Trump was secretly recorded talking about paying Playboy model

U.S. President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer secretly recorded Trump discussing a potential payment for a former Playboy model's account of having an affair with him, people familiar with an investigation into the attorney said Friday.

The payment was never made, according to Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who said the recording shows Trump did nothing wrong.

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen surreptitiously made the recording two months before Trump's 2016 election, according to a person familiar with a federal investigation into Cohen that brought the tape to light. The FBI now has it, according to the person, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing inquiry.

The conversation between Trump and Cohen came weeks after the National Enquirer's parent company reached a $150,000 US deal to pay ex-Playmate Karen McDougal for her story of a 2006 affair, which it never published — a tabloid practice known as "catch and kill." Trump denies the affair ever happened.

The company, American Media Inc., is run by Trump friend and supporter David Pecker.

The company's payment effectively silenced McDougal through the election, though days beforehand, news of the deal emerged in The Wall Street Journal. At the time, a Trump spokesperson said his campaign had "no knowledge of any of this."

But in the recorded conversation, he and Cohen had discussed buying the rights to McDougal's story from the Enquirer, according to the person familiar with the investigation.

Transaction 'never took place'

Giuliani said the conversation between the two men was very brief.

"The transaction that Michael is talking about on the tape never took place, but what's important is: If it did take place, the president said it has to be done correctly and it has to be done by cheque," to keep a proper record of it, Giuliani told the AP.

Cohen, his lawyers and McDougal's lawyer didn't immediately respond to messages. Cohen lawyer Lanny Davis declined to comment to The New York Times, which first reported on the recording.

The Enquirer's payment to the former centrefold gave the tabloid the exclusive rights to any story she might ever wish to tell about having an affair with a married man.

She later publicly alleged that the Enquirer had tricked her into accepting the deal and had threatened to ruin her if she broke it. After she sued the tabloid seeking to invalidate the contract in March, the Enquirer agreed to allow her to tell her story.

Cohen, a self-described fixer for Trump for more than a decade, said last year that he "would take a bullet" for Trump. But Cohen told an interviewer earlier this month that he now puts "family and country first" and won't let anyone paint him as "a villain of this story."

'Stay tuned'

Hours before the Times published its story, Cohen met in New York Friday morning with the Rev. Al Sharpton, a frequent critic of Trump.

Cohen and Sharpton said in tweets they have known each other for 20 years. Cohen contacted the civil rights activist in recent weeks, longtime Sharpton spokeswoman Rachel Noerdlinger said. 

She said the two revisited conversations they'd had over the years when Cohen was Sharpton's conduit to Trump during clashes over race issues and over Trump's years of questioning the authenticity of former President Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Cohen tweeted there's "no one better to talk to!" than Sharpton, who used his own Twitter account to advise readers: "Stay tuned."