Now that the NYT is reporting it, i’m re-posting here something i wrote late monday night, about my hunch that that conversation between Cohen and Trump wasn’t what it was widely believed to be about. In fact, i’d been pondering this since friday evening, ever more convinced that there was a lot more to it. More, even, than the Times has reported. What follows is a cleaned-up version of that post from monday. I’ve corrected some typos and rearranged — and added — a few sentences, but i have not enlarged upon my premise.
Last month, CNN published a leaked audio recording of Trump and Cohen which seemed to be a conversation about a payoff to someone, and was believed to have been produced during the election campaign. There were a few sentences in the transcript1 that caught my eye. They didn’t fit, and they stuck with me.
Exclusive: CNN obtains secret Trump-Cohen tape
(CNN) Presidential candidate Donald Trump is heard on tape discussing with his attorney Michael Cohen how they would buy the rights to a Playboy model's story about an alleged affair Trump had with her years earlier, according to the audio recording of the conversation aired exclusively on CNN's "Cuomo Prime Time."
The purported scenario behind the recording is that Cohen is discussing with Trump an arranged payoff to AMI, publisher of National Enquirer, in return for services rendered with regard to an NDA that a woman was encouraged to sign in return for her silence. This appeared to be so because we already knew about the $150,000 payoff from AMI to Karen McDougal. And it seems as though Donnie Diapers mentions that very figure.
TRUMP: So, what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?
1. Aaron Blake, The Washington Post, The Trump-Michael Cohen tape transcript, annotated
Before i go any further, i have to confess that i’ve not followed this as closely as i might have. Is there any other evidence which suggests that the conversation in this audio recording is specifically about paying off the McDougal arrangement?
That wasn’t the sentence i was referring to, btw. I’ll get to that. But this is a good point at which to talk about figures.
COHEN added these amounts to a sum of $180,035. After receiving this document, executives of the Company "grossed up" for tax purposes COHEN's requested reimbursement of $180,000 to $360,000, and then added a bonus of $60,000 so that COHEN would be paid $420,000 in total. Executives of the Company also determined that the $420,000 would be paid to COHEN in monthly amounts of $35,000 over the course of twelve months, and that COHEN should send invoices for these payments.
Potentially criminal discrepancy between Trump financial disclosure and Cohen charging document
When you hear one of these people throwing out a figure like that — in that situation — don’t take it as the final ledger entry. That’s just not how they operate. In any case, we don’t know whether he meant $150 million. Yes, you read that right.
Another line of speculation is that they were planning to threaten Pecker:
COHEN: ... you never know where that company — you never know what he’s —
TRUMP: Maybe he gets hit by a truck.
COHEN: Correct. So, I’m all over that. …
I disagree. Rather, the concern was that, should something happen to Pecker, something of great value might fall into the wrong hands. Disloyal hands.
spill already
This wasn’t just about covering the Karen McDougal cost. I think that Michael Cohen recorded a conversation with Donald Trump, the context of which was an arrangement with David Pecker, CEO of AMI, to attain possession of all of the material regarding Donald Trump that AMI — and specifically David Pecker — had in its vault. Everything, going back decades.
They sat down with Pecker — who’d been a loyal, and very well-off, stooge for years — to discuss how things had now changed; that Trump was the fucking President of the United States now, and that they knew he had files, and that they felt that it was very important to button that the fuck up.
They thanked Pecker for his loyalty — emphasizing loyalty — and for all the marvelous help he’d provided, all these years. Then, they got down to brass tacks: They explained to him that it was simply no longer possible for that material to remain in his possession. You understand? But, they know that a transaction is a transaction, and they mean to take very good care of him.
And TrumpCo has been raking in money. He can afford to take care of his loyal subjects.
In the transcript, Cohen says that he needs to set up a burner company “for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, David”. I want you to ponder that word — info — for a moment.
COHEN: … funding. Yes. Um, and it’s all the stuff.
TRUMP: Yeah, I was thinking about that.
COHEN: All the stuff.
All the stuff. All of the info. Regarding our friend, David.
Since word of his cooperation the news has been all over this notion that Pecker’s got oodles of lurid files on Trump locked in his safe. Would the FBI send in their crack team of locksmiths if Pecker wouldn’t talk?
The other shoe drops
I think that the collection of Trump files — the dossier — is long gone. Last April gone.
I think that the plan was for Michael Cohen to hold onto the files.
I think that the FBI found those same files when they raided his home, his hotel suite, and his borrowed office space last Spring.
I think that Pecker is cooperating because he has very narrow immunity and is well-exposed for i just cannot imagine why.
I think that the FBI already has the Pecker Dossier [because, why not go there?] and is fishing for much more from our eponymous shitbag — the better to keep him tightly leashed.
I think that this specific recording was leaked because Michael Cohen knew that it involved a lot of stuff — a lot of info — that was very sensitive to baby Trump. Who is being an asshole to his long-time, loyal — and well-off — servant.
“If it was so damaging to baby Trump’s ego, why wouldn’t he have burned it immediately?”
Because he’s a fucking narcissist dumbass.
He is obsessed with any mention of him in the press and on television, good or bad. Short of Polaroids showing him killing and eating a child, i cannot envision him putting those files to the torch. Perhaps, he thought there were photos of Ivanka that he hadn’t already secretly taken himself. Maybe it was just the prospect of lurid rumors about the peephole camera in her bedroom.
But i think that he and Cohen conspired to gain possession of this material, and that Trump never even considered destroying it immediately. That, perhaps, he still hasn’t had a chance even to look through it during his “executive time”.
I think that Cohen was holding onto it, and now the FBI has got it. Has had it for months. And that Michael Cohen understood this, and leaked that specific recording as a fuck you to Trump.
Crazy times at the Doj. Crazy - fucking - times.
Will this mean much, going forward, for the FBI? Or SDNY? Who knows? But, i would not be surprised should any of these secrets come out at trial.
Or leak.
Friday, Aug 31, 2018 · 1:46:00 AM +00:00
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subtropolis
It was the “hit by a truck” line which first caused me to question what i was reading. It soon became apparent that this wasn’t all that it was thought to be about. I’ve updated the post to include the missing part about that line.