Stormy, Pee Tapes, and Pussy-Grabbing: The Three Explanations for the Cohen-Hicks-Trump Call on October 8, 2016

The warrant to search Michael Cohen’s property released yesterday revealed what the FBI Agent who wrote the affidavit supporting the application believed was a conference call between Michael Cohen, Donald Trump, and Hope Hicks on October 8, 2016.

On October 8, 2016, at approximately 7:20 p.m., Cohen received a call from Hicks. Sixteen seconds into the call, Trump joined the call, and the call continued for over four minutes. 27 Based on the toll records that the USAO has obtained to date, I believe that this was the first call Cohen had received or made to Hicks in at least multiple weeks, and that Cohen and Trump spoke about once a month prior to this date — specifically, prior to this call on October 8, 2016, Cohen and Trump had spoken once in May, once in June, once in July, zero times in August, and twice in September.

27 I believe that Trump joined the call between Cohen and Hicks based on my review of toll records. Specifically, I know that a call was initiated between Cohen’s telephone number and Trump’s telephone number at the same time the records indicate that Cohen was talking to Hicks. After the Cohen-Trump call was initiated, it lasted the same period of time as the Cohen-Hicks call. Additionally, the toll records indicate a “-1” and then Trump’s telephone number, which, based on my training and experience, means that the call was either transferred to Trump, or that Trump was added to the call as a conference or three-way call participant. In addition, based on my conversations with an FBI agent who has interviewed Hicks, I have learned that Hicks stated, in substance, that to the best of her recollection, she did not learn about the allegations made by Clifford until early November 2016. Hicks was not specifically asked about this three-way call.

The agent’s description (which was based entirely off toll records and assumed every call pertained to this scandal and not the many other scandals Trump’s campaign was juggling at the time) has led many to question Hicks’ testimony to HJC, including (in a letter to her lawyer) from Jerry Nadler. Her lawyer Robert Trout (who should be taking a victory lap from his likely imminent win in the Bijan Kian trial) says she stands by the her testimony, in which said that that call involved rumors that TMZ had found the pee tape.

Q Okay. When did you first become aware of the “Access Hollywood” tape?

A About an hour before it was made public.

Q And what was your reaction to it?

A Honestly, my reaction was, it was a Friday afternoon, and I was hoping to get home to see my family for the first time in a few months, and that wasn’t happening.

Q Did you have any other reactions?

A Look, I obviously knew that it was going to be a challenge from a communications standpoint.

Q Did you discuss it with Mr. Trump?

A I did, yes.

Q Tell me about those discussions, please. A I made him aware of the email I received from The Washington Post which described the tape. And I don’t know if the initial email did this, but certainly one of the subsequent emails and exchange provided a transcript of the tape. So, described those different components to Mr. Trump and tried to evaluate the situation.

Q And how did he react to that?

A You know, he wanted to be certain, before we engaged, that it was legitimate. And I think we all felt it was important that we request to see the actual tape or listen to the audio before responding.

Q Was he upset?

A Yes. I think everybody was in, like, a little bit of shock.

Q And did he ask you how — did he seek your advice on how to respond?

A Yes. There were quite a few of us, so it was very much a group discussion, given that this unfolded at a debate-prep session. Q And do you remember who else you discussed the tape with?

A Who else was present there?

Q Yeah, at that time. A Sure. Reince Priebus, Chris Christie, Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, Jason Miller, Steve Bannon, David Bossie, Kellyanne Conway. Later, Jared Kushner. I think that’s it.

Q Do you recall reaching out to Michael Cohen about the tape?

A My recollection of reaching out to Michael took place the following day. And it wasn’t about the tape; it was about — this is going to get confusing, but the day after the tape, there were rumors going around — I’m not sure exactly where — I heard it from our campaign spokesperson, Katrina Pierson, who was sort of like a — she had a lot of contacts, grassroots. And she had called to tell me that — or maybe sent me a message about rumors of a tape involving Mr. Trump in Moscow with, you know — can I say this?

[Discussion off the record.]

Ms. Hicks. — with Russian hookers, participating in some lewd activities. And so, obviously, