Prosecutors have increased the frequency of their interviews with Cohen since they started in the fall of 2019, shortly after the district attorney’s office subpoenaed Trump’s accountant to pay his taxes.
Cohen, who worked for Trump for about a decade and once said he would take a bullet for Trump, knows the inner workings of the company. Prosecutors are interested in talking to Cohen because he can help explain the company’s culture and relations between Trump, his family and Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer.
Prosecutors are investigating whether the Trump Organization has unduly inflated the value of its assets when dealing with creditors and insurers and deflated them when declaring taxes.
They are also investigating tax deductions from fees paid to consultants, including Ivanka Trump, the daughter of the former president, and conservation easements granted at Seven Springs, a family estate in Westchester County, NY.
Cohen told Congress that Trump inflated and deflated the value of certain assets to borrow and reduce his taxes. He was also involved in the secret cash payment scheme and pleaded guilty to nine counts, including campaign funding violations, in connection with the scheme.
Investigators met Cohen three times in late 2019, while he was serving time in a federal prison in Otisville, NY.
Friday’s meeting is believed to be the first to be held in person at the prosecutor’s office, according to a person familiar with the matter. Cohen is serving the rest of his sentence from his Manhattan home.
The district attorney’s investigation gained momentum this year. In February, Cy Vance, the district attorney, recruited Mark Pomerantz, a well-known former federal prosecutor, to conduct the investigation. Pomerantz has spent decades as a defense attorney working on financial investigations and has a vision of how these cases are initiated and how companies and individuals defend themselves against them. They also brought in an external forensic accounting firm.
Vance’s office last month, after a 16-month court battle, gained access to eight years of Trump’s personal and business tax returns and related records. The investigators examined the records, which add up to millions of pages. Vance is not running for re-election, and, people familiar with the matter say, he will likely decide whether to open the case before leaving office in December. The decision could still take months, according to people familiar with the matter.