In August 2018, the Wall Street Journal wrongly reported that then Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg had accepted an immunity deal to testify against Michael Cohen in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. Adam Davidson of New Yorker used the occasion to unveil his profile of Weisselberg, making all kinds of conclusions that never bore fruit because, although he was granted limited federal witness immunity to talk to the grand jury, Weisselberg never agreed to become a cooperating witness.

This didn’t help Cohen, however, who on August 21, 2018 pleaded guilty to “five counts of tax evasion, one count of making false statements to a financial institution, one count of willfully causing an unlawful corporate contribution, and one count of making an excessive campaign contribution at the request of a candidate (Donald Trump) for the ‘principal purpose of influencing [the] election’.” In November 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to the U.S. Senate about his work on the Trump Tower Moscow deal, about which I’ve written extensively.  Cohen ultimately spent over two years either in prison or under house arrest.

As for Weisselberg, in January 2023 he began what would ultimately be a little over three-month prison term in New York’s infamous Rikers Island prison. He had pleaded guilty to 15 counts of grand larceny, criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records. On Wednesday, morning, he headed back there in shackles.

Allen Weisselberg, a retired executive in Donald Trump’s real estate empire, was sentenced on Wednesday to five months in jail for lying under oath during his testimony in the civil fraud lawsuit brought against the former president by New York’s attorney general.

Weisselberg, 76, pleaded guilty last month to two counts of perjury in connection with the suit. He admitted lying when he testified he had little knowledge of how Trump’s Manhattan penthouse came to be valued on his financial statements at nearly three times its actual size.

…Weisselberg, wearing a black windbreaker and a surgical face mask, declined to address the court during the brief sentencing, which lasted less than five minutes. He was swiftly escorted from the courtroom in handcuffs following the proceeding to begin serving his sentence.

The prosecutors and judge went easy on Weisselberg, citing his age and willingness to admit wrongdoing, and importantly they did not require him to testify in Trump’s criminal trial related to the Stormy Daniels case which is scheduled to begin next week. Considering that he’s now a convicted perjurer, perhaps that’s not too consequential, as his testimony isn’t necessarily believable. Of course, that’s also true of Cohen who will be a key witness.

These two men were at the center of the Stormy Daniels coverup, as Davidson described in his 2018 profile of Weisselberg:

In a recording that Michael Cohen made of a conversation he had with Donald Trump about a payment to keep secret an affair, Cohen described setting up a shell company to pay hush money during the 2016 campaign to Karen McDougal, a woman who claimed to have had an affair with Trump. This week, Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign-finance laws, in part by setting up this secretive payment. He said that he knew at the time that it was illegal to secretly make a payment for campaign-related activity, but he did so anyway at Trump’s direction. Strikingly, Cohen makes it clear on the tape that Weisselberg also knew about the shell company and payment. “I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up,” Cohen explains to Trump.

The secret payments to McDougal were part and parcel of that same scheme set up to pay Daniels for her silence, for which Cohen went to jail. Since Cohen admitted the ‘principal purpose’ of the scheme was “influencing [the 2016] election,’ it is highly relevant to the charges Trump faces now. Manhattan District Attorney General Alvin Bragg Jr. has brought 34 counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree against the former president. Trump is accused of committing these crimes “in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.”

To be clear, Weisselberg is now in Rikers Island for the second time, and both stints could have been avoided if he’d agreed to become a cooperating witness against his former boss, but neither conviction was related to the Stormy Daniels case. Cohen, however, did hard time for his role in the scheme while Trump, identified in Cohen’s case as Individual-1, was beyond the reach of the law because the Justice Department has a policy against putting a sitting president on trial. But Cohen and Individual-1 were equally guilty.

In any case, of the three individuals who were present in the 2016 meeting Cohen surreptitiously recorded in Trump’s office, only Trump has not seen the inside of the prison cell. Even if Trump is convicted in this case, that’s unlikely to change. In theory, Trump could be sentenced to up to four years in prison, but with his age and no prior convictions, he’d probably get probation. Of course, that assumes he doesn’t antagonize the judge.

New York attorney Matthew Galluzzo, also a former Manhattan prosecutor, said Trump’s chances of jail would increase substantially if he publicly denigrates the jury or judge and fails to demonstrate contrition for a guilty verdict.

“He risks jail if he loses badly,” Galluzzo said, “and if he disrespects the process as a ‘witch hunt’ and says the judge is biased and that ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’ The judge might say, ‘Fine, do 90 days in Rikers and see how you like it.”

When you put it like that, I guess he might do some limited time, although that could place in him prison on Election Day, and I don’t know if Judge Juan Merchan wants to go that far. I think it’s fair to say that Trump is already on thin ice with Merchan. In late March, the judge “issued a gag order barring Donald Trump from commenting publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and jurors.” In early April, he expanded it after Trump went after his daughter.

Merchan issued the gag order last month at prosecutors’ urging, then expanded it last week to prohibit comments about his own family after Trump lashed out on social media at the judge’s daughter, a Democratic political consultant, and made what the court system said were false claims about her.

And if Merchan is at all like me, he won’t see a just outcome here if Trump is convicted and doesn’t doesn’t do at least some time. He’s the head honcho. Cohen and Weisselberg worked for him and committed their crimes at his behest. Why should they go to prison while he gets probation?

First, of course, Bragg has to win convictions, and that’s no sure thing.

While some legal observers consider the charges a reasonable use of New York’s penal code, others view them as a legally shaky effort to tie business fraud to attempts to keep information about Trump’s behavior hidden from voters…

…Bragg critics contend that he has stretched legal doctrine in a way that could make it difficult to persuade jurors to convict Trump. In New York, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor unless prosecutors can prove the defendant acted with an intent to commit another crime, in which case the charge can be elevated into a Class E felony, the state’s lowest-level felony count.

Trump’s guilt here isn’t in question, but there’s some novelty in how the crimes have been charged, so Bragg has some work to do to secure a conviction, and that’s assuming he get a jury without any MAGA destroyers who will never convict no matter the evidence.

At least it looks like the show will soon begin.