Lordy, there are (lots of) tapes.
CNN reported Friday that President Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen secretly recorded multiple conversations between the two, including one about a payment made to a former Playboy model who says she slept with Trump.
According to CNN, the President had no idea the calls were being recorded. When he learned this week about the tapes, which are now in the possession of the FBI, he reportedly said, “I can’t believe Michael would do this to me.”
The New York Times broke the news earlier Friday that Cohen had recorded a fall 2016 call in which he and Trump discussed paying Karen McDougal to keep her quiet about her alleged 2006 affair with the president.
All of the recordings were seized in April when the FBI executed search warrants on Cohen’s premises as part of a criminal investigation into his finances. Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani confirmed the existence of the McDougal tape, but said the two-minute call showed no wrongdoing on Trump’s behalf and was actually “powerful exculpatory evidence.”
The McDougal tape appears to be the only Trump-Cohen recording “of substance,” according to a source of CNN’s Dana Bash.
But Bash noted on air that Cohen apparently recorded his calls not just with Trump but with “people around the president” and other “significant individuals.” CNN did not name any of those other individuals.
In addition to working as a longtime fixer for Trump and the Trump Organization, Cohen arranged a hush money deal for powerful GOP donor Elliott Broidy and did legal work for Fox News host Sean Hannity.
