Cohen taped Trump discussing payment to ex-Playboy model
WASHINGTON — President 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 appears to undercut the Trump campaign’s denial of any knowledge of payments to the model. 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 cooperating with prosecutors.
The former model, Karen McDougal, says she began an affair with Trump in 2006, shortly after Trump’s wife, Melania, gave birth to their son Barron. McDougal sold her story for $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. The practice, known as “catch and kill,” effectively silenced McDougal.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, confirmed Friday that Trump had discussed payments to McDougal with Cohen. He said Trump did not know he was being recorded and claimed 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.
Giuliani initially indicated the men discussed a payment from Trump to McDougal — separate from the Enquirer’s payment — to buy her story. Later, he said Trump and Cohen had actually discussed buying the rights to McDougal’s story from the Enquirer, a move that would have effectively reimbursed the newspaper for its payments to her.
That payment was never made, Giuliani said, adding that Trump had told Cohen that if he were to make a payment related to McDougal, to write a check rather than send cash, so it could be properly documented.
Neither of Giuliani’s descriptions of the conversations explains why, when the Wall Street Journal revealed the existence of the AMI payment days before the election, Trump’s campaign spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said, “We have no knowledge of any of this.” She said McDougal’s claim of an affair was “totally untrue.”