NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 21: Michael Cohen, former lawyer to U.S. President Donald Trump, exits the Federal Courthouse on August 21, 2018 in New York City. Cohen reached an agreement with prosecutors, pleading guilty to charges involving bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign finance violations. (Photo by Yana Paskova/Getty Images) Michael Cohen, U.S. President Donald Trump's personal attorney, takes a phone call as he sits outside near the Loews Regency hotel on Park Ave on April 13, 2018 in New York City. (Yana Paskova/Getty Images) NEW YORK, NY - MAY 30: Michael Cohen, (C) former personal lawyer and confidante for President Donald Trump, exits the United States District Court Southern District of New York on May 30, 2018 in New York City. According to a filing submitted to the court Tuesday night by special master Barbara Jones, federal prosecutors investigating Michael Cohen, a longtime personal lawyer and confidante for President Donald Trump, are set to receive 1 million files from three of his cellphones that were seized last month. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images) NEW YORK, NY - MAY 30: Michael Cohen, (L) former personal lawyer and confidante for President Donald Trump, exits the United States District Court Southern District of New York on May 30, 2018 in New York City. According to a filing submitted to the court Tuesday night by special master Barbara Jones, federal prosecutors investigating Michael Cohen, a longtime personal lawyer and confidante for President Donald Trump, are set to receive 1 million files from three of his cellphones that were seized last month. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images) NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 21: Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney and fixer, exits federal court, August 21, 2018 in New York City. Cohen reached an agreement with prosecutors, pleading guilty to charges involving bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign finance violations. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Michael Cohen, a longtime personal lawyer and confidante for President Donald Trump, leaves the United States District Court Southern District of New York on May 30, 2018 in New York City. (DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images) (CNN) — President Donald Trump blasted his former attorney Michael Cohen on Wednesday, the morning after CNN aired the audio of a recording Cohen made of the two. “What kind of a lawyer would tape a client? So sad! Is this a first, never heard of it before? Why was the tape so abruptly terminated (cut) while I was presumably saying positive things? I hear there are other clients and many reporters that are taped - can this be so? Too bad!” Trump tweeted. In the audio aired first on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time,” Trump and Cohen can be heard discussing how they would buy the rights to former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story about an alleged affair she had with Trump years earlier, which Trump denies. Court filings said federal prosecutors have 12 recordings from Cohen, and CNN previously confirmed the recording with Trump is among those 12. The tape’s release marked a dramatic rupture in the relationship between the President and Cohen, previously a steadfast supporter in addition to working as Trump’s personal attorney and longtime confidant. Cohen is under criminal investigation by the US attorney’s office in Manhattan for his personal financial dealings, including the payment he made to porn actress Stormy Daniels on Trump’s behalf before the election, though he has not been charged with any wrongdoing. The audio also features Trump and Cohen discussing other matters, including an attempt by The New York Times to unseal the records from Trump’s first divorce and mentioning pastor Mark Burns, a Trump supporter. Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis provided CNN the September 2016 recording and said Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani had been “falsely disparaging” Cohen. Giuliani contended that the recording would not harm Trump after news broke last week in The New York Times that the recording of Trump and Cohen was among those obtained by prosecutors. CNN reported that Trump’s attorneys had waived his attorney-client privilege on the tape. Giuliani, who confirmed the existence of the audio last week, responded on Wednesday to Davis’ statements and the airing of the audio in a tweet claiming Davis was misrepresenting Trump’s reference to “cash” in the recording and calling the information “privileged.” Trump’s legal team, however, previously waived Trump’s attorney-client privilege on the recording. “If Cohen is telling the truth why are he and Lanny Davis misrepresenting the language from President Trump “Do not pay by cash…CHECK.” And why are they leaking falsely privileged and confidential information. So much for ethics!” Giuliani tweeted. If Cohen is telling the truth why are he and Lanny Davis misrepresenting the language from President Trump “Do not pay by cash...CHECK.” And why are they leaking falsely privileged and confidential information. So much for ethics! — Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) July 25, 2018 Trump expressed anger over the recording last weekend on Twitter, calling both the seizure of the recording and Cohen’s creation of it “inconceivable.” “Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer’s office (early in the morning) - almost unheard of. Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client - totally unheard of & perhaps illegal. The good news is that your favorite President did nothing wrong!” Trump tweeted. The FBI, however, was executing court-approved warrants in conducting the searches. The FBI raids on Cohen came ahead of a disclosure from the Department of Justice in early April that the longtime Trump attorney had been “under criminal investigation” for months. The prosecutors for the Southern District of New York said at the time that special counsel Robert Mueller’s office had referred a case about Cohen’s business dealings to their office and had not been involved since. Trump was outraged at the raid on Cohen in April, declaring on Twitter that “attorney client privilege is dead” on Twitter and calling the search “an attack on our country.” In the months since, speculation has grown about what the legal pressure on Cohen might mean for Trump – discussion far removed from Cohen’s claim last year that he would “take a bullet” for the President. Cohen said in an interview with ABC published in early July that his family and country would come before his loyalty to Trump, and CNN reported later that Cohen had told his friends he did not think Trump would pardon him if it came to that point. Giuliani said later he was unconcerned about Cohen moving to cooperate with federal prosecutors against Trump, telling CNN that he did not know what Cohen would have to “flip over.” After CNN first aired the Trump-Cohen recording on Tuesday evening, Davis said he believed Trump’s team fears the President’s former personal attorney. “They fear that he has the truth about Donald Trump,” Davis said. Giuliani, meanwhile, argued on Fox News that Davis was wrong about what the audio showed and reiterated it showed “no indication” of a crime. At the heart of their disagreement is an apparent reference from Trump in the audio to paying with cash, although the audio is muddled and each side disputes Trump’s meaning.<doc-sep>With the release of a recording of President Donald Trump and his former attorney Michael Cohen discussing a deal to bury a onetime Playboy model’s allegations of an affair with Trump, questions about obscure campaign finance rules are once again front and center. The recording, which aired on CNN Tuesday after being released by Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis, involves Trump and Cohen discussing buying the rights to the story of Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who alleges she had an affair with Trump in 2006. Legal and campaign finance experts say that, while there is nothing incriminating in the recording itself, it raises more questions than it answers about payments that could be campaign finance violations. “I don’t think there’s anything on that tape that clearly indicates a campaign finance violation,” said Rick Hasen, a professor at University of California, Irvine who specializes in election and campaign finance law. “It gives ample reason for further investigation. But alone it doesn’t establish illegal conduct.” Trump and Cohen have already faced questions, lawsuits and federal complaints over Cohen’s $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, whose own allegations of an affair with Trump arose in the weeks before the 2016 election. But the new recording also involves a third party: David Pecker, CEO of American Media, which owns the National Enquirer. On the recording, Cohen is heard telling Trump he needs to “open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David,” presumably a reference to Pecker. Pecker’s company allegedly paid McDougal $150,000 in 2016 for the rights to her story, but never ran it, in a move known in the tabloid industry as a “catch-and-kill.” McDougal later filed a lawsuit against AMI, and was released from her contract in April. Nothing on the recording released Tuesday indicates that a payment from Cohen to Pecker ever actually happened. A spokesman for AMI did not respond to TIME’s request for comment. But if Trump, or Cohen on behalf of Trump, paid Pecker for the rights to the story with corporate funds and never reported it, that could be a violation of campaign finance laws. That’s because it may qualify as an in-kind contribution, or payments that are designed to influence the election, whether or not they go directly to a campaign. Even if Pecker never received a payment from anyone associated with the Trump campaign, he could have still have violated campaign finance regulations by failing to run McDougal’s story in an effort to protect Trump, with whom he is personally friendly. News publications are exempt from campaign finance stipulations if they are fulfilling what is known as a “legitimate press function” of informing the public, but experts say that stipulation may not apply here. “AMI would probably not be acting in its ‘legitimate press function’ if the purpose of the payment was to keep the McDougal story from going public,” says Brendan Fischer, the Director of Federal and FEC Reform at Campaign Legal Center. “Certainly there may be circumstances where a news publisher’s editorial decision to run or not run a story could fall under the press exemption,” Fischer added, “but if the goal of a publisher’s $150,000 payment was always to not run the story, it shouldn’t fall under the exemption.” Fischer also said the other question in the McDougal case is that “whether Trump or his agents were at all involved with the agreement or payment.” Pecker could also find himself in legal trouble if it can be proven that he made the decision to buy McDougal’s story with the intention of never running it after consultation with the Trump campaign. Common Cause, a non-partisan watchdog group, filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice in February requesting an investigation into exactly that. “I just think it again affirms what we filed in our complaint; that it sounds like Donald Trump knew about the hush money payment to McDougal before the election,” said Common Cause Chief of Strategy and External Affairs Stephen Spaulding. “I just think this is more of another log on the fire that these are campaign finance violations and that the thread continues to unravel.” Get our Politics Newsletter. The headlines out of Washington never seem to slow. Subscribe to The D.C. Brief to make sense of what matters most. Please enter a valid email address. * The request timed out and you did not successfully sign up. Please attempt to sign up again. Sign Up Now An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. Please try again later. Check the box if you do not wish to receive promotional offers via email from TIME. You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Thank you! For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder. Write to Alana Abramson at Alana.Abramson@time.com.