Michael Hernandez
25 July 2018•Update: 25 July 2018
By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON
President Donald Trump ripped his former personal lawyer Wednesday after a recording was made public of the two men speaking about a possible payment for a Playbody model's story.
"What kind of a lawyer would tape a client? So sad! Is this a first, never heard of it before?" Trump said in a tweets. "Why was the tape so abruptly terminated (cut) while I was presumably saying positive things?"
Michael Cohen secretly recorded a conversation with Trump about two months before the 2016 presidential election in which they discussed a possible payment to a former Playboy model who alleges an affair with Trump.
Cohen is under investigation for possible campaign finance violations and bank fraud allegations. He has not been charged.
The recording was released by CNN late Tuesday after it was received from Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis.
Davis told a national morning television program Cohen is no longer seeking a pardon from the president.
"Michael Cohen has turned a corner in his life and he's now dedicated to telling the truth to everyone," Davis said. "Ultimately Donald Trump is going to be done in by the truth."
The recording was initially seized during an FBI raid on Cohen's office in April. Cohen formerly served as Trump's personal attorney for the better part of the past decade.
Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model, alleges Trump had an affair with her beginning in 2006 while he was married to current first lady Melania Trump. McDougal sold her story to the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper for $150,000, but the Trump-friendly publication did not publish it, effectively killing it.
McDougal claims Cohen worked to have the Enquirer hold the story from publication.
The payment discussed in the recording was an effective reimbursement for the newspaper's payout to McDougal.
Trump and Cohen can be heard discussing it, and whether to "pay with cash," though the recording is muffled. But those remarks appear to clash with the Trump campaign's steadfast denials that Trump had any knowledge of the Enquirer's purchase of McDougal's story.
Trump's new personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said last week the payment was never made.
Additional matters are also discussed in the recording, including an attempt by the New York Times to unseal records related to Trump's divorce from his first wife.
