The Trump campaign is today aggressively pushing back against the new report in ProPublica, one that says nine potential witnesses in Donald Trump's criminal cases are getting big financial benefits from Trump's companies and his campaign committees. ProPublica says that the pay of Trump campaign adviser and lawyer Boris Epstein more than doubled Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg got a $2 million severance package that bars him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. The daughter of top Trump campaign official Susie Wiles, was hired as the fourth highest paid employee. And another Trump aide, Dan Scavino, was given a good seat on Trump's social media board after he was subpoenaed. But before he testified. A Trump campaign official denies any form of witness tampering, saying that benefits provided to witnesses were the result of them taking on more work due to the campaign or his legal cases. Heating up. With us now, Robert Federici, one of the ProPublica investigative reporters behind the piece. So, Robert, let me just ask you the devil's devil's advocate question here. These are people who work very hard for Donald Trump. I mean, Boris Epstein says he was like, is it not possible that they were paid this because they're working hard and not to influence their testimony? Of course, that's possible. You know, this circumstance that we're looking at is not unique. Oftentimes, the boss of a company is under a criminal investigation and the witnesses are his employees. What we learn from talking to experts is that what's supposed to happen when there's any changes to their employment status in these circumstances is that the decision be made by, you know, ideally by some sort of independent board that this happened in the normal course of business? You know, Trump is famously a micromanager and prides himself as a penny pincher. So the idea that, you know, someone's payments being doubled, someone's salary going up by 20%, someone ending up on the board of his media company without his knowledge is a bit of a question given his history. One example in your reporting is a lawyer named Boris Epstein, who used to work at the White House. He was an important figure in Trump's effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Here's a look at your graph that shows how Trump campaign payments to Epstein's company skyrocketed after he was indicted. In cases where Epstein was a witness, now you talk to a former Trump attorney, Tim Palmer Latorre. What did he have to say? I know he and we should note that he and Boris are not exactly the best of friends. Did part of Parliament have any insight or explanation for that? Sure. I mean, what he said was that he didn't think that he was qualified for this position and that he was puzzled by this dramatic increase in payments. Other other people we talked to said something similar. What the campaign said is that, you know, his responsibilities simply increased. But when we sort of delved into that claim and asked, you know, did the number of hours he's working increase, what they said was that, you know, everyone's already working 24 seven and they were not really able to provide any detail. Secondly, you know, we see that he is still doing work for other campaigns. He's taking on a new position completely outside of politics. So his attention is divided. And yet again, you know, there was this dramatic increase in payments from the campaign to his company. So ProPublica got a cease and desist letter from Trump's attorney, Right. Demanding that your article not be published, warning, quote, President Trump will evaluate all legal remedies. ProPublica published the article anyway, which means you're confident in the money trail you followed. What Discovery stood out to you the most in the course of your reporting? Well, yeah, first of all, on the letter, yeah, of course we take that kind of thing seriously. We actually received it while we were on the phone with the Trump campaign, vetting each and every fact that we planned to put in our story. We're very careful about that kind of thing. Which one stood out to me? I mean, we when we went into nine examples in the story that what stood out to me was was sometimes the timing of the events and the benefits. So in one example, a witness and one of former President Trump's cases between the time he got a subpoena to testify before the grand jury and when he actually did testify before the grand jury, he got a position on the board of Trump's media company. His affiliation with that company has been quite lucrative. He got a promissory note for form a $4 million promissory note that converted into shares of the company. He got a very large retention bonus. So his affiliation with that company has has dramatically changed his fortunes. And again, it occurred between the time he got the subpoena and when he actually testified before the grand jury. So a Trump campaign spokesperson, you were talking about how you found it. Tough to imagine Donald Trump not being aware of of raises and such. But a Trump campaign spokesperson is, you know, said that Trump's not involved in determining how much campaign staff staffers are or are paid. What what do you make of that? Well, you know, we again, I look at his history. There's been testimony in the latest trial, his own writings. He has described himself as someone who's in the weeds with the finances of the organizations he sits atop top of. So we have not independently established that he was involved in any of these decisions. But if you look at his history, he is someone who is a micromanager and is deeply involved in the finances of his organizations. All right. Thanks. Thank you so much. Robert Fetter, actually, really appreciate your time today. The.