<doc-sep>CNN’s Chris Cuomo opened his show tonight with audio of the tape of Michael Cohen and then-candidate Donald Trump talking about the Karen McDougal payment. Per CNN’s report: Cohen told Trump about his plans to set up a company and finance the purchase of the rights [to McDougal’s story] from American Media, which publishes the National Enquirer. “I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David,” Cohen said in the recording, likely a reference to American Media head David Pecker. Trump interrupts Cohen asking, “What financing?” according to the recording. When Cohen tells Trump, “We’ll have to pay.” Trump is heard saying “pay with cash” but the audio is muddled and it’s unclear whether he suggests paying with cash or not paying. Cohen says, “no, no” but it is not clear what is said next.<doc-sep>
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday expressed disbelief that his longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen would have taped conversations with him, a day after an audio recording of a conversation between the two men was aired on U.S. television. A lawyer for Cohen, Lanny Davis, released the recording of Trump and Cohen discussing paying for the rights to a Playboy model’s story about an alleged affair with Trump and it aired on CNN on Tuesday Night. Government watchdog group Common Cause has said that the proposed payment benefited Trump’s presidential election campaign and the failure to document it was potentially illegal. Some legal experts, however, say that if the payment was made for personal reasons, it would not run afoul of federal election laws. Under U.S. election law, presidential candidates must disclose expenses, loans and campaign contributions, which are defined as things of value given to a campaign in order to influence an election. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has said the proposed payment was a personal matter and not subject to campaign finance law. Before the election, Trump’s campaign denied any knowledge of payment to McDougal, but the taped conversation could undermine those denials. “What kind of a lawyer would tape a client? So sad! Is this a first, never heard of it before? Why was the tape so abruptly terminated (cut) while I was presumably saying positive things? I hear there are other clients and many reporters that are taped - can this be so? Too bad!” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter. Davis told CNN he released the tape to dispute an assertion by Giuliani that the tape would show that Trump made clear that if there were going to be a payment, it should be done by check, which would be easily traced. Giuliani has said the payment was never made. Slideshow ( 7 images ) In the recording, Trump can be heard saying “pay with cash.” Cohen counters by repeatedly saying, “No.” According to Giuliani, in his transcript of the recording, Trump says on the tape: “Don’t pay with cash. Check.” Reuters was unable to verify the entire exchange between the two men because of the poor sound quality of the recording. Davis and Giuliani did not respond to a request for further comment. In an interview with ABC News, Davis disputed Giuliani’s characterization of the call and said they method of payment was beside the point. “It’s not about cash versus noncash. It’s about truth,” Davis said on “Good Morning America” on Wednesday. The debate over whether Trump was advocating for payments via cash or check is “irrelevant” in determining whether he violated campaign finance laws, said Joshua Douglas, a professor of election law at the University of Kentucky. “The question is whether the payment was intended to affect the campaign,” Douglas said. Common Cause says the tape bolstered their argument that Trump knew about the payment and that it was potentially illegal. Slideshow ( 7 images ) “Denials and tweets in all caps do not make campaign finance violations go away,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause. But Bradley Smith, a professor at Capital University Law School and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said that Trump could have considered making the payment for reasons unrelated to the election. “People in Trump’s position have all kinds of reasons for making these kind of payments, like family harmony or retaining commercial viability,” said Bradley Smith, a professor at Capital University Law School and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission. Karen McDougal, the model, alleges she began a 10-month affair with Trump in 2006. Giuliani denies that Trump had an affair with McDougal. Davis said the tape is among audio recordings that were seized by the FBI in a raid of Cohen’s home and office in April. It was turned over to federal prosecutors last Friday, according to a filing in federal court in Manhattan on Monday. In the conversation, recorded in September 2016 at Trump Tower in New York, Cohen discusses setting up a company to make a payment apparently involving David Pecker, chief executive of American Media Inc (AMI) and a close friend of Trump’s. Cohen was proposing to pay AMI, which owns the National Enquirer newspaper, for the rights to McDougal’s story. AMI had bought them from McDougal for $150,000 but AMI did not publish her story.