Just hours after a Washington Post investigative report revealed that prosecutors seized at least 100 audio recordings from Michael Cohen — the former lawyer and “fixer” for Donald Trump — lawyer Michael Avenatti claimed that the tapes contain shocking evidence of Trump discussing cover-ups of “multiple” affairs with women — and even showing that Trump was “concerned about a pregnancy.”
Avenatti is the lawyer for adult film star Stormy Daniels who, as Inquisitr has reported, was paid off to the tune of $130,000 shortly before the 2016 presidential election to keep her quiet about a sexual encounter with Trump 10 years earlier.
Cohen, who is under criminal investigation by federal authorities in New York, released a single tape — actually a digital audio recording — on Tuesday of a discussion with Trump in 2016, in which Trump is heard to instruct Cohen to pay off former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal “with cash,” as Inquisitr reported.
At the time, CNN reported that the tape was one of 12 made by Cohen that was now in the hands of federal prosecutors. But on Wednesday, the Post reported that the feds had “more than 100 recordings that Cohen made of his conversations with people discussing matters that could relate to Trump and his businesses and with Trump himself talking.”
Posting to his Twitter account on Thursday morning, approximately five hours after the Post report appeared online, Avenatti said that he knew what was on at least some of those tapes.
“Donald Trump conspired with Michael Cohen to pay off multiple other women prior to Election Day in 2016. They were also concerned about a pregnancy,” Avenatti wrote. “Cohen has evidence and info in his possession and it must be released to the public. Now!”
Avenatti later said on Twitter that he had obtained “new evidence” that allowed him to make the claims of multiple payoffs and the “pregnancy.”
Avenatti offered no further details. As Inquisitr has previously covered, Cohen arranged a $1.2 million payoff to another former Playboy centerfold model, Shera Bechard, from major Republican fundraiser Elliot Broidy, who admitted to an affair with Bechard — and to impregnating her, then paying for her abortion.
But according to some media speculation, Broidy was merely acting as a cover for Trump himself, who in this scenario would be the actual father of Bechard’s alleged aborted baby. A judge in Los Angeles has ordered that Bechard’s lawsuit remain under seal, The Los Angeles Times has reported.
In April of this year, The New Yorker magazine reported that in the late 1980s, Trump allegedly fathered a child with an employee at one of his buildings in New York City. A doorman at the building claimed that he was paid $30,000 to keep quiet about the pregnancy.
