The idea that Michael Cohen—sleazy lawyer, influence peddler, and taxi-medallion grifter—might own a pocket recorder seems to have come as a shock to Donald Trump. But the morning news that Cohen recorded Trump planning how they were going to pay off a former Playboy model at the end of a months-long affair, turns out to the tip of a tape iceberg.
As details have emerged over the course of the day, it appears that Trump wasn’t talking to Cohen about directly paying off his on-the-side playmate, but was discussing cutting a check to AMI, the company that owns National Enquirer. It was National Enquirer who bought the story as part of a “catch and kill” operation in which the woman thought she was getting the word out about Trump, but instead ended up with a check and an NDA that kept her silent through the election. It now appears that Trump, Cohen, and AMI’s chairman and CEO David Pecker collaborated to set things up, making it appear that the National Enquirer was interested in the story, while it was all just an elaborate scheme to bury the story and hand out an NDA without getting Trump’s “David Dennison” all over the paperwork.
But let-me-count-the-lawsuits as all of that may be, it’s not the most interesting part. CNN is now reporting that Cohen didn’t just decide to break out a cassette for this very special extortion. There are more. Many more.
Cohen has other recordings of the President in his records that were seized by the FBI, said both a source with knowledge of Cohen's tapes and Giuliani, who described the other recordings as mundane discussions.
Mundane discussions between Trump and Cohen about … additional people Trump paid off over affairs? The real estate deals where both Cohen and Trump were engaged in money laundering for foreign clients? Setting up Essential Consultants LLC to handle all of Trump’s porn star money going out, and influence peddling coming in? We don’t know, but we’re likely to find out.
There are other tapes of Cohen and other "powerful" individuals that the FBI seized beyond the President that could be embarrassing for the people on the tape and for Cohen, according to a source familiar with the tapes. The source said the people are of "significance and consequence."
If that makes it seem that Cohen was frequently in the business of bailing out millionaires who slept around … yes, that’s was his specialty. And if the fact that Cohen taped all these conversations makes it seem that he was setting all his clients up for potential extortion down the road, that’s … something that’s really going to come in very handy for the FBI.