SDNY reveals that the Trump-Cohen payoff scheme has incriminated another Donald Trump campaign official
Just as Michael Cohen was being sentenced to three years in prison today, the SDNY formally announced a non-prosecution agreement with David Pecker from the National Enquirer. In the agreement, Pecker admits to having illegally conspired with Trump and team to “ensure that the woman did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election.” The surprise: an additional Trump campaign official has been implicated in the process.
The cooperation agreement states that “Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen and another campaign official met with AMI Chairman David Pecker about the scheme around August 2015,” according to the Boston Globe. The official in question is not being named, but if Trump, Cohen and Pecker were all committing a felony, then this other individual is also clearly caught up in this felony. The thing is, back at that time, there were very few Trump campaign officials to speak of.
When Donald Trump launched his campaign in June of 2015, he had essentially no campaign officials or staff. Two months later, when the Cohen-Pecker meeting took place, he still had little more than a skeleton crew. In fact, apart from a few key names like Paul Manafort, Jeff Sessions, Sam Clovis, and Roger Stone, the campaign was largely being run by the Trump family as of August 2015. Yet someone who was a Trump “campaign official” at the time was a part of this felonious meeting.
So who is the mystery official? We don’t know. But Robert Mueller and the SDNY obviously know. It’s possible that the official in question has already been contacted and is cooperating. It’s also possible that the official is just now reading this announcement and realizing they’ve been nailed, and trying to decide what to do next. But it’s clear that SDNY, and Mueller by extension, have one of Trump’s earliest campaign officials nailed on a felony – with multiple witnesses in place to testify.
