Lawyer recorded Trump talking of buying story

Associated Press

NEW YORK

President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer secretly recorded Trump discussing a potential payment for a former Playboy model’s account of having an affair with him, people familiar with an investigation into the attorney said Friday.

The recording by attorney Michael Cohen adds to questions about whether Trump tried to quash damaging stories in the run-up to his 2016 election. Trump’s campaign had said it knew nothing about any payment to ex-centerfold Karen McDougal. It could also further entangle the president in a criminal investigation that for months has targeted Cohen, his onetime lawyer and close ally.

Current Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said the payment was never made and the brief recording shows Trump did nothing wrong.

“The transaction that Michael is talking about on the tape never took place, but what’s important is: If it did take place, the president said it has to be done correctly and it has to be done by check” to keep a proper record of it, Giuliani said.

One of Cohen’s lawyers, Lanny Davis, said “any attempt at spin cannot change what is on the tape.”

“When the recording is heard, it will not hurt Mr. Cohen,” Davis said in a statement.

Cohen surreptitiously made the recording two months before the election, according to a person familiar with a federal investigation into Cohen. The person spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing inquiry.

The conversation between Trump and Cohen came weeks after the National Enquirer’s parent company reached a $150,000 deal to pay McDougal for her story of a 2006 affair, which it never published, a tabloid practice known as catch and kill. Trump denies the affair ever happened.

The company, American Media Inc., is run by Trump friend and supporter David Pecker.

The company’s payment effectively silenced McDougal through the election, though days beforehand news of the deal emerged in The Wall Street Journal. At the time, a Trump spokeswoman said his campaign had “no knowledge of any of this.”

But in the recorded conversation, Trump and Cohen appear to be discussing buying the rights to McDougal’s story from the Enquirer’s parent company, according to the person familiar with the investigation.

McDougal’s lawyer and an American Media spokesman didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment Friday.

The recording, first reported by The New York Times, likely will revive questions about what other recordings of Trump’s conversations might exist. As a businessman, Trump occasionally recorded his phone calls, a former Trump Organization executive told the AP last year, although Trump once denied doing so.

The FBI raided Cohen’s office, home and hotel room in April, searching in part for information about payments to McDougal and porn actress Stormy Daniels, who received a $130,000 payment from Cohen before the election to keep quiet about a sexual relationship she says she had with Trump. Meanwhile, a government watchdog group has asked the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission to investigate whether American Media’s payment to the former centerfold amounted to an unreported and illegal corporate campaign contribution.

The Cohen investigation, by federal prosecutors in New York, is separate from an ongoing inquiry by special counsel Robert Mueller into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.