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WASHINGTON – 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 that she had an affair with Donald J. Trump, his campaign flatly refused
"We do not know anything about this," Trump's spokesperson Hope Hicks told the newspaper. Last week, when The New York Times revealed the existence of a recorded conversation on the same payment that Mr. Trump denied knowing about, Mr. Trump's lawyer, Rudolph W Giuliani, called the recording "exculpatory" – suggesting that it would actually help Mr. Trump when he became public.
Finally, the band became public. And that revealed that the statements of Mrs. Hicks and Mr. Giuliani were false. The recording, released by CNN late on Tuesday night, shows that Mr. Trump is directly involved in discussions about the payment of the Enquirer for the rights to the history of the wife.
The recording and repeated statements that it contradicts. is a striking example of how Mr. Trump and his aides used lies as a shield against difficult questions and unflattering stories. Ssuking his repeated cry of "false news," he told supporters this week not to believe the news. "What you see and what you read is not what happens," added the president.
In a capital where politicians have created an art form of non-nominal denial, press secretaries generally reserve denials for stories that are downright false. Candidates can face the most embarrassing stories, and press clerks know that being caught in a lie only makes things worse.
But Mr. Trump, as a candidate and president, reversed this idea. Faced with the evidence of its inaccuracies, the administration bypasses and moves on to something else. "I will not go back and forth," said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders last month when she was confronted with her unmistakable false denials that Mr. Trump dictated his son's fallacious statement.
The recording that took place on Tuesday was about the old model, Karen McDougal, who says he started a nearly one year relationship with Mr. Trump in 2006. Shortly before the election of In 2016, she sold her story to National Enquirer. But the tabloid, which backed Mr. Trump, sat on the story, a practice known as catch and kill. She effectively silenced Ms. McDougal for the rest of the campaign
The legal implications of the recorded conversation for Mr. Trump are unclear. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating whether Mr. Trump's longtime personal attorney, Michael D. Cohen, has committed bank fraud or violates campaign finance laws by arranging payments to silence women who criticize Mr. Trump. Ms. McDougal in the context of the presidential campaign. Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen talk about voting, substitutes, repelling journalists and, finally, embarrassing agreements. But it's not clear if this creates legal problems for Mr. Trump.
The record was handed to prosecutors of a mine of documents from Mr. Cohen as F.B.I. agents seized in April. This is the only record of substance between Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the material. Other people include Mr. Cohen speaking to the media, according to the people.
In the recording, Mr. Trump does not seem surprised to hear about the arrangement with the parent company of Enquirer, American Media Inc. Mr. Cohen describes the agreement with "our friend David", a reference to the general manager of the company, David Pecker.
The band surfaced amid a growing gap between Mr Trump and Mr Cohen, his trusted adviser. Mr. Cohen almost announced that he was willing to cooperate with federal prosecutors, an arrangement that could uncover many secrets that he has helped to bury in a decade of work as a Mr. Trump's repairman. No such cooperation agreement has been concluded and prosecutors generally do not make such arrangements until they have finished considering the evidence that they have collected
The recording also shows how much the Trump organization had become political and was striving to protect Mr. Trump's image One can hear Mr. Cohen tell Mr. Trump that he had consulted the company's finance director, Allen Weisselberg, "at the time of funding" payments to the parent company of the Enquirer
"Wait a second, what financing?", said Mr. Trump,
"Well, I'm going to have to pay him something," says Mr. Cohen
Weisselberg also participated in structuring Mr. Cohen's repayments of more than 400 $ 000 after being separated from the Trump organization.It is said that these repayments to Mr. Cohen included the money that he spent to silence an adult-movie actress named Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels. She also alleged a previous case with Mr. Trump that he denied.
When the recording surfaced, Trump's lawyers wrote a transcript and distributed it to reporters. In their version, Mr. Trump told Mr. Cohen "do not pay in cash", then he said "check".
Cohen's lawyers argued that Mr. Trump's team had established a dialogue to make it more favorable to their client. "They started saying that a lie is the truth and that they do not believe in the media," said Lanny J. Davis, a lawyer for Mr. Cohen. "But they have gotten into a trap here because a band is a band, it's a fact, if you're for Donald Trump, do not believe me, I'm a Democrat, believe your own ears."
Repeated screenings of the recording do not clearly reveal that Mr. Trump says "do not pay with", an omission that would completely change the meaning of his commentary.That creates a gap – between what is heard on the tape, and what Mr. Trump's aides are saying is heard on the tape.
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