Rudy Giualini, a member of President Trump’s legal team, said Saturday that “somebody played with” the recording between Trump and his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen that was shared last week with CNN.
“He abruptly ended that recording as soon as the president said the word ‘check,'” Giualini told Fox News. “What we are investigating is, how did that happen? What actually did happen? What was eliminated? And then you have to raise these questions with every one of these tapes. How many of them did he play around with?”
The audio tape was made in September 2016 and was provided to CNN by Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis. On it, Cohen and Trump can be heard discussing how they would buy the rights to Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story about an alleged affair.
Giuliani claimed that both Davis, who served as an adviser to former President Bill Clinton, and Cohen are “deceivers,” adding in tweets Saturday evening that Davis is “destroying” Cohen’s credibility and usefulness as a witness because of his willingness to “leak” his client’s “surreptitiously record[ed] tapes.”
Giuliani has accused Cohen of violating the attorney-client privilege he had with Trump over discussion about the tape, while Davis shot back that Giuliani “waived” that privilege by by talking about the recording.
The latest offensive by Giuliani came after CNN reported late Thursday that Cohen is ready to tell special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump knew in advance that son Donald Trump Jr. and campaign officials were planning to meet with Russians in hopes of obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton, despite Trump’s claims he knew nothing about the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan.
[Opinion: CNN’s infamous Michael Cohen tape of Trump has zero useful information]
