Federal investigators who raided the home and office of President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen took more than 100 recordings of discussions related to Trump, according to The Washington Post.
Some were surreptitiously recorded on an iPhone, and a number of them involved conversations between Cohen and reporters during and after Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, two sources familiar with the recordings told the Post in a story published Wednesday evening.
The most substantive of the seized recordings was the one Cohen, embroiled in multiple scandals involving the president, released to CNN on Tuesday night, in which he and Trump discussed a payment to quash former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story alleging an extramarital affair with Trump.
Cohen’s decision to release the audio of the September 2016 discussion furthered speculation that he may turn on Trump and strike a deal with investigators.
The growing investigation into Cohen has raised questions about whether the “hush money” payments to silence McDougal — as well as porn star Stormy Daniels — violated campaign finance rules and what else Cohen, considered Trump’s fixer, has done to help conceal the president’s scandals.
FBI agents raided Cohen’s home and office in New York earlier this year.
Investigators have also sought any recordings of discussions regarding Trump’s infamous 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he can be heard bragging about sexually assaulting women.
“He never intended to make use of the recordings and certainly didn’t intend to be deceptive,” Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis told the Post, explaining that he “had the habit of using his phone to record conversations instead of taking notes.”
On Wednesday, Davis told ABC News that “there are more tapes” and that Cohen “has turned a corner in his life, and he’s now dedicated to telling the truth to everyone.”
But he said his client is not seeking a pardon from Trump.
Trump alluded to the possibility of more tapes when responding to the recording on Wednesday morning, tweeting that “I hear there are clients and many reporters that are taped ― can this be so? Too bad!”