The Trump-Cohen tape just resulted in a subpoena that Donald Trump is going to hate
All eyes are on Michael Cohen to see whether his next move is to release another incriminating tape of Donald Trump, or to get it all over with by formally cutting a plea deal against Trump. Even as we wait to see what Cohen does next, the first tape is already having a major impact on the criminal investigation into what Trump and Cohen were illegally plotting. In fact Trump is going to hate the subpoena that’s just been issued.
On the tape in question, Michael Cohen tells Donald Trump that “I’ve spoken to Allen” about how to arrange the illegal $150,000 payoff to keep Trump’s mistress Karen McDougal quiet during the election. The “Allen” in question is Trump Organization financial executive Allen Weisselberg. This afternoon the Wall Street Journal reported that the Feds have subpoenaed Weisselberg to testify in the criminal case against Cohen. The WSJ article doesn’t mention the tape, but based on the timing, this can’t be a coincidence.
To be clear, Michael Cohen’s public release of this tape is not what triggered the subpoena. It was Donald Trump and his legal team who made the decision days ago to waive privilege for the tape, which then allowed federal prosecutors to use it as evidence in issuing the subpoena. So this would have happened whether Cohen released the tape publicly or not.
This distinction matters, because the Washington Post now reports that Michael Cohen secretly made more than a hundred tapes of conversations that he had with Donald Trump himself and/or about Trump’s scandals. Various legal experts have stated the belief that by waiving privilege for the one tape, Trump and his lawyers waived privilege for all of the tapes by default. This would mean that prosecutors are now acting on what they’ve heard on every tape, and not just the one tape that we’ve heard.
