An attorney who led Linda Tripp’s defense against state charges for secretly recording Monica Lewinsky says President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, should seek a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller if he illegally recorded Trump.
Cohen secretly taped Trump discussing a payment to a Playboy model who alleged an affair, about two months before the 2016 election, the New York Times reported Friday. The date and location of the conversation were not reported, but Cohen is believed to have taped other talks with Trump, possibly in files seized in raids of his office and home in April.
Anthony Zaccagnini, Tripp’s lawyer, said if federal prosecutors find evidence that Cohen violated a state law, they could turn Cohen over to state authorities, or use the information as leverage to coerce his cooperation. Proactively brokering a deal with federal authorities could make a state prosecution much more difficult, he said.
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If Cohen can broker an immunity deal, Zaccagnini said, “the state prosecutor would have to prove that they learned of these recorded conversations from some method other than the Mueller investigation,” significantly limiting Cohen’s exposure.
A dozen states make it a crime to record conversations without the consent of all participants — including Florida, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, states that Trump visited ahead of the election.
A former Trump associate told the Washington Examiner that Cohen had a recording application on his cellphone that he used “liberally,” and that they witnessed Cohen replay phone calls on at least two occasions.
Zaccagnini said Cohen is in a precarious situation if he illegally recorded conversations. In addition to having to worry about what federal prosecutors would do if they found evidence of illegal recordings, he said a politically motivated case is easy to imagine.
“It could very easily happen [to Cohen] in those states that aren’t red — you got a blue state, they may want to make hay out of it,” Zaccagnini said. “And vice versa, actually. If you have a Republican state, they may want to go after Cohen.”
Tripp, who played a key role exposing President Bill Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky, was prosecuted after 49 Democrats in Maryland’s legislature demanded a probe of leaked grand jury information about illegal call recordings.
“We saw it happen with Linda Tripp. Her prosecution was purely political,” Zaccagnini said. “The state legislature came out and said, ‘Hey, we want this investigated because we believe that she illegally recorded Monica Lewinsky,’ which in fact she had done. So the state legislature prompted the appointment of a special prosecutor. ”
Tripp faced 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine before prosecutors dropped charges in 2000. Prosecutors attributed their decision to a judge’s ruling suppressing Lewinsky’s testimony, but Zaccagnini said a federal immunity deal played a key role.
“At a minimum, he would want immunity from any activity related to recording telephone conversations with his client candidate Trump while he’s in jurisdictions that require dual consent,” Zaccagnini said.
Once a ferocious defender of Trump, Cohen suggested in a recent interview that he was open to cooperating with authorities looking into possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia, and his payment of $130,000 in an October 2016 hush agreement with porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims she had sex with Trump. Some experts believe that payment could violate election law.
“My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” Cohen said in the interview. “I put family and country first.”
Lanny Davis, an attorney for Cohen, declined to comment.
