Prosecutors have alleged in court that the Trump Organization offered former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg more than $1 million to keep his mouth shut.
Jose Pagliery
Political Investigations Reporter
Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Reuters
In a turn that is oh-so-meta, a brand new hush money deal is now at the center of attention in Donald Trump’s ongoing hush money trial: $750,000 that prosecutors say the business mogul is dangling above Allen Weisselberg’s head to keep him testifying against his former boss.
For the first time on Friday, prosecutors disclosed the strict terms of a severance agreement that the Trump Organization used to promise more than $1 million to its outgoing chief financial officer—as long as he kept his mouth shut.
The 76-year-old disgraced accountant is currently serving a five-month jail sentence on Rikers Island for perjury, having lied to try sparing Trump from legal trouble in a separate case that ultimately fined the tycoon nearly $500 million for bank fraud.
But Weisselberg has conspicuously remained the missing witness at Trump’s first criminal trial. Prosecutors allege he was the finance guy who helped manage the hush money deal that kept the porn star Stormy Daniels quiet about her sexual affair with Trump in the final weeks of the 2016 election. Documents in court show that Weisselberg structured the $420,000 repayment to Michael Cohen (then Trump’s personal attorney) after the so-called “fixer” had fronted the $130,000 initial payment to the porn star.
In court on Friday, prosecutors revealed that the Trump Organization has promised to pay Weisselberg three installments of $250,000 due later this year in June, September, and December—if he doesn’t “cooperate” with law enforcement.
One part of the contract, read out loud in court, says Weisselberg promises “not to verbally or in writing disparage, criticize, denigrate” the company or any of its executives. Another section says “he will not communicate with” and “otherwise will not cooperate with” any entity seeking “adverse claims” against the company.
And while the law generally punishes people for “aiding or abetting” a criminal, Weisselberg’s contract by contrast punishes him if he decides to “aid, abet, or cause” any action against the Trump real estate empire.
This whole other kind of hush money deal came up because prosecutors are planning to wrap up their presentation of the case next week without calling Weisselberg to the stand, which might seem confusing to jurors. That’s why they asked the judge to let jurors see the severance agreement.
“What we’re trying to do is explain his absence. This agreement offers a real explanation as to why he’s not going to be here at this trial,” said prosecutor Christopher Conroy.
This legal debate ensued after the 18 jurors considering the case were sent home for the weekend. The discussion made clear that prosecutors will likely call Cohen as a final witness, then wrap up their presentation against the former president. It would then be Trump’s turn to tell his side of the story, if he even has plans to do so.
For a few minutes, lawyers on both sides sparred over whether to allow jurors to see the severance agreement. The judge initially seemed open to the idea. That is, until he discovered that prosecutors haven’t even tried.
“Has anyone attempted having him come in in some way… serving him with a subpoena or trying to compel his testimony?” Justice Juan Merchan asked.
“Judge, the people have not,” a prosecutor responded.
The reality is a tad bit complicated. The fact is, neither side wants jurors to hear from Weisselberg—because no one knows what a pissed off old man suffering in jail for the second time around after once again taking the fall for his boss might say.
He’s a loaded gun, and he could point in either direction.
Donald Trump and his son Donald, Jr., with Allen Weisselberg (C).
Timothy A. Clary
Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor, readily admitted that his team saw it as a “strategically bad decision to put a witness on the stand who has an agreement like that.”
Meanwhile Trump’s defense team fought against the notion of having Weisselberg testify. But then he also complained that it would be unfair to let jurors see the agreement.
Emil Bove, a defense lawyer, tried to have the judge consider this cushy retirement package in total isolation. In reality, that deal followed years of Trump’s top accountant refusing to flip on his boss.
Weisselberg has been grilled by federal prosecutors who initially looked into the deal six years ago, pressured to testify about his cooking of the books at the company’s tax fraud trial in 2022 (before this same judge), later spent three months at Rikers for dodging taxes, played a reluctant witness at Trump’s bank fraud trial last year, and is now serving time for lying during that trial.
“That he entered into a settlement agreement after the fact… is not relevant to what’s going on at this trial,” Bove tried to convince the judge. “Mr. Weisselberg is in prison right now and not available to anyone.”
