President Trump said Wednesday that it’s “sad” his former lawyer Michael Cohen would have taped a private conversation they had and then allow it to be leaked to the press.
“What kind of a lawyer would tape a client? So sad! Is this a first, never heard of it before?” Trump said on Twitter. “Why was the tape so abruptly terminated (cut) while I was presumably saying positive things? I hear there are other clients and many reporters that are taped – can this be so? Too bad!”
[Opinion: Michael Cohen’s tape of Trump isn’t that big a deal – yet]
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? I hear there are other clients and many reporters that are taped – can this be so? Too bad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2018
The audio recording of Trump and Cohen was released by Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis to CNN and was aired Tuesday night.
In the tape, the two appear to be discussing how to make a payoff to silence a story about Trump’s alleged affair with Playboy model Karen McDougal.
America Media, the parent company of the National Inquirer, paid McDougal $150,000 in August 2016 for the rights to her story about an alleged 10 month extramarital affair she had with Trump, but the story was never published.
Trump’s campaign has said it had no awareness of this issue, and Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani said that no payment was made from Trump to McDougal.
Davis confirmed that there were more audio tapes, and said there would be “more to come” that would prove Cohen would no longer be “taking a bullet” for the President.
