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:
Such filthy language.
Not listening. Bad enough I have to know he exists.
This statement is, by far, the most chilling thing that Cohen says on the tape.
This is why I don’t feel the least bit sorry for these assholes. They’re the biggest bullies, but when the light turns on them they turn into pansies and ‘this is so unfair’.
“Listen, I’ve got a bone
To pick with your client Mike Cohen
I ask for my paper
did he really rape her?
And how long have you both known?”