Earlier tonight, CNN released a roughly minute-long tape of Donald Trump and Michael Cohen talking in 2016 about setting up a company for payments. The tape can be heard at the second link. Note: The tape has a cuss word said by Trump. It is not bleeped here.
Of course, Guiliani is trying to spin this that the tape doesn’t mean anything, but if the “David” mentioned on the tape is David Pecker of AMI, the publisher of the National Enquirer, it would mean they were setting up payments for Trump’s girlfriend Karen McDougal.
Yeah not incriminating enough- but if there are truly a dozen more tapes- it could easily show that Trump was agreeing to a payoff to hush McDougal- definitely defying campaign contribution limits, not to mention being involved in a completely seamy deal to not let citizens know about this before the election. John Edwards comes to mind.
“There’s no way that the president is going to be talking about setting up a corporation and then using cash, unless you are a complete idiot,” Giulani told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. “And the president’s not an idiot.”
The key piece here is that Cohen is very likely willing to work for the prosecution if/when there is a case. He would provide corroborating testimony about what was discussed on the tapes. That would be very damning.
No doubt this non-story doesn’t matter. What matters is who leaked it- most likely an Obama campaign operative connected to the DOJ who wants to topple the president by any means necessary. Thats the real story.