Listen: Michael Cohen Threatens Reporter With Lawsuit In 2015

on May 30, 2018 in New York City.
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 30: Michael Cohen, a longtime personal lawyer and confidante for President Donald Trump, leaves the United States District Court Southern District of New York on May 30, 2018 in New York City. Acc... NEW YORK, NY - MAY 30: Michael Cohen, a longtime personal lawyer and confidante for President Donald Trump, leaves the United States District Court Southern District of New York on May 30, 2018 in New York City. According to a filing submitted to the court Tuesday night by special master Barbara Jones, federal prosecutors investigating Cohen are set to receive 1 million files from three of his cellphones that were seized last month. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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NPR on Thursday published a recording of a phone call between Trump fixer Michael Cohen and then-Daily Beast reporter Tim Mak, in which Cohen threatened Mak over a story he was writing.

Mak, now a reporter at NPR, included the audio as part of a report on Cohen’s history of threatening reporters with legal action.

Mak in 2015 had called Cohen for comment about President Donald Trump’s ex-wife Ivana Trump’s assertion in a divorce deposition that Trump had once raped her. Ivana Trump later said that she did not want the term to be “interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”

“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have,” Cohen told Mak in the call. “And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know.”

“So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?”

Cohen is now the subject of a months-long criminal probe. Judge Kimba Wood of the Southern District of New York on Wednesday rejected his request for more time to review millions of items for potential attorney-client privilege claims. Wood set the completion date of that review for June 15. TPM was in the courtroom, and Cohen looked irritated.

Listen to the audio via NPR below:

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