{UAH} Michael Cohen taped Trump discussing payment to a Playboy model, report says Fredreka Schouten USA TODAY
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Michael Cohen taped Trump discussing payment to a Playboy model, report says
WASHINGTON – President Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen secretly recorded a conversation in which he and Trump discussed payments to a former Playboy model who claimed to have had an affair with Trump, The New York Times reported Friday.
The Times said that the FBI seized the tape during an April raid on Cohen's office. The tape was made two months before the 2016 election, the paper said.
Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani confirmed in an interview with the paper that Trump discussed the payments with Cohen on the tape, but he said no payment was ever made and Trump did not engage in any wrongdoing.
"Nothing in that conversation suggests he had any knowledge of it in advance," Giuliani said.
Lanny Davis, one of Cohen's lawyers, declined to comment to USA TODAY, citing the ongoing investigation.
The revelation casts a fresh spotlight on efforts before the presidential campaign to put the lid on damaging disclosures about Trump, as well as the trove of information that Cohen might possess as he weighs cooperating with prosecutors.
Federal prosecutors in New York have been investigating whether Cohen's actions, including a payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, violated campaign-finance laws as part of a wide-ranging corruption probe into the longtime Trump fixer.
Daniels, who said she had sex with Trump in 2006, received $130,000 from Cohen days before the election in exchange for her silence. After months of denials, Trump in May filed a financial disclosure report showing he reimbursed Cohen for the Daniels' payment.
The taped conversation now in the FBI's possession involves Karen McDougal, a former Playboy centerfold who said she had an affair with Trump that began in 2006. McDougal received a $150,000 payment in August 2016 from the parent company of the National Enquirer. But the tabloid did not publish the story, keeping it out of public view.
The head of the Enquirer's parent company, David Pecker, is a Trump ally. In a lawsuit she has since settled, McDougal argued that Cohen secretly intervened in the deal she struck with tabloid's owner.
Daniels, meanwhile, is suing to break free of her confidentiality agreement.
Trump has denied the affairs.
Lawyers representing Cohen and Trump have wrangled in court with prosecutors over the millions of items — documents, emails files and other material — seized from Cohen's office, home and hotel room this year. A lawyer representing Cohen previously has said "audio files" were among the materials seized.
Contributing: Kevin Johnson
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