Yes @waltshaub, happy to! Immunity is fairly common in grand jury investigations (almost all investigations conducted by the US Atty are GJ investigations, the GJ is where the power to subpoena and take testimony under oath come in). Immunity is tied to the specific testimony
at issue. Here, SDNY was investigating the Cohen/AMI payments as campaign finance violations and learned that Cohen was paid for “legal services” that was actually a reimbursement for the Stormy payoff, so they subpoenaed the Trump Org/Weisselberg, presumably for both documents
and testimony about this. What happened next is Weisselberg’s atty would have called SDNY to discuss and would have said W would invoke his 5th Am right because he could be incriminated by these docs/testimony. This is where prosecutors have a decision to make. Here the claim was
legit because W oversaw payments that were part of the cover-up (not actual legal services payments) and depending on what W knew he could have exposure. So prosecutors can either do without W’s docs and testimony, or they can give him immunity. This kind of immunity is called
use immunity and it means that prosecutors can’t use the witness’s testimony or documents against him. But in theory they could still charge W if they procured other evidence against him. This is very rare though; once prosecutors decide to give someone immunity on their
testimony it means practically that they’ve decided not to prosecute that person (and if they did charge the person they would almost surely have litigation where prosecutors would have to prove the charges were brought without using the immunized evidence). The reporting has
been, to the extent it’s accurate, that W was only asked about issues related to the payoffs. The subject of testimony would have been discussed in detail in advance with the lawyers because witnesses can’t have a lawyer with them in the GJ. So W’s involvement looks like it only
relates at this point to the payoffs. If SDNY decided to launch a broader investigation into the Trump Org (which, since they could do as they can investigate any federal crimes over which SDNY has jurisdiction), they could issue W another subpoena for info related to that, and
they would no doubt have another immunity negotiation on their hands. But W is not a cooperator in any sense of the word, and once he has immunity he has no choice but to comply with subpoena or risk contempt of court. So no reason to believe he has “flipped” at all. /end
