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Monday 30 July 2018
Giuliani: 180 tapes seized from Cohen but Trump only speaks on one
Michael Cohen stands behind Donald Trump and Mike Pence at a campaign event in Cleveland in 2016.
Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Approximately 180 secret recordings were seized by investigators from Donald Trump’s former legal fixer Michael Cohen, the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani suggested on Sunday.
Giuliani claimed that a tape given to the media
by Cohen last week was the only one to feature remarks by Trump. If
true, that would dampen hopes among the president’s critics of finding
incriminating evidence against him.
“We know of something like 183 unique conversations on tape,”
Giuliani said, on CBS’s Face the Nation. “One of those is with the
president of the United States.”
Giuliani said about a dozen other recordings contained discussions about Trump between Cohen and others including reporters.
Giuliani,
a former mayor of New York City, disclosed the new total while
unveiling a new line of attack aimed at discrediting Cohen, based around
vague claims that Cohen may have doctored his recordings.
“You’ve gotta raise that question with every one of those tapes,”
Giuliani said in an interview with Jeanine Pirro on Fox News late on
Saturday. “How many of them did he play around with? The guy has, like,
180 tapes.”
FBI agents took the recordings, along with thousands of pages of
records, from Cohen’s offices and home during raids in April, as part of
a criminal investigation into his business activities by federal
authorities in New York.
Amid a bitter fall-out between the two men, Cohen last week leaked to reporters
the recording in which he and Trump discussed a $150,000 payoff to buy
the silence of Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who says she had a
lengthy affair with Trump, which Trump denies.
Giuliani claimed other recordings seized from Cohen would support the
Trump team’s position that payoffs to women threatening to disclose
damaging information during 2016 would not violate campaign finance laws
by amounting to undisclosed campaign spending.
He said Cohen was heard saying he paid the women “not for the
campaign” but rather “because I personally love the president and
Melania”.
Russia inquiry: how Trump's inner circle could bring him down – video explainer
The dispute has brought a messy end to a decade-long relationship
between Trump and Cohen, who is under investigation for possible bank
fraud and violation of election campaign finance laws. Cohen has denied
any wrongdoing.
Cohen reportedly feels Trump has abandoned him to face the
consequences of actions he took for the future president. Trump’s team,
which is being watched closely by the special counsel Robert Mueller for
any attempts to obstruct justice, has apparently refrained from trying
to secure Cohen’s loyalty.
In a the most dramatic escalation so far, Cohen’s legal team last
week leaked a secret recording of Cohen and Trump apparently discussing
McDougal’s payoff. McDougal alleged a deal was struck for the National
Enquirer magazine to pay her $150,000 for her story, and then decline to
publish it. The magazine is published by Trump’s friend David Pecker.
In the recording, after Cohen mentions “our friend David”, Trump asks:
“So, what do we got to pay for this? 150?”
CNN and NBC subsequently reported
that Cohen was also willing to tell investigators Trump had known his
son and senior aides were to meet Russians offering “dirt” on Hillary
Clinton during the 2016 campaign – and that he had approved. Donald Trump
Jr, Jared Kushner, and Trump’s then campaign chairman, Paul Manafort,
met at Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 with a group of well-connected
Russians, having been told they would bring information about Clinton
from the Russian government. Trump has always denied knowing about the
meeting.
Trump reiterated his denial following last week’s reports, saying
on Twitter that he “did NOT know of the meeting”, and accusing Cohen of
trying to trade false information to escape his own legal difficulties.
Other Trump allies joined Giuliani’s effort to undermine Cohen’s
credibility, in a striking example of how the president’s media
defenders aggressively protect him at moments of high pressure.
Introducing her Giuliani interview on Fox News, Pirro – a friend of
the president – said the former mayor was claiming “experts” had
examined the leaked recording and found evidence of tampering. Giuliani
cited no such expert analysis, and instead said only it was suspicious
that the recording ended abruptly.
Rudy Giuliani said Michael Cohen is on tape saying he
paid women out of ‘love’ for the president. Photograph: Drew
Angerer/Getty Images
In fact, during a separate interview
on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, Giuliani conceded that analysts who
examined the tape had said there was “no way to tell” if it had been
edited.
Undeterred, on Sunday morning Fox & Friends – the president’s
favourite show – displayed the message “Rudy: experts think Cohen tapes
were tampered”. Alan Dershowitz, a veteran Harvard legal expert and
Trump ally, reminded the hosts that a doctored tape was used against one
of his former clients.
“Words had been shifted around to make him say things he didn’t say, and he was acquitted,” he said.
By the time he reached a later interview on Fox News Sunday,
Giuliani’s account had become that Cohen was “capable, I think,
unfortunately, of doctoring tapes”.
Giuliani said on Sunday Cohen’s charge about Trump’s prior knowledge
of the Trump Tower meeting was “flat-out untrue”, and noted that despite
Cohen’s practice of recording meetings, he apparently had no recording
to support this allegation. He repeatedly accused Cohen of being an
habitual liar.
The remarks stood in sharp contrast to Giuliani’s description of
Cohen, less than two months ago, as “an honest, honorable lawyer”.
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