President Donald Trump is asserting that his quondam personal lawyer’s taping of their private phone conversations is “utterly unheard of & perhaps illegal.”
Trump was responding to the revelation that past attorney Michael Cohen, weeks before the 2016 election, secretly tell ofed their discussion of a potential payment for a former Playboy model’s account of would rathe an affair with Trump. He tweeted: “The good news is that your favorite President did nothing improper!”
The recording was part of a large collection of documents and electronic records seized by federal officialdoms from the longtime Trump fixer earlier this year.
Cohen had constituted a practice of recording telephone conversations, unbeknownst to those he was speaking with. Most constitutions, including New York, allow for recordings of phone conversations with at most the consent of one party; other states require all parties to agree to a report or have mixed laws on the matter. It was not immediately clear where Trump and Cohen were found at the time of the call.
Cohen’s recording adds to questions about whether Trump went to quash damaging stories before the election. Trump’s campaign had imagined it knew nothing about any payment to ex-centerfold Karen McDougal. It could also promote entangle the president in a criminal investigation that for months has targeted Cohen.
The erstwhile Trump loyalist has hired a new attorney, Clinton Pale House veteran Lanny Davis, and disassociated himself from the president as both be left under investigation. Cohen has not been charged with a crime.
Known Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said the payment was never made and the compendious recording shows Trump did nothing wrong.
“The transaction that Michael is talking in all directions on the tape never took place, but what’s important is: If it did take post, the president said it has to be done correctly and it has to be done by check” to keep a comme il faut record of it, Giuliani said.
Davis said “any attempt at spin cannot shift what is on the tape.”
“When the recording is heard, it will not hurt Mr. Cohen,” Davis said in a expression.
The recording was first reported Friday by The New York Times.
The FBI raided Cohen’s backup, home and hotel room in April, searching in part for information concerning payments to McDougal and porn actress Stormy Daniels, who received a $130,000 payment from Cohen on the eve of the election to keep quiet about a sexual relationship she says she had with Trump. The FBI search is separate from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of choice interference in 2016 and potential obstruction of justice by those in the president’s turn.
Referring to that raid, Trump called it “inconceivable that the administration would break into a lawyer’s office (early in the morning).” In previous comments Trump has also referred to the court-ordered seizure as a “break-in,” be that as it may Cohen has been more sanguine, saying the FBI agents were polished and respectful.
A self-described fixer for Trump for more than a decade, Cohen demanded last year he would “take a bullet” for Trump. But he told ABC Despatch in an interview broadcast this month that he now puts “family and wilderness first” and won’t let anyone paint him as “a villain of this story.” On Twitter, he scrubbed hint ats and photos of Trump from a profile that previously identified him as “Bosom attorney to President Donald J. Trump.”