Former FBI Director James Comey once joked “Lordy I hope there are tapes,” when talking about conversations he had with President Donald Trump. Now it seems there might actually be tapes.
A Washington Post report revealed Thursday that Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen sometimes would tape conversations with associates. Allies of Trump’s are now fearful that those tapes are in the hands of the FBI, which raided Cohen’s office Monday.
“We heard he had some proclivity to make tapes,” a Trump adviser told The Post. “Now we are wondering, who did he tape? Did he store those someplace where they were actually seized? . . . Did they find his recordings?”
It’s currently unknown whether Cohen recorded his conversations with Trump himself, but two sources familiar with Cohen told The Post that Trump knew of the practice because Cohen would play recordings with other advisors.
“It was his standard practice to do it,” one person said.
Former Trump biographer Tim O’Brien noted that Trump told him that their conversations were being recorded. When the two were involved in a lawsuit, however, O’Brien found out that Trump’s threat had been nothing more than bluster.
“Back in the early 2000s, Trump used to tell me all the time that he was recording me when I covered him as reporter for the New York Times,” O’Brien wrote. “He also said the same thing when I was writing a biography of him, ‘Trump Nation.’ I never thought he was, but who could be sure?”
Trump confessed in the deposition he is “not equipped to tape-record.”
The story is developing….