This could be big, folks. The Washington Post is reporting that Donald Trump's longtime personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen was known to sometimes record conversations. Now Trump's allies fear those recordings were swept up by the FBI when agents raided Cohen's office, apartment, and hotel room earlier this week.
We don’t know what exactly Cohen recorded. But as you read this, remember two things even though they're somewhat at odds with each other: 1) Trump does not use email, he calls; 2) Cohen may have been motivated to record conversations that he believed would be adversarial in nature, so that he could leverage those recordings later (one source suggested as much).
Cohen, who served for a decade as a lawyer at the Trump Organization and is a close confidant of Trump, was known to store the conversations using digital files and then replay them for colleagues, according to people who have interacted with him. [...]
It is unknown whether Cohen taped conversations between himself and Trump. But two people familiar with Cohen’s practices said he recorded both business and political conversations. One associate said Trump knew of Cohen’s practice because the attorney would often play him recordings Cohen had made of his conversations with other top Trump advisers.
“It was his standard practice to do it,” this person said.
Remember Watergate? It was the tapes.
Cohen reportedly noted often that, under New York law, only one party had to consent to recording a conversation.
Also, considering how important loyalty was to Trump, it wouldn't be at all surprising if Cohen was recording conversations that he later replayed to Trump to prove whether someone was or wasn't being loyal. (Again, pure conjecture on my part.)