. They don’t tell us what’s going on in the investigation. It’s a very — it’s a good look at how the judicial process actually works.”
Vance’s effort, which included a successful legal battle to obtain Trump’s tax returns, recently dovetailed with a separate inquiry by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Both are Democrats.
“We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the organization is no longer purely civil in nature. We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA,” Fabien Levy, a spokesman for James, told the Washington Examiner on May 18.
On May 19, the New York Times reported Allen Weisselberg had been the subject of a criminal tax investigation for months. James notified Trump’s company via a letter in January that investigators are looking into whether the CFO paid taxes on “fringe benefits,” cars, and private school tuition for at least one of his grandchildren.
Allen Weisselberg has not been accused of wrongdoing, and the report said his lawyer, Mary Mulligan, declined to comment.
Jennifer Weisselberg said her former father-in-law had a “long family relationship” with Trump that led him to be “very meshed in the [Trump] organization.” She said the connection between the two continued into Trump’s tenure in the Oval Office.
Jennifer Wiesselberg predicted in March that Allen Weisselberg would flip on the former president to save himself and his sons.
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Trump on Tuesday decried the grand jury announcement and likened the proceedings to a “witch hunt.”
“This is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history. It began the day I came down the escalator in Trump Tower, and it’s never stopped. They wasted two years and $48 million in taxpayer dollars on Mueller and Russia Russia Russia, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and it continues to this day, with illegally leaked confidential information,” he said in part.
Although Trump didn’t mention the prosecutors, he did refer to New York.
“New York City and State are suffering the highest crime rates in their history, and instead of going after murderers, drug dealers, human traffickers, and others, they come after Donald Trump,” the former president said.
