New York State prosecutors investigating former President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization have subpoenaed the personal bank records of the company’s chief financial officer and are investigating gifts he and his family received from Trump, according to a new report.
According to the New York Times, Manhattan prosecutors have turned their attention toward Allen Weisselberg, who has overseen the company’s finances for decades. Sources told the Times prosecutors working for Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. seem to be working to gain Weisselberg’s cooperation in their investigation into whether Trump and the company falsely manipulated property values to receive loans and tax benefits.
Though Weisselberg has not been accused of wrongdoing, if prosecutors were to discover any possible illegal activity through a review of his personal finances, they could then use that information to push him to cooperate with the investigation.
Prosecutors are also looking to obtain another round of internal documents from the Trump Organization, including general ledgers from a number of its more than two dozen properties that the company did not turn over last year, according to the report. They have subpoenaed records from banks where Trump or the Trump Organization had accounts, such as JPMorgan Chase and Capital One, as well.
The developments come after the district attorney’s office obtained Trump’s tax records and other underlying financial documents in February after the Supreme Court ruled against the former president’s efforts to block Vance from receiving the financial information.
Trump has previously denied any wrongdoing, calling the investigation a politically motivated “fishing expedition.”
The probe is still investigating allegations that the Trump Organization played a role in doling out illegal hush-money payments in 2016 to two women who claimed they had affairs with Trump.
Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty in 2018 to violating campaign-finance laws in handing out the payments, which he said were made “at the direction of and with the knowledge of” Trump during his run for president in 2016.
Cohen later testified to Congress that Weisselberg was aware of the payments and even helped create a plan to mask the reimbursements. The federal prosecutors who charged Cohen did not accuse Weisselberg of wrongdoing, however.