Posted on 07/23/2018 9:56:00 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
On Friday, first lady Melania Trump responded to Michael Cohen's "Trump tapes," the existence of which was reported earlier in the day. The New York Times reported that Cohen, Donald Trump's former attorney, secretly recorded a conversation wherein the two discussed making payments to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who claims to have an affair with Trump. In a statement Friday, however, Melania refused to address the reports, and made clear that she won't be doing so at any point in the future.
"Mrs. Trump remains focused on her role as a mother and as First Lady of the United States," Melania's communications director Stephanie Grisham said in a statement. "We will have no further comment on the topic."
A White House spokesperson told ABC News that "the president says he never had a relationship with McDougal."
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor now representing the president, confirmed the existence of the tapes after the Times report. Giuliani said that no payment to McDougal was ever made, however, and characterized the tapes as "powerful exculpatory evidence." According to the Times, the tapes are now in the possession of the FBI, which raided Cohen's office earlier in the year.
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McDougal's claim that she had an affair with Donald was first reported before the election. However, the revelation that Cohen and Donald discussed paying McDougal two months before the 2016 election raises questions about how much Donald's team knew about her allegations, and when.
Days before the election, the Wall Street Journal reported that McDougal claimed to have had a nine-month affair with Donald, and that the National Enquirer paid her $150,000 for the exclusive rights to her story. But the tabloid never published her account, and McDougal later confirmed to the New Yorker that she signed a confidentiality agreement with the Enquirer's parent company the chairman of which is a close friend of Donald banning her from speaking publicly about the alleged affair.
After the Journal story was published in November 2016, Donald's former top aide Hope Hicks said in a statement that "we have no knowledge of any of this." However, Giuliani confirmed Friday that two months earlier, Donald and Cohen had discussed reimbursing the Enquirer for its payment to McDougal which of course, they couldn't have done if Donald's team had "no knowledge" of McDougal's dealings with the Enquirer.
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In a statement to the Daily Beast, Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis said that "when the recording you are reading about is heard, it will not hurt Mr. Cohen." Davis added that "any attempt to spin this story cannot change what is on the tape," which one source told the Beast is likely a reference to Giuliani's claim that the tape is "exculpatory."
I had never heard of an attorney privately recording his client without his knowledge. That just seems odd to me.
Who cares? MAGA!!!
Fake attorney. Had no clients but Trump.
That the Left has been deliberately trying to destroy the Trumps’ marriage is one of those “beyond despicable” things that make negotiation with them a non-starter.
Revealing such information is an absolute ethical violation and the recording potentially is illegal, as is its use in any court. And having Lanny Davis leak it is despicable.
And Bill Clinton is a rapist who raped while in office.
And that wasn’t an issue for anyone back then.
An attorney nonetheless and not a fake. No such thing. Many attorneys have one client.
At the end of the day (and I hate that phrase), Melania will still be married to Donald Trump and he will still in fact be POTUS, which is the real thing that drives the left crazy.
Add in attorney-client privilege, can one side waive privilege unilaterally?
Don't mess with a Mama Grizzly.
They killed Lincoln, McKinley, Garfield and Kennedy and tried to kill another handful. What’s a marriage to that?
Michael Cohen is fake for plenty of other reasons. He went to Cooley. That can barely be called a law school.
I do know this. To have a private conversation recorded in the state of Michigan, you have to have the consent of the person being recorded AND there has to be a beep every few seconds during the recording so the person being recorded can demand the recording stopped at any time.
I know, because my ex tried that shit with me during our divorce. They tried to bring it up in court and the judge went ballistic on her lawyer and threatened to have him disbarred.
My lawyer and I sat there greatly amused at the whole thing.
I later had my lawyer file lawsuit against her and her lawyer for it and that Judge took us aside and had us drop the suit since her lawyer was under investigation and was later disbarred.
Cohen should be disbarred.......................
I had never heard of an attorney privately recording his client without his knowledge. That just seems odd to me.
Throw-in using those tapes in a court of law. I have never even heard of that in mafioso trials. Unless Trump is two steps ahead of the law and made a tape to exonerate himself. I don’t understand why a lawyer would even bring something like that up or provide it to authorities. Unless he wants to be disbarred. It can’t be true because this is the strangest thing I have ever heard.
Fake attorney. Had no clients but Trump
If true what does that say about Trump?
It says he was a fixer. Not Trump’s main attorney(ies).
When you’re famous it’s easy for someone to make false claims against you with no repercussions. It’s possible these payments, just like the one to sex worker Stormy, are to prevent false accusations.
One party recording is legal in New York.
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