Los Angeles Times

Federal prosecutors have begun pulling back the curtain at the Trump Organization

WASHINGTON - Even as Donald Trump rose from New York real estate mogul to U.S. president, the innermost workings of his namesake real estate and branding company stayed shielded behind the black-tinted windows of his eponymous Fifth Avenue skyscraper.

Always run more like a family business than a blue-chip corporate empire, the private Trump Organization has operated free from the oversight of independent board members or pesky shareholders. But now that secrecy has cracked.

The plea agreement in federal court this week by Michael Cohen, who spent 10 years as executive vice president and special counsel at the Trump Organization and later served as Trump's personal attorney, showed that federal prosecutors had excavated invoices, receipts, tax records, emails and other internal documents from Trump's business.

Federal prosecutors also made clear their willingness to squeeze friends of the

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