How the Cohen tapes expose the Trump campaign’s lies

Just before Election Day, when The Wall Street Journal uncovered a secret deal by The National Enquirer to buy the silence of a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Donald Trump, his campaign issued a flat denial.

“We have no knowledge of any of this,” Mr Trump’s spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, told the newspaper. She said the claim of an affair was “totally untrue.”

Then last week, when The New York Times revealed the existence of a recorded conversation about the very payment Mr Trump denied knowing about, Mr Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, described the recording as “exculpatory” – suggesting it would actually help Mr Trump if it became public.

Finally, the tape has become public. And it revealed the statements by Ms Hicks and Mr Giuliani to be false. The recording, which was broadcast by CNN late on Tuesday, shows Mr Trump directly involved in talks about whether to pay The Enquirer for the rights to the woman’s story.

The recording, and the repeated statements it contradicts, is a stark example of how Mr Trump and his aides have used falsehoods as a shield against tough questions and unflattering coverage. Building upon his repeated cry of “fake news,” he told supporters this week not to believe the news. “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,” the president added.

In a capital where politicians have made an art form of the non-denial denial, press secretaries typically reserve their on-the-record denials for reports that are outright false. Candidates can weather most embarrassing stories, and spokespeople know that getting caught in a lie only makes things worse.

It was a lie about an affair, after all, that led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment – though his most fateful move was testifying falsely under oath – just as it was a lie about infidelity that ended the political career of John Edwards, once a rising Democratic star (a story that broke in The Enquirer, coincidentally).

But Mr Trump, both as a candidate and as president, has turned that thinking on its head. When faced with the evidence of its misstatements, the administration sidesteps and moves on. “I’m not going to get into a back-and-forth,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said last month when confronted with her unequivocal, and false, denials that Mr Trump had dictated his son’s misleading statement about meeting with Russians.

Mr Trump ignored shouted questions from reporters on Wednesday in the Rose Garden of the White House about the recording. A representative for Ms Hicks declined to elaborate or explain her November comment, and asked to explain his denial from last week, Mr Giuliani maintained that his client was not heard on the tape doing anything wrong. He did not explain why he characterised it as “exculpatory.”

The tape that surfaced on Tuesday concerned the former model, Karen McDougal, who says she began a nearly yearlong affair with Mr Trump in 2006. Shortly before the 2016 presidential election, she sold her story for $150,000 to The Enquirer. But the tabloid, which was supportive of Mr Trump, sat on the story, a practice known as catch and kill. It effectively silenced Ms McDougal for the remainder of the campaign.

The legal implications of the taped conversation for Mr Trump are unclear. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating whether Mr Trump’s long-time personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, committed bank fraud or violated campaign finance laws by arranging payments to silence women critical of Mr Trump. They are also eyeing the role of The Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., as they discern whether the payment to Ms McDougal represented illegal, coordinated campaign expenditure.

The recording is potentially significant because it places Ms McDougal in the context of the presidential campaign. Mr Trump and Mr Cohen talk polling, surrogates, fending off journalists, and, finally, whether to buy Ms McDougal’s rights from AMI.

The recording was among 12 handed over to prosecutors from a trove of Mr Cohen’s material that FBI agents seized in April. It is the only recording of substance between Mr Cohen and Mr Trump, according to people familiar with the material. Others include Mr Cohen speaking to figures in broadcast news, the people said.

One captures a lengthy conversation Mr Cohen had with CNN host Chris Cuomo, The Journal reported on Wednesday. The conversation involved “the usual discussion of politics and media,” said a lawyer for Mr Cohen, Lanny J. Davis, adding that Mr Cohen had a habit of recording conversations “in lieu of taking notes,” and had not intended to ever make it public.

In the recording about American Media and the McDougal deal, Mr Trump does not appear surprised to hear about the arrangement with AMI. Mr Cohen describes the agreement with “our friend David,” a reference to the company’s chief executive, David Pecker.

The tape surfaced as part of a widening rift between Mr Trump and Mr Cohen, his once-trusted adviser. Mr Cohen has all but advertised his willingness to cooperate with federal prosecutors, an arrangement that could unearth many of the secrets that he helped bury in a decade of work as Mr Trump’s fixer. No such cooperation deal has been reached, and prosecutors typically do not make such arrangements until they have finished reviewing the evidence they have collected.

The tape also shows how enmeshed the Trump Organisation had become in politics and the effort to protect Mr Trump’s image. Mr Cohen can be heard telling Mr Trump that he had consulted with the company’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, “when it comes time for the financing” of the payments to the Enquirer’s parent company.

“Wait a sec, what financing?” Mr Trump is heard saying.

“Well, I’ll have to pay him something,” Mr Cohen then says.

When the recording of Mr Trump and Mr Cohen discussing the AMI deal with Ms McDougal surfaced last week, Mr Trump’s lawyers drafted a transcript and circulated it to reporters. In their version, Mr Trump told Mr Cohen “don’t pay with cash” and then says, “check.”

The transcript, however, is based on widely circulated audio easily accessible with the click of a mouse, as Mr Cohen’s legal team noted on Wednesday. Mr Trump’s team manufactured a dialogue to make it more favourable for their client.

“They have been getting away with saying that a lie is the truth and don’t believe the media,” said Lanny Davis, a lawyer for Mr Cohen. “But they walked into a trap here because a tape is a tape. It’s a fact. If you’re for Donald Trump, don’t believe me. I’m a Democrat. Believe your own ears.”

Repeated screenings of the tape do not clearly reveal Mr Trump saying the words “don’t pay with,” an omission that would entirely change the meaning of his comment. That creates a chasm between what is heard on the tape and what Mr Trump’s aides say is heard on the tape.

The New York Times