WASHINGTON — Federal investigators have an audio recording in which then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and his personal attorney Michael Cohen discussed in the fall of 2016 making payments for the story of Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal, who allegedly had an extramarital affair with Trump, according to two people familiar with the conversation.
Karen McDougal, shown in 2011 at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, says she had a 10-month affair with Donald Trump in 2006-07.
The recording, made by Cohen, was seized by federal agents now investigating Trump’s longtime confidant for potential bank and campaign finance crimes, according to multiple familiar with the probe.
In a statement Friday, President Trump’s attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani confirmed the recording’s existence and said no payment was ever made. The New York Times first reported the existence of the recording.
Trump and Cohen discussed the possible payment after AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, bought the rights to McDougal’s story for $150,000 in August 2016, then sat on it.
“Nothing in that conversation suggests that he had any knowledge of [the AMI payment] in advance,” Giuliani said. “In the big scheme of things, it’s powerful exculpatory evidence.”
Lanny Davis, an attorney for Cohen, declined to comment.
On Twitter, McDougal’s lawyer Carol Heller wrote that she was “learning of this in real time just like everyone else.” Peter Stris, a lawyer who negotiated McDougal’s settlement with AMI earlier this year, tweeted, “When @realDonaldTrump said we were lying, do you think he meant we WEREN’T?”
The revelation of the recording comes as Cohen has signaled that he might be willing to cooperate with the federal investigation into his business dealings, a probe that has examined his interactions with AMI and a hush-money payment he arranged with adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, who also claimed to have had a sexual encounter with Trump. An April raid of Cohen’s residences and office sought records related to both McDougal and Cohen.
Cohen, who served for a decade as a lawyer at the Trump Organization, was known to sometimes tape conversations with associates, store them digitally and then replay them for colleagues, as The Washington Post reported in April.
In the September 2016 conversation, Cohen and Trump were discussing a plan by Cohen to attempt to purchase the rights to McDougal’s story from AMI for roughly $150,000, according to one person familiar with recording.
Trump can be heard urging Cohen to make sure he properly documents the agreement to buy the rights and urges him to use a check – rather than cash – to keep a record of the transaction, the person said.
It is unclear why Cohen and Trump sought to purchase the story from AMI and then did not complete the transaction.
The Wall Street Journal first reported four days before the November 2016 election that McDougal had been paid by the National Enquirer. At the time, Trump’s campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks called McDougal’s claims “totally untrue.”
“We have no knowledge of any of this,” she said.
Earlier this year, in an interview with CNN, McDougal detailed what she said was a 10-month affair she had with Trump in 2006 and 2007, beginning in the year after Trump married Melania.
The former Playboy model said that after their first sexual encounter, Trump tried to offer her money. She turned down the offer and began a relationship that included, she said, interactions between the two “many dozens of times.”
In August 2016, AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, paid McDougal $150,000 for the right to her story but never published an article based on her account. But the agreement meant that McDougal signed a non-disclosure agreement that prevented her from revealing the affair.
She filed a lawsuit against AMI this year seeking to regain the rights to her story and settled with the company in April.
In her lawsuit against AMI, McDougal said she was happy when AMI bought her story in August 2016 but did not publish it, because she was not anxious for publicity before the campaign. But her opinion changed this year when she learned new details about the deal, including that her lawyer at the time and AMI had both been in contact with Cohen while her deal was being negotiated.
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