Donald Trump’s hush money to keep Allen Weisselberg quiet just backfired and exploded in court
Just when we thought we knew what the rest of the prosecution’s case was going to look like – Michael Cohen and an unspecified number of ancillary witnesses – Alvin Bragg and his team managed to pull a surprise out of their hats today after all.
Prosecutors alleged in court today that Donald Trump has essentially paid Allen Weisselberg $750,000 not to testify against him, and revealed plans to show the jury evidence of these payments, by way of explaining why Weisselberg wasn’t testifying.
This prompted Judge Merchan to suggest that he might bring Weisselberg in and ask him whether he wants to testify, which in turn caused Trump’s attorneys to panic at the prospect of Weisselberg testifying. By the time the judge began proposing scenarios to allow Weisselberg’s testimony to happen, court ended for the day. So now we’re looking at quite a cliffhanger.
It looks like we’ll come out of this with one of two scenarios. The first would be that the judge allows prosecutors to show the jury how Trump bought Weisselberg’s silence. The second would be that Weisselberg is indeed brought in to testify. This would be surreal, given that Weisselberg is currently in prison for the perjury he committed in Trump’s last trial.
But Weisselberg, damaged and reluctant as he may be, could destroy Trump on the stand. Keep in mind that even without a cooperation deal, by law Weisselberg still has to provide certain kinds of testimony. The Fifth Amendment only protects him from incriminating himself, not Trump.
So Weisselberg would have to testify about the crimes he witnessed Trump committing but didn’t participate in. Weisselberg would also have to testify about the crimes he’s already pleaded guilty to, because the Fifth Amendment becomes moot in that instance. There is also the question of whether Weisselberg would be stupid enough to come into this trial and commit perjury again, which would lengthen his current prison sentence. But if Weisselberg does get caught lying on the stand in this trial to try to help Trump, that could probably only be a good thing for the prosecution’s case.
In any case, the Trump trial has certainly ended the week with unexpected drama. We’ll see what the judge ends up deciding to do with it on Monday. But either way, this can’t be good for Trump. Either the jury is about to find out that Trump paid Weisselberg to keep quiet about whatever Weisselberg isn’t there testifying about, or Weisselberg is about to testify.
