White House fears FBI has Cohen tapes

THE White House is reportedly in turmoil amid fears that the FBI could have seized tapes of conversations between Donald Trump and his long-time lawyer Michael Cohen.

Mr Cohen is known to record conversations with his clients, and his aides fear they may be among the files seized by the FBI on Monday.

“We heard he had some proclivity to make tapes,” one of Mr Trump’s advisers told the Washington Post.

“Now we are wondering, who did he tape? Did he store those someplace where they were actually seized?… Did they find his recordings?” Yesterday it emerged that Mr Cohen was under criminal investigation by the Department of Justice, after the lawyer went to court in an attempt to block investigators from using the material.

FBI agents have been monitoring several of Mr Cohen’s email accounts for months as part of an extensive investigation into Mr Cohen’s “personal business dealings”, federal prosecutors told the court. These did not include emails exchanged with Mr Trump.

Mr Cohen is being investigated for suspected fraud and “acts of concealment” as part of an ongoing grand jury investigation, the prosecutors said.

In a separate development, it was reported yesterday that Mr Cohen made a $1.6million (£1.1million) payment to a Playboy model to keep secret her sexual relationship with a top Republican fundraiser. Elliott Broidy confirmed he had financially assisted the model after she told him she was pregnant.

“She alone decided that she did not want to continue with the pregnancy and I offered to help her financially during this difficult period. We have not spoken since that time,” Mr Broidy said in a statement. The Republican told the Wall Street Journal he retained Mr Cohen’s services because he had a prior relationship with the woman’s lawyer Keith Davidson.

Mr Cohen has admitted paying porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims she had an affair with Mr Trump, $130,000 weeks before the US election. The president denies the claim.