Ex-con Michael Cohen testifies about secret recording he made of Trump discussing affair claims before 2016 election
Michael Cohen testified Monday he secretly recorded Donald Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 election, discussing plans to buy a Playboy model’s story about having an affair with the then-candidate.
Cohen — who worked for Trump for more than a decade — told jurors in Manhattan Supreme Court that the Sept. 6, 2016, conversation, taped on the Voice Memos app on his iPhone, was the only time he surreptitiously recorded his former boss.
“So, what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?” Trump could allegedly be heard saying on the nearly three-minute recording played in court by Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger.
The conversation centered around plans to buy the rights to former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal’s story about having an affair with the married Trump from the National Enquirer, according to testimony.
Cohen said the recording was meant to give assurances to then-National Enquirer publisher David Pecker that Trump would reimburse Pecker the $150,000 he paid to McDougal for the exclusive rights to her story — which he never planned to publish.
“It was so I could show it to David Pecker and that way he would hear the conversation, that he would know … Mr. Trump is going to be paying him back,” Cohen said on the stand.
Sitting at the defense table in the courtroom, Trump, 77, could be seen smirking and shaking his head at Cohen’s explanation for making the recording without telling him.
Cohen, Trump’s onetime “fixer” and lawyer, began testifying Monday as the star prosecution witness in the hush money trial against the ex-president.
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Jurors previously heard snippets of the same tape during the testimony of Douglas Daus, a tech expert.
Cohen stressed that his role in brokering the “catch-and-kill” deal with McDougal was done solely at Trump’s behest.
“What I was doing, I was doing at the direction and for the benefit of Mr. Trump,” he testified.
Cohen told jurors that when he first made the real estate tycoon aware of McDougal’s allegations, Trump didn’t deny that it happened, but merely pointed out how attractive she was.
“His response to me was, ‘She’s really beautiful,'” Cohen said.
During some of Cohen’s early testimony, Trump could be seen sitting slumped in his chair with his eyes closed for at least 30 minutes.
He seemed more animated following the mid-morning break, leafing through a stack of papers in front of him at the defense table while Cohen continued speaking.
Trump’s aides have been spotted handing him news clips to read at other points during the trial, but it’s hard to make out in the room exactly what he’s looking at.
Earlier, Cohen — who said he made roughly $525,000 a year working for Trump — laid out for jurors the myriad ways he acted like a “fixer” for the real estate mogul, including threatening to sue reporters who published unfavorable stories about him, getting a yellow cab company to pay for a fender-bender with his limo, and generally lying and bullying others on his behalf.
When a Trump Tower doorman came forward with a phony story about Trump having a love child with a maid, Trump told Cohen to “handle” It, Cohen testified.
“He told me to make sure that the story doesn’t get out — ‘You handle it,'” Cohen said, adding Trump’s side worked out a deal with the doorman “to take [his story] off the market.”
Pecker paid the doorman $30,000 for the exclusive rights to it, and then buried it, prosecutors have said.
Cohen also testified that Trump didn’t run for president in the 2012 election because he was still on “The Apprentice” in 2011. But once Trump threw his hat in the ring in 2015, Cohen said Trump warned him, “Just be prepared, there’s going to be a lot of women coming forward.”
Prosecutors allege Trump “corrupted” the 2016 presidential race by having Cohen pay porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep her quiet about her claim that she had a one-night-stand with Trump in 2006, a year after he married Melania.
Trump then tried to hide the hush money payment by logging his reimbursements to Cohen as legal expenses, prosecutors allege.
Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and has vehemently denied the charges.
