- A witness working with prosecutors looking at Trump has hired a financial crime expert.
- Duncan Levin, a former top official in the DA’s Manhattan office, represents Jennifer Weisselberg.
- The ex-wife of a key Trump Organization employee has turned over documents to prosecutors.
- Check out more stories on the Insider company page.
A cooperating witness in two investigations into former President Donald Trump’s finances hired a former top official in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office with expertise in financial crime to represent her in those cases.
Jennifer Weisselberg previously told Insider that she gave seven boxes of documents to detectives from the Manhattan DA office and the New York State Attorney General’s Office in the fall, but she still has several in her possession that are relevant. may be for prosecutors.
She hired attorney Duncan Levin shortly after she was approached by detectives in September to conduct his own parallel investigation of the remaining documents.
“We have several boxes of materials that we have not yet handed over to the prosecutors that we are going through ourselves,” Levin told Insider in an interview. ‘We do our own internal investigation.’
Levin has worked closely with Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. in the past. He was the office’s chief forfeiture from 2011 to 2014, overseeing money laundering, corruption, terrorist financing, bank fraud, and mafia cases. He also worked for Vance in private practice, while the two were at the Manhattan law firm of Morvillo Abramowitz LLC.
Weisselberg hired him because she wants to help the investigation as much as possible, Levin said.
“I know what I’m looking at,” said Levin. “We are basically clearing it methodically and we will hand over documents and information to law enforcement if it is useful.”
In addition to his work for Vance, Levin also worked for a federal judge and oversaw complex money laundering cases for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. at New York City Criminal Court in 2020.
Jeenah Moon / Getty Images
Both the Manhattan DA’s Office and the New York State Attorney General’s Office are analyzing the personal finances of the Trump Organization and Trump, apparently investigating whether they are misrepresenting the value of assets to pay little taxes while get favorable terms for loans.
Weisselberg was married to Barry Weisselberg, the son of Allen Weisselberg, CFO of the Trump Organization between 2004 and 2018. Allen Weisselberg also manages the Trump family’s finances. Manhattan prosecutors are trying to “flip” him to cooperate, Jennifer Weisselberg told Insider. Barry Weisselberg remains a key employee of the Trump Organization in his own right, managing the Trump-run Wollman Rink in Central Park.
Jennifer Weisselberg said she has received a large amount of documents about Barry’s finances and the finances of the Trump Organization through her divorce case. They include bank account information, ownership information, and credit card information, Levin said.
The properties shared between Jennifer and Barry Weisselberg extend beyond prosecutors to the former couple’s Trump Parc East apartment that prosecutors were already looking at, Levin said. Investigators had previously been investigating in that apartment that Donald and Melania Trump gave them as a wedding gift because Barry Weisselberg may have miscategorized it in tax returns, Bloomberg News first reported.
Trump has discredited the investigations as politically motivated, and Allen Weisselberg’s lawyer has declined to comment.
In a previous interview, Weisselberg said the Trump Organization exercised some measure of control over her life through her husband’s compensation. She said it would pay for her children’s tuition and housing for her family instead of giving her husband regular pay raises.
“They want you to commit crimes and not talk about it and not go away,” she said. “It’s so controlling.”