[SIZE=6]Cohen taped Trump discussing payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal[/SIZE]
Jul 20, 2018, 11:56 AM ET
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WATCH: President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer has been a vocal supporter of the president.
Investigators discovered recordings made by Michael Cohen that include then-candidate Donald Trump talking about making a payment to a former Playboy model, sources familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.
The recordings were found as part of the raid on Michael Cohen’s home office and hotel carried out earlier this year in New York, the sources told ABC News.
The New York Times first reported the news of the recordings.
The Playboy model in question is reportedly Karen McDougal, who has previously claimedthat she had an affair with Trump. The White House previously denied McDougal’s claims.
McDougal, who was Playmate of the Month in December 1997 and Playmate of the Year in 1998, alleges that she had a 10-month romantic affair with Trump in 2006. After being silent for more than a decade, McDougal started speaking about it earlier this year, first opening up in an interview with The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow in February.
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Karen McDougal, Playboy Playmate of the Year 1998 attend Playboy’s Super Saturday Night Party presented by Bacardi at Sagamore Hotel, Feb. 6, 2010, in Miami Beach, Fla.
McDougal told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in March that her first intimate encounter with Trump came in June 2006, soon after she met the New York real-estate tycoon at the Playboy mansion during a taping there of his reality series, “The Apprentice.” At the time, Trump had recently married the now-first lady Melania Trump, and the couple had an infant son.
“I was attracted to him,” McDougal said. “He’s a nice looking man. I liked his charisma.”
In March, McDougal filed a lawsuit in state court in California, seeking to invalidate a contract she signed with American Media, Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer. In August 2016, AMI purchased the rights to McDougal’s story in exchange for $150,000 and a deal for her to write columns and appear on covers of fitness magazines owned by AMI. But AMI never published a story about her alleged affair with Trump.
She’s alleging in court filings that AMI colluded with her former attorney and Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to purchase her story with the purpose of burying it in advance of the election. AMI has denied the allegations.
In the interview with CNN, McDougal claimed that she is a lifelong Republican who voted for Trump and that she has no financial motivation for speaking out. She said she would be willing to return the $150,000 she received from AMI. “I just want my rights back,” she told CNN.
A White House spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News in February that Trump denies having an affair with the ex-Playboy model: “This is an old story that is just more fake news. The President says he never had a relationship with McDougal.”