DON RIPS TAPE TURNCOAT
President Trump blasted his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen on Wednesday, a day after a secret recording of them discussing a payment to a Playboy Playmate who claimed to have had an affair with Trump a decade earlier was released.
“What kind of a lawyer would tape a client? So sad! Is this a first, never heard of it before? Why was the tape so abruptly terminated (cut) while I was presumably saying positive things?” Trump tweeted, his first comments since the private conversation, which was recorded last Sept. 16, was released Tuesday night.
“I hear there are other clients and many reporters that are taped — can this be so? Too bad!”
Lanny Davis, Cohen’s lawyer, provided the audio clip to CNN and said it’s just the tip of the iceberg of what his client might reveal to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of investigators, who are probing Russian election meddling and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.
“Michael is going to tell the truth to the powers that be and let the chips fall where they may,” Davis told Axios.
He said the tape signals that Cohen, who in the past said he’d “take a bullet” for Trump, has new priorities, and could potentially cut a deal to cooperate with Mueller
“I am no longer the previous Michael Cohen that you knew — taking a bullet for Donald Trump, saying anything to defend him, being a good soldier,” Davis told the Web site, channeling Cohen. “That is over. There is more to come.”
In the recording, Cohen and Trump discuss transferring money to a company for “info regarding our friend David,” an apparent reference to David Pecker, the CEO of American Media Inc., owner of the National Enquirer and a close Trump pal.
A month earlier AMI paid $150,000 to Playmate Karen McDougal for her story about a 10-month-long affair she claims she had with Trump in 2006, but ultimately never published it — a practice called “catch and kill” that allowed the supermarket tabloid to acquire the story rights but leave it under wraps.
While speaking of how to finance the deal, Cohen tells Trump: “I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up.”
Weisselberg has been a confidant of Trump and his real-estate empire since the 1970s, when it was run by Trump’s late father, Fred.
Weisselberg was the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer and also served as treasurer for Trump’s charity, which was sued last month by New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood for alleged campaign-finance-law violations and self-dealing.
On tape, Cohen then tells Trump, “We’ll have to pay,” and Trump appears to reply, “Pay with cash.”
But Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani reiterated his claim that the president actually said not to pay with cash, but by check. The poor quality of the recording made it difficult to determine definitively what Trump said about the payment.
“If Cohen is telling the truth, why are he and Lanny Davis misrepresenting the language from President Trump “Do not pay by cash . . . CHECK,” Giuliani said.
According to Davis, Trump’s message to Cohen was clear.
“I’ve used this line too many times, but who talks about cash like that besides drug dealers and mobsters?” Davis said.
The $150,000 payment was apparently never made to AMI, but reportedly would have served as reimbursement for Pecker’s payment to McDougal.
Late Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen also secretly recorded a two-hour conversation he had with CNN anchor Chris Cuomo about the $130,000 payment Cohen made to stripper and alleged Trump tryst-mate Stormy Daniels.