“Not good for Trump” – the Michael Cohen tape saga gets even uglier for Donald Trump

| 11:50 pm EDT July 20, 2018
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After it was revealed this morning that the FBI has the secret tapes that Michael Cohen made of his conversations with Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani quickly tried to get out ahead of it. He acknowledged that the tape does indeed exist, while insisting that the contents of the tape somehow demonstrated Trump’s innocence. As it turns out, not so much.

CNN reporter MJ Lee just posted this to Twitter: “Source tells Gloria Borger that the conversation between Trump and Cohen is not as Rudy Giuliani described. This source says the tape is not good for Trump (Giuliani said it is exculpatory).” In other words, the tape is exactly what we think it is: Trump and Cohen plotting to illegally pay off Trump’s mistress Karen McDougal during the election. It’s a felony for a candidate or campaign to buy someone’s silence during an election. It gets even uglier.

In his haste to spin this tape in Trump’s favor, Giuliani admitted to CNN that the FBI has multiple tapes of Cohen and Trump. Now that we know the tape in question is “not good for Trump,” it stands to reason that the rest of the tapes are similarly incriminating. Logically speaking, Cohen’s motivation for recording such conversations would be to give himself a bargaining chip in case he got busted carrying out the crimes that Trump was instructing him to carry out.

Now comes the question of when or whether these tapes will leak publicly. The only known copies are in the hands of the judge, the FBI, and Donald Trump’s own legal team. Did Michael Cohen ever give copies to other people as an insurance policy? At the rate this story is unfolding, we may find out soon enough.