Maggie Haberman really wants to become the successor to Press Secretary Huckabee Sanders. Or at least the WH damage control officer.
Claiming in a tweet that there was only one audio tape when there are at least twelve, she’s got to stop carrying water like a diaper pail for access to Lord Dampnut.
Federal prosecutors have received 12 audio tapes seized from President Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen.
Special master Barbara Jones, who was assigned to review seized items from Cohen by the FBI earlier this year, said the 12 audio tapes were released to federal investigators and prosecutors on Friday, though the content of the tapes is unclear.
The five names above are mentioned in email chains in the Manafort case.
The F.B.I. seized the recording(s) this year during a raid on Mr. Cohen’s office. The Justice Department is investigating Mr. Cohen’s involvement in paying women to tamp down embarrassing news stories about Mr. Trump ahead of the 2016 election.
Prosecutors want to know whether that violated federal campaign finance laws, and any conversation with Mr. Trump about those payments would be of keen interest to them.
The wide-ranging search warrants served on Mr. Cohen this spring show that prosecutors are investigating Mr. Cohen’s involvement in payments to silence women about their relationships with Mr. Trump. In addition to Ms. McDougal’s arrangement, prosecutors also sought evidence of payments to the adult film star Stephanie Clifford, who is better known as Stormy Daniels.
Mr. Trump has denied knowing about those payments, though people familiar with the arrangement have said he was aware of them. But his denial helped suppress public allegations of an affair during the final months of the campaign.
[...]
For a decade, Mr. Cohen served as one of Mr. Trump’s most trusted fixers, aggressively taking on journalists, opposing lawyers and business adversaries. He frequently taped his conversations, unbeknown to the people with whom he was speaking. New York law allows one party to a conversation to tape conversations without the other knowing.