President Donald Trump initially denied any knowledge about a payment made to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, but his former longtime lawyer Michael Cohen released audio evidence on Tuesday night that makes evident Trump was aware of an attempt to quash a report about his alleged extramarital affair with the model only weeks before the 2016 presidential election.
Cohen released a secretly recorded taping of his 2016 conversation with Trump to CNN, via his lawyer Lanny Davis.
The key section of the tape involves the then-Republican presidential candidate telling Cohen that he wants a payment pertaining to McDougal's story to be paid in "cash." At the time of the recording, American Media, a company that owns the pro-Trump tabloid National Enquirer, wanted to buy McDougal's story for what seemed to have been a practice known as "catch and kill." The plan was to purchase exclusive rights to McDougal's story in order to prevent any other outlet from publishing information seen as damaging to Trump.
"I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David," Cohen tells Trump in the recording, most likely a reference to David Pecker, the head of American Media.
Later, after Cohen again raises the matter of financing, Trump interjects to ask what Cohen is talking about. Cohen then reminds him that "we'll have to pay" for the story, to which Trump tells Cohen to "pay with cash," although it is unclear based on the subsequent section of the audio whether he means to pay with cash or to not pay with cash. This is important because Trump's new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, first claimed that the tape would exonerate Trump because it makes clear Trump wanted a paper trail for the payment.
Later in the tape, Cohen also makes a reference to Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's chief financial officer.
"I've spoken with Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with funding," Cohen can be heard saying.
Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, did not answer a question by CNN about whether the money would have come from the company or Trump's personal finances. All he said was that Weisselberg had a complex professional relationship with Trump, claiming that "I don't even know what Michael Cohen would have said to Allen Weisselberg because all Allen does is bookkeeping and process requests for transactions that are given to him."
Michael Caputo, who worked as a communications adviser for Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, downplayed the recording of Trump discussing a "cash" payment for the McDougal story in an interview with Salon.
"First and foremost, there's no crime in these tapes," Caputo told Salon, describing the controversy surrounding the tape as "just salacious."
"I think that the reasons for releasing this are clear. And I think the reason is clear and it's a fail because, while the Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans believe that every single one of these proof points of criticisms of his personal life are damaging to him, it's really quite baked into his candidate model. Nobody thought that Donald Trump was a paragon of morality and decency when they voted for him."
He also pointed out that "this is an investigation of Michael Cohen and these are lawyers on both sides that are doing this. This [is] not the Mueller investigation, this is from the Southern District of New York prosecutor's office, and I don't believe there is anything at all to be gained in either their legal case nor the defense to put this out into the public."
He also said that he viewed the question of why the tape got leaked as a "mystery" because he doesn't feel it benefits anyone for the public to be made aware of its contents.
"It doesn't do anything for any of the parties involved," Caputo said. "I think we've all become — the media, media consumers — we've all become enamored of the leak. And in the end, as you would expect after a torrent of leaks over a couple of years, it's inevitable that they're going to end up being silly."
When asked how the Cohen tapes could be connected to the broader Trump-Russia investigation, Caputo argued that there was a clear separation.
"I think that we saw from the documents creating the special counsel that the Department of Justice tasked them with pursuing evidence of collusion and any crimes that might come out of that investigation," Caputo said. "The Mueller investigation referred this to the Southern District of New York, and I have to assume that's because they don't see this as being relevant to their investigation. We also [have] the indictments of the Russian GRU officers as being referred out of the Mueller investigation into the Department of Justice. So at the same time, while they're moving an irrelevant investigation to the Southern District, they're moving relevant investigations to the Department of Justice. So I think media consumers have to look at each of these on their merits and on their real reasons behind the referral."
Lanny Davis, the lawyer for Michael Cohen who provided the tape to CNN, told the network that the attacks on the tape and on Cohen — such as those that came from Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer, during an appearance on Fox News Tuesday — were out of bounds.
"What is this about? This is about honesty versus false disparagement of Michael Cohen. Why is Giuliani out falsely disparaging Michael Cohen — because they fear him," Davis told Chris Cuomo on CNN.
He added, "What do they fear, Chris? Why am I representing him? They fear that he has the truth about Donald Trump. He will someday speak the truth about Donald Trump. The truth is that when Donald Trump said 'cash,' which Rudy Giuliani knows that only drug dealers and mobsters talk about cash, it was, you heard Michael Cohen . . . say what? 'No, no, no, no.'"
Davis later told Cuomo that "if you voted for Donald Trump, listen to the tape and ask yourself: Is Donald Trump lying when he said he didn't use the word 'cash' and accuses Michael Cohen of using the word 'cash'? Cohen has been disparaged. Cohen has been insulted and called all sorts of things by people around Donald Trump."
He added in an interview with Axios Wednesday morning: "There are more tapes."
"Michael is going to tell the truth to the powers that be, and let the chips fall where they may."
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