President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani tells Fox News two experts and retired FBI agents have analyzed the secretly recorded Trump-Cohen tape and believe it was “played” with.
“Now that we’ve seen the full scope of [Michael] Cohen and Lanny Davis’ deception, we don’t trust anything,” Giuliani said.
The tape, first obtained by CNN, was secretly recorded by the president’s former attorney, Michael Cohen.
In it, the pair can be heard discussing a payment to Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who claims she had an affair with Trump prior to his election as president.
In a phone call with Fox News Saturday evening, Giuliani said he is trying to obtain a raw copy of that tape.
According to Giuliani, analysts say the public audio is a “tape of a tape,” and because of that, they are unable to determine if Cohen cut off the recording in the room, in real time, or altered and/or erased parts of it at a later date.
“Since we don’t have the original, we asked for it,” Giuliani said. “Our expert analysis is done until we get the raw copy, which we are seeking.”
Giuliani speculated that the chances of success for obtaining the raw tape are narrow.
Authorities in the government’s investigation of Cohen are reportedly analyzing multiple recordings.
Giuliani told Fox News there are additional “Cohen tapes,” but he said the now-public Trump-Cohen tape is the only one involving the president.
The others, Giuliani explained, are recordings where Cohen is speaking with third parties and describing his version of what happened in regard to payments to McDougal and adult film star Stormy Daniels, who has also maintained she had an affair with Trump before his election as president.
Giuliani said most of the tapes are secret recordings of conversations between Cohen and reporters.
More to the point, Giuliani insisted, there’s nothing on the tapes that contradicts the positions the president has publicly taken “on all these things.”
Giuliani claimed he would welcome the release of all the so-called “Cohen tapes,” telling Fox News that if Cohen’s legal team sought his permission to release the tapes, “we would say happily, we’ll play it for everybody.
They show the president didn’t do anything wrong and that Cohen deceives people.”
Fox News reached out to Cohen’s legal team to address Giuliani’s allegations, but at press time had not spoken directly with Cohen’s attorney.
However, Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, did send Fox News a statement via text message.
“Mr. Giuliani seems to be confused,” Davis wrote. “He expressly waived attorney client privilege last week and repeatedly and inaccurately — as proven by the tape — talked and talked about the recording, forfeiting all confidentiality.”
In regard to reports that a so-called “joint defense agreement” between Trump and Cohen has been severed, Giuliani told Fox News he does not know if the agreement has been formally renounced. However, Giuliani said Trump’s legal team does not share information with the Cohen legal team, and that legal team does not share information in the opposite direction.
