In the document, the prosecutors said they had “effectively concluded” their inquiry, which centered on payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to buy the silence of two women who said they had had affairs with Trump.
At the same time, other newly released documents from the investigation showed that Trump was in close touch with Michael D. Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and fixer, when he was arranging the payments.
The day before paying one of the women $130,000, Cohen spoke twice on the phone with Trump, according to the documents, which said that “less than thirty minutes after speaking to Trump,” Cohen took steps to open a bank account to pay the woman.
He also spoke with Trump the day after wiring the money to the woman’s lawyer, the documents said. It is not known what was said during the phone calls.
For the first time, the prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan also revealed in one document that they had expanded their investigation from campaign finance violations to include whether “certain individuals” lied to investigators or tried to obstruct the inquiry.
The brief report did not identify the subjects of those investigations, although it contained redactions of what appeared to be at least one name. That investigation has also ended, prosecutors said.
As recently as this spring, prosecutors were still considering whether one Trump Organization executive was untruthful when testifying before the grand jury, according to people briefed on the matter.
The Trump Organization reimbursed Cohen for the hush money he paid to Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film actress. Cohen also urged American Media Inc., which publishes The National Enquirer, to buy the rights to a former Playboy model’s story of an affair with Trump. Both deals effectively silenced the women in the run-up to the 2016 election.
A lawyer for the Trump Organization could not immediately be reached for comment.
Cohen pleaded guilty in the case. He has said he helped arrange the hush money at the direction of Trump, and prosecutors have since repeated the accusation in court papers. Cohen is serving a three-year prison sentence.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.