Trump Campaign Sent Cease-and-Desist Letter to ProPublica Attempting to Stop Their Latest Exposé. It Didn’t Work.

Steven Hirsch/New York Post via AP, Pool.

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign and businesses have provided “significant financial benefits” to nine of the witnesses in his criminal cases, ProPublica reported Monday morning — shrugging off a threatening cease-and-desist letter sent by Trump’s attorney.

The detailed report by ProPublica’s Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski describes how nine individuals who have been named as witnesses received benefits that included “large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company” from Trump’s various campaign committees and businesses. These benefits “often came at delicate moments in the legal proceedings against Trump,” said the report, highlighting one example of Trump aide Dan Scavino, who was given  a “plum position on the board of Trump’s social media company, for example, got the seat after he was subpoenaed but before he testified.”

Other well-known names in Trump’s circle mentioned in the article include campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn (his pay more than doubled), campaign head Susie Wiles (campaign hired her daughter in a top role, payments to Wiles’ firm “spiked”), lawyer Evan Corcoran (payment to his law firm “dramatically increased”), and former Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg (a $2 million severance package just four months after the New York attorney general sued Trump for financial fraud).

The Weisselberg severance agreement is especially interesting because it contained a nondisparagement clause and banned him from voluntarily cooperating with the investigations against Trump. Prosecutors in the hush money trial that just ended with a guilty verdict last week had pointed to this agreement to explain why they were not calling Weisselberg as a witness.

Salary increases, bonuses, promotions, and other benefits (or on the flip side, demotions, reductions in pay or benefits, or termination of employment), can be evidence of witness tampering, the ProPublica article explained, if prosecutors can show that these employment changes occurred separate from normal business operations and the “perks or punishments were intended to influence testimony.”

Even if no new charges are brought against the former president who is now a convicted felon, the details of these benefits could be used by prosecutors in Trump’s still-pending cases to “undermine the credibility” of these witnesses if the defense calls them to provide testimony helpful to Trump.

The Trump Org and various campaign entities have, of course, denied that any wrongdoing took place, and denied that Trump had knowledge or direct involvement in compensation issues. However, as ProPublica noted, decades of reporting describe the ex-president as micromanaging his underlings and a “repeated theme” of attempts to pressure witnesses involved in the various investigations, civil lawsuits, and criminal prosecutions he’s faced over the years:

ProPublica did not find evidence that Trump personally approved the pay increases or other benefits. But Trump famously keeps close watch over his operations and prides himself on penny-pinching. One former aide compared working for the Trump Organization, his large company, to “a small family business” where every employee “in some sense reports to Mr. Trump.” Former aides have said Trump demands unwavering loyalty from subordinates, even when their duties require independence…

Trump’s former campaign manager and former campaign adviser were convicted on federal witness tampering charges in 2018 and 2019. The campaign adviser had told a witness to “do a ‘Frank Pentangeli,’” referencing a character in “The Godfather Part II” who lies to a Senate committee investigating organized crime. Trump later pardoned both men in the waning days of his presidency. (He did not pardon a co-defendant of the campaign manager who had cooperated with the government.)

During the congressional investigation into the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a former White House staffer testified that she got a call from a colleague the night before an interview with investigators. The colleague told her Trump’s chief of staff “wants me to let you know that he knows you’re loyal and he knows you’ll do the right thing tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss.” (A spokesperson for the chief of staff denied that he tried to influence testimony.)

Last year, Trump himself publicly discouraged a witness from testifying in the Georgia case. Trump posted on social media that he had read about a Georgia politician who “will be testifying before the Fulton County Grand Jury. He shouldn’t.”

One witness has said publicly that, when he quit working for Trump in the midst of the classified documents criminal investigation, he was offered golf tournament tickets, a lawyer paid for by Trump and a new job that would have come with a raise. The witness, a valet and manager at Mar-a-Lago, had direct knowledge of the handling of the government documents at the club, the focus of one of the criminal cases against the former president. “I’m sure the boss would love to see you,” the employee, Brian Butler, recalled Trump’s property manager telling him. (The episode was first reported by CNN.)

A campaign official told ProPublica that any of the pay raises, etc. these witnesses received was because they took on additional job duties or the work was getting more difficult due to the campaign and various legal matters getting more intense.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung issued a statement saying that “[a]ny false assertion that we’re engaging in any type of behavior that may be regarded as tampering is absurd and completely fake.”

ProPublica also got a cease-and-desist letter from Trump attorney David Warrington, demanding that the article not be published and warning if ProPublica and its reporters “continue their reckless campaign of defamation, President Trump will evaluate all legal remedies.”

Warrington’s letter was clearly insufficient to deter ProPublica from the report, which you can read in full here.