Cohen taped Trump discussing payment to Playboy model
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, secretly recorded a conversation with Trump two months before the presidential election in which they discussed payments to a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Trump, according to lawyers and others familiar with the recording.
The FBI seized the recording this year during a raid on Cohen’s office. The Justice Department is investigating Cohen’s involvement in paying women to tamp down embarrassing news stories about Trump before the 2016 election. Prosecutors want to know whether that violated federal campaign finance laws, and any conversation with Trump about those payments would be of keen interest to them.
The recording’s existence further draws Trump into questions about tactics he and his associates used to keep aspects of his personal and business life a secret. And it highlights the potential legal and political danger that Cohen represents to Trump. Once the keeper of many of Trump’s secrets, Cohen is now seen as increasingly willing to consider co-operating with prosecutors.
The former model, Karen McDougal, says she began a nearly year-long affair with Trump in 2006, shortly after Trump’s wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron. McDougal sold her story for US$150,000 to The National Enquirer, which was supportive of Trump, during the final months of the presidential campaign, but the tabloid sat on the story, which kept it from becoming public. The practice, known as “catch and kill,” effectively silenced McDougal for the remainder of the campaign.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, confirmed in a telephone conversation Friday that Trump had discussed payments to McDougal with Cohen on the tape. He said the recording was less than two minutes long, said Trump did not know he was being recorded and claimed that the president had done nothing wrong.
Giuliani said there was no indication on the tape that Trump knew before the conversation about the payment from the Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., to McDougal.
“Nothing in that conversation suggests that he had any knowledge of it in advance,” he said.
The men discussed a payment from Trump to McDougal — separate from the Enquirer payment — to buy her story and ensure her silence, Giuliani said. That payment was never made, Giuliani said, adding that Trump had told Cohen that if he were to make a payment related to the woman, to write a cheque rather than send cash, so it could be properly documented.
Cohen’s lawyers discovered the recording as part of their review of the seized materials and shared it with Trump’s lawyers, according to three people briefed on the matter.
Cohen rejected repeated requests for comment. “We have nothing to say on this matter,” Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny J. Davis, said when asked about the tape.
David J. Pecker, the chair of AMI, is a friend of Trump’s, and McDougal has accused Cohen of secretly taking part in the deal — an allegation that is now part of the FBI investigation.
When The Wall Street Journal revealed the existence of the AMI payment days before the election, Trump’s campaign spokesperson, Hope Hicks, said, “We have no knowledge of any of this.” She said McDougal’s claim of an affair was “totally untrue.”
It is not clear how explicit Trump and Cohen were in their recorded conversation. Any evidence showing that Trump knew about the financial arrangement would undercut the Trump campaign’s statements.