Michael Cohen’s secret recordings of President Trump may turn out to be of little importance.
A Wednesday Washington Post story on Cohen, Trump’s former attorney and “fixer,” reported that federal investigators have “seized more than 100 recordings that Cohen made of his conversations with people discussing matters that could relate to Trump and his businesses and with Trump himself talking.” Dramatic as that sounds, reality appears to be less interesting.
One of Cohen’s recordings was provided to CNN by his attorney Lanny Davis this week, revealing a discussion between Trump and Cohen about buying the rights to Karen McDougal’s story of her alleged affair with Trump.
But rather than being the tip of the iceberg, that particular recording may turn out to be the most interesting from Cohen’s vault. On his 100-plus tapes, the Post reported, “Trump’s voice is on several of the recordings, but only in snippets — typically when he is returning a call from Cohen or asking Cohen on a voice-mail message to call him back, the people said. The only recording in which Trump and Cohen have a substantive conversation is the one that Davis released Tuesday, according to these people.”
That same report, based on the accounts of “two people familiar with the recordings,” also asserted that “a significant portion” of them is “Cohen surreptitiously recording reporters who met with or questioned Cohen about Trump during the campaign and after Trump’s election.”
Davis claims Cohen “had the habit” of recording conversations on his phone rather than taking notes.
If the Post report is accurate, the most “substantive conversation” involving Cohen and Trump has already been released, and the president’s voice is only heard in “snippets” on “several” of the recordings. To be sure, even “snippets” can be damning. Sometimes it only takes one word. And if some of the tapes show Cohen involved in unflattering business on Trump’s behalf, the president’s voice doesn’t have to be on the recording for him to look bad.
But the likelihood of juicy audio emerging from the Cohen tapes certainly decreases if Trump is hardly even on them at all.
[Opinion: CNN’s infamous Michael Cohen tape of Trump has zero useful information]
