(CNN)The story, on its face, seems to be this: In the waning months of the 2016 election, Donald Trump and Michael Cohen
talked about paying off former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal, who alleged an affair with Trump, to keep her quiet.
Pretty big news, right? (
Kudos to The New York Times for breaking it.)
And it is! But the bigger story here isn't that one conversation between Trump and his fixer. After all, we know that Cohen did this sort of dirty work for Trump; Cohen paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 11 days before the 2016 election to ensure her silence about an alleged tryst she says she had with Trump in the 2000s. And we know, despite the initial denials from Cohen and Trump, that Trump paid Cohen back for that payout.
The big story here -- and it is a B-I-G story -- is that Cohen secretly recorded a conversation with Trump. And that this wasn't the only conversation with Trump he taped. And certainly not the only conversation that might be of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller that Cohen taped. These two paragraphs, from
CNN's report on the taping, hit the nail on the head:
"Cohen has other recordings of the President in his records that were seized by the FBI, said a source with knowledge of Cohen's tapes and Giuliani, who described the other recordings as mundane discussions.
"There are other tapes of Cohen and other "powerful" individuals that the FBI seized beyond the President that could be embarrassing for the people on the tape and for Cohen, according to a source familiar with the tapes. The source said the people are of "significance and consequence."
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/20/politics/michael-cohen-trump-tape-karen-mcdougal/index.html