Michael Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis releases Trump-Cohen tape, and it’s devastating for Donald Trump

| 10:31 pm EDT July 24, 2018
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Donald Trump and his legal team waived privilege on the tapes that Michael Cohen secretly made of his conversations with Trump, for reasons that are still unclear to anyone but them. The move may end up being remembered as the mistake that ultimately led to the demise of Trump’s presidency. Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis released the tape to CNN this evening, and it does indeed capture Trump committing a felony.

Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani claimed earlier in the week that on the tape, Trump suggested that his mistress Karen McDougal be paid off via check. This turns out to have been yet another Giuliani lie. On the tape played live on air by CNN, Trump can be clearly heard telling Cohen to “pay by cash.” This itself is incriminating; as Davis told CNN, “The only people who use cash are drug dealers and mobsters.” But it gets much worse for Trump.

It’s a felony violation of federal law for a candidate or campaign to try to buy anyone’s silence during an election. By the time this tape was made, Trump was a major party nominee for President of the United States. So it’s likely he would have known about this law, and even if he didn’t, his ignorance under the circumstances would not serve as a valid legal excuse for violating it. Seriously conspiring to commit a felony, whether it’s ultimately carried out or not, is a felony in itself.

The short of it is that this tape catches Donald Trump committing a felony. We still don’t know all the details of what happened between the time this tape was made, and the time that Trump’s close ally the National Enquirer paid McDougal for the exclusive rights to her story, which it then buried. But whether or not it can be proven that Trump was involved in the payment that was made, he’s now been caught red handed conspiring to commit a felony – and that comes with a prison sentence.