Trump Lashes Ex-Lawyer, Says Taping of Client «Perhaps Illegal»

Local Editor

US President Donald Trump has lashed out at his former lawyer, saying Michael Cohen may have acted illegally in secretly taping their discussion.

Trump's early-morning tweet was his first direct reaction to a New York Times report Friday that the FBI had seized the recording during an April raid on Cohen's office amid an investigation of possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia.

Cohen has not yet been arrested or charged with any crime. But his cooperation with the government could prove vital to prosecutors -- a scenario that could be made more likely by an open split with Trump.

While Cohen was once quoted as saying he would "take a bullet" for the president, Trump's tweet and the sharp reply from Cohen's lawyer Lanny Davis could signal that the bond between the two has been damaged, if not broken.  

"Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer's office (early in the morning) - almost unheard of," Trump tweeted Saturday.

"Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client - totally unheard of & perhaps illegal.

"The good news is that your favorite President did nothing wrong!"

The Wall Street Journal said the recorded September 2016 conversation between Trump and Cohen was about buying the rights to McDougal's story, which she had sold a month earlier to The National Enquirer for $150,000.

The tabloid never published the story. The chairman of its parent company, American Media, is a friend of Trump.

Rudy Giuliani, Trump's current personal attorney, confirmed to the Times that the Cohen tape existed, but said it showed the president had done nothing wrong. He called it "exculpatory" because it showed Trump had no advance knowledge of a possible payment.

None in fact was made.

But Davis tweeted on Saturday that Trump and Giuliani's strategy in the matter was "flawed; just as is #Trump's false #Twitter statement made against" Cohen.

The reports raise questions about why Trump's campaign denied knowledge of the deal between McDougal and American Media when it became public, and they have fanned speculation about how much damage Cohen might be able to inflict on the president.

Regarding Trump's claim of illegality, New York state law permits the recording of a phone call or an in-person conversation as long as one party consents, according to attorney John B. Harris, who authored an article on the subject for the New York Legal Ethics Reporter.

Yet "it remains murky whether and when a New York lawyer can ethically tape without advance disclosure," Harris said.

Stephen Gillers, an authority of legal ethics and professor at New York University School of Law, told The American Lawyer in April that such recordings are "an issue on which the national profession has not come to common agreement," but he argued that law firms should forbid the practice except in very narrow circumstances.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team