Can the Cohen Tapes Bring Down Trump?

After a tumultuous week, The New York Times reported on Friday that the FBI has in its possession tape-recorded conversations between attorney Michael Cohen and then-candidate Donald Trump in September 2016. In one of the conversations, the two men can be heard discussing potential hush-money payments to a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, with whom Trump had an affair. CNN reportedthat the FBI had also seized recordings of other, “more mundane” conversations with the president.

The revelation of the tapes comes almost 45 years after the most famous secret presidential tape revelation of all—the moment on July 16, 1973, when the head of the Federal Aviation Administration and former deputy assistant to the president, Alexander Buttterfield, told the Senate Select Watergate Committee in a televised hearing that President Richard Nixon had recorded his Oval Office conversations. The tapes helped bring an end to Nixon’s presidency. This time, Cohen’s tapes probably won’t