Trump Is Super Pissed Prosecutors Are ‘Harassing and Tormenting’ His Money Guy

Former President Donald Trump wants New York prosecutors to stop putting so much pressure on the guy who knows his financial secrets.  

And true to Trump’s typical style, he’s not exactly being chill about it. 

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office is “harassing and tormenting my 75 year old employee who they have thrown in jail, trying to force him to say something bad (lie!) about me,” Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, on Monday. 

Trump meant Allen Weisselberg, his organization’s longtime Chief Financial Officer who’s serving a five-month sentence in New York’s infamous Rikers Island for financial crimes—the man prosecutors already tried to flip once into a cooperating witness against Trump. 

Now, apparently, they’re at it again. Trump’s tirade marks just the latest piece of evidence that Manhattan prosecutors are taking steps behind the scenes to ready a fresh case against Trump, after successfully prosecuting his company for rewarding top executives with off-the-books benefits to avoid taxes. 

And Trump’s fury over the pressure on Weisselberg is hardly the only sign of action. On Monday, Bragg’s office met with Hope Hicks, who once ranked among Trump’s closest aides, according to the New York Times, making her the latest in a string of Trumpworld insiders to huddle with prosecutors. 

Bragg and his team are reportedly looking at multiple aspects of Trump and his company’s activity. They have warned Weisselberg that he could face insurance fraud charges if he doesn’t agree to cooperate against Trump, according to both the New York Times and Bloomberg News.

The potential grounds for those charges were first laid out in a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James against Trump’s company last September. That filing alleges that Weisselberg lied to an insurance company about the method of assessing the value of the Trump Organization’s real estate holdings by claiming they had been evaluated by an independent appraiser. 

Weisselberg’s attorney, Nicholas Gravante, didn’t return a request for comment from VICE News. 

Bragg and his team have also dusted off an unrelated years-old case involving hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who claims she had an affair with Trump. The $130,000 payout was aimed at stopping Daniels from telling her story before the 2016 election. Trump’s former attorney and so-called “fixer,” Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations in connection with the transfer of funds. 

Cohen testified that he made the payments at Trump’s direction, but Trump was never charged. Now, Bragg’s team has reportedly begun showing evidence in the case to a new grand jury in a process that could potentially result in criminal charges within a matter of months. 

Trump has insisted he did nothing wrong and repeatedly denied having an affair with Daniels. 

Hicks became the seventh witness to meet with Manhattan prosecutors since Bragg began working with the new grand jury, following Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Kellyanne Conway last week and two employees of Trump’s company, according to the Times. 

It remains unclear whether Hicks met with the grand jury or merely held discussions with Bragg’s team of prosecutors. And Bragg has not yet revealed the full scope of his investigations, or how he might weave together the various accounts of Hicks, Conway and Weisselberg into one criminal case, multiple cases, or no case at all. 

Weisselberg served by Trump’s side for decades and is widely believed to know more about Trump’s finances than anyone. Last year he pleaded guilty to his role in orchestrating payments to senior executives at the Trump Organization in off-the-books benefits to avoid taxes, and received a five-month sentence.

The aging money man may prove a tough nut to crack, however. The financier steadfastly refused to cooperate against Trump when prosecutors threatened him with the criminal charges that ultimately put him in prison. Instead, Weisselberg chose a narrow path by agreeing to testify at the criminal trial of Trump’s company, but not to cooperate in a broader investigation of Trump himself. 

The result was that Trump’s company was found guilty but received only a relatively minimal punishment of a $1.6 million fine, and Trump himself was never accused of wrongdoing. 

Former prosecutors and legal experts say that sometimes, potential witnesses can become more receptive to cooperation deals with prosecutors when they are already behind bars. That’s because the long-term consequences of staying inside prison become all the more apparent. 

Now, it remains to be seen whether Weisselberg continues to resist—or seeks a deal to secure his freedom.