But the judge saw right through the uncomfortable dance being performed on both sides.
“It would be helpful to make my decision if I see that there were some efforts taken,” he said, accusing all the lawyers of “jumping the gun.”
The judge pointed to a narrow provision in Weisselberg’s retirement deal that allows him to testify if he’s dragged into court by a subpoena, calling it “a factor for me in making that decision.”
At that point, Steinglass pivoted, warning the judge that having prosecutors approach Weisselberg at all could cost the Trump associate dearly but still ultimately prove futile on the witness stand if he decides to plead his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Merchan suggested an alternative, one that would subject Weisselberg to a bus ride from the dreaded island jail in the East River to the criminal courthouse in downtown Manhattan. Once there, he could be ordered to testify in a courtroom without the jury present—and once lawyers know what he’ll say, decide whether to put him in front of jurors.
Merchan said the entire exercise would be important. After all, there’s a key difference between that and what he’s hearing now from lawyers who have a common interest in not hearing from a complicated key player in this saga.
“Then it”s on the record, and I’ve seen it,” Merchan said.
In the final moments of the fourth week of Trump’s ongoing trial, Bove made one last try to keep Weisselberg from showing up next week, complaining that the accountant was never on the government’s witness list.
“We were entitled to notice of that long before the trial started,” Bove argued.
At that, the judge turned down his gray bearded chin, shaking his head while his eyes pierced into Bove from behind his thick-rimmed black glasses.
“You didn’t think it was a possibility the people might call Allen Weisselberg to testify?”
Hi. Grand post, great videos, I love them. Ten Bears and I have already talked about this here. But MPS posted far more than I did on it. How anyone can watch the elephants and not see thinking, loving, communicating, caring, grand beings in what we humans call a herd. Oh how I wonder how they refer to most of us. On one side note. When I posted this, I referred to the man who moved under one of the larger elephants. This is why it is important to read comments on sites, this person seen something I missed. I marveled that the man who is a fragile creature was so comfortable being that surrounded by these huge beings. The comment put a new view of what was happening. Again it is so loving. Hugs. Scottie
w3ski4me says:
Elephants are way cool. They communicate, they have rituals, they protect the herd. So much we puny humans don’t understand. On another note. When the herd trotted up to the rescue truck, there was one youngish guy among the Elephants and in sandals I think. An Elephant raised a leg to shelter the human which I thought was exceptionally gentle.
As the article says church attendance is declining. That means less money in the donation plates. That happened when gathering in groups was banned during Covid pandemic, churches lost a lot of revenue. So they fought Covid prevention messures. It was not religious, it was financial. That is what drives a lot of the church stances, putting more asses in the pews which puts more money in donation plates. That is why they were against gay marraige, as same sex couples did not breed like opposite sex couples and bring those crotch fruit to church. Hugs. Scottie
by Darrell Lucus
Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)
Keith Giles tells me He Gets Us caved and admitted it sold data after publicly maintaining it didn’t do so. He’s working on a follow-up now. But we now have an admission that #TheyExploitUs.
For the last two-plus years, we’ve seen numerous ads for the “He Gets Us” advertising campaign, which has bought billions of dollars in advertising for the last two Super Bowls, as well as on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. While it bills itself as an effort to overcome the bad rap that Christians have gotten over the years, it was actually funded by outfits with unmistakably right-wing underpinnings.
One of the major donors for the campaign is David Green, the founder of the unshakably conservative craft store chain Hobby Lobby, which proudly touts its successful push for the right to restrict its employees’ access to birth control. Additionally, the nonprofit that originally started the campaign, Servantly, donated scads of money to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christianist legal advocacy group that is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Rebekah Slager diaried about it here in 2023.
But it turns out “He Gets Us” has problems more fundamental than just possible astroturfing. Christian left blogger and retired pastor Keith Giles recently discovered that the people behind “He Gets Us” have no qualms about selling your information to local churches, despite public claims to the contrary. What is more, He Gets Us partners with a data-mining company that makes it all too easy for bad actors to get said information.
Giles relates the story of “Kathy Wilson,” a woman from his hometown of El Paso who happened to see a He Gets Us ad on Instagram. Wilson had been going through a rough time of late. She clicked on a link that connected her with someone in her area who could offer support and prayer if she wanted it.
Shortly after entering her information, she began getting texts from “Janice,” who co-pastors a church in El Paso alongside her husband. Kathy thought she was getting a sympathetic ear in her time of need. But a few weeks later, Janice was speaking at a women’s conference about the need for women to reach out to their unsaved friends. She used that talk to reveal that her church partnered with Christian data-mining company Gloo (no relation to the British electronic music group) to get cell data from women looking for support in partnership with He Gets Us—a direct contradiction of He Gets Us’ own claim that it is “not a back to church campaign.” She then whipped out her phone and read several personal texts from Kathy about how she felt lonely at times, even going as far as to share information about her occupation and her work schedule. A recording of that talk soon appeared on the Website of Janice’s church.
A few weeks later, Giles was sitting for coffee with one of his friends, “Gustavo,” who revealed he’d recently gotten an invite to a local prayer meeting after years of being out of church. However, he had second thoughts about going when he happened to check out the church’s Website and discovered Janice’s talk at that women’s conference. Gustavo was dumbfounded that anyone could be so cavalier with someone else’s trust—even more so after a quick Google search revealed a trove of personal information about Kathy.
Giles did his own search and corroborated what Gustavo told him. He then reached out to Kathy on Facebook and let her know Janice had essentially blasted out her information for all to see and hear. Kathy confronted Janice, who immediately offered an unreserved apology. That didn’t go far enough for Kathy, who retained a lawyer and sent a further message asking her to publicly apologize to her and give written assurance that she would never pull a stunt like this again. The talk was deleted soon afterward, and Janice promised to record another message apologizing to Kathy and post it to her church’s Website.
Giles soon discovered how Janice got her hands on Kathy’s information. It turned out that the Instagram ad was one of many ways Christian organizations “capture the personal data of people who are emotionally and spiritually vulnerable.” They then sell this data to Gloo, who then sells it to “local pastors seeking to grow their churches.” How does it work?
According to GLOO, a US-based Christian Data-Mining Company started by Scott and Theresa Beck in 2013, their mission is to “help ministry leaders scale their impact through technology.” To do that, they purchase meta-data from a variety of groups like He Gets Us, K-Love, Barna Research, and other organizations, to create a database of potential targets – like Kathy Wilson – and then they sell that data on their platform to more than 38,000 churches who sign up for their “Explorer” program.
Here’s how it works, according to GLOO’s own website:
“GLOO enables cooperative outreach by partnering with a wide range of campaign partners, including K-LOVE and He Gets Us. One partner, Churches Care, runs digital ads on channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Google on topics including faith, relationships, vocation, finance and health. When a person responds to an ad, they can provide their information to be connected to a church in their local area. The church can message the individual directly through the Gloo platform and help them with their inquiry, often resulting in the person receiving prayer, help for a need and even visiting that church in person.” (the emphasis is Giles’)
If that isn’t unnerving enough, Giles discovered that Gloo has almost no means of keeping people’s information from bad actors. He was able to sign up for a Gloo account with just his email address and a credit card. Once he paid $49.99 to set up an account, he immediately got a phone number to allow him to get texts forwarded to him from Gloo’s many partners—including He Gets Us. No one asked if he had any written evidence to prove he was affiliated with a church or religious organization.
He then found the “Explorer” program that Janice’s church had joined. Users with Premium accounts are automatically matched with “Explorers,” or people “reaching out for encouragement, prayer, or answers.” According to a Gloo press release, whenever “Explorers” interact with ads from Gloo partners, they have a chance to connect with a nearby church. Their ultimate goal is to amass data from over a million people.
In a statement, Come Near, the nonprofit that has run He Gets Us since 2023, maintains that it “does not, and has not, sold data to Gloo.” It added that it paused all Gloo-related activities this past February. But Giles discovered that Gloo lists He Gets Us as one of the campaigns with whom it partners, and discovered a screenshot from the Gloo Website that details how Gloo collects data from He Gets Us ads. Giles believes this means one of two things—either Gloo is lying about getting user information from He Gets Us, or He Gets Us may have given the data away for free. After all, Janice had to get Kathy’s information somehow.
Either way, Giles is being way too kind when he suggests a better description of “He Gets Us” is “He Tricked Us.” To my mind, it’s more accurate to say “They Exploit Us”—and are doing so in a textbook case of evangelicalism in its most unacceptable form. And in so doing, it is putting churches and pastors in astronomical reputational and legal danger. If I were Come Near and Gloo, I’d have lawyers on speed dial.
Thanks Ten Bears. In the US profit is king and everything is designed to make profit for the wealthy and push the costs on to the public, the people. These corporate people and their shareholders see the public not as people but as livestock to milk and use until there is nothing left to take from them, then dispose of them and get new ones. We the people are chicken that lay their eggs of profit and when we can’t lay any more they sell what is left for what they can get. They have raided every sector of US life, it is all for profit now. We need to take it back, put public back into public service. Hugs. Scottie
My dogs that love gravy! These laws are being driven by religion, more truthfully people that hid their true religious intent to get elected to then try to force their religious views on everyone else. To force everyone to live by their churches doctrines and their religious driven idea of what is moral or not. Do you understand this is a bunch of hyper religious people wagging their fingers at the people they dislike and telling them god sees what they are doing? This is our time of the temperance movement or the prohibition of alcohol that went so badly wrong. It is a small group of people who have extreme views of morality based on their own religious views who insist on forcing everyone else to live according to their views. It is the morality police and the vice patrols of the Islamic theocracies that the same people doing this in the US claim to hate. It is scary to me the regressive world they want to force the country into. Hugs. Scottie
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee’s version of the age verification bills being sponsored around the country by anti-porn religious conservative activists continues making its progress through the state legislature toward likely approval.
On Tuesday, the state’s Senate Finance Committee advanced SB 1792 — titled by its chief sponsor, Republican Senator Becky Duncan Massey, as the “Protect Tennessee Minors Act” — out of committee.
SB 1792 “would make porn websites criminally liable if they don’t verify the ages of users of their sites through photo matching,” local CBS affiliate WREG reported.
Massey compared the proposed new requirement to “age verification when folks go on an alcohol-related site,” and said her bill is necessary because, she believes, pornography “can cause damage” and “mental health issues.”
FSC Director of Public Affairs Mike Stabile, however, told XBIZ that Massey’s bill effectively criminalizes the distribution of adult content online, which he cited as a frequently stated goal of many conservatives.
Stabile also called SB 1792 “an escalation of what we’ve seen in other states” and deemed it “a grave threat” to First Amendment protections.
“First it was private lawsuits, then fines from attorneys general — Tennessee evidently wants to become the first state to begin arresting pornographers,” Stabile said, adding that the Tennessee bill’s chilling effect on legal speech will be substantial.
“The legislature’s own fiscal review committee says that it assumes ‘a majority of entities’ will simply stop publishing content in the state, but that, if not, ‘the increase in such convictions could be significant,’” he explained.
Stabile also pointed out that for many legislators, age verification is “just an excuse to increase liabilities for people that create, and platforms that host, material dealing in sex or sexuality. It’s no surprise that Tennessee has also recently expanded the definition of ‘material harmful to minors’ to include drag and other non-explicit LGBTQ+ content offline, and the bill itself criminalizes as little as the description of a nipple.”
Aylo: Recent Slew of AV Laws Are ‘Ineffective, Dangerous’
SB 1792 would also require websites to keep “anonymized age-verification data” for extended periods of time.
Massey told WREG, “They keep the data but not personally identifying data. They have to keep the data to prove that they did verify for seven years, but it can’t have their name, address. It can’t have any personal identifying markers.”
Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Utah and Virginia have passed similar age verification bills, all introduced by Republicans, while 19 other states have introduced similar legislation. Florida recently passed its version of the law, written by a legislator who is also a pastor, as part of a more comprehensive social media bill.
Aylo issued a statement about the Tennessee bill and the other laws, stating, “The way many jurisdictions worldwide have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy. Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws.”
Main Image: Anti-Porn crusader Tennessee Sen. Becky Duncan Massey (R)
Scottie's Playtime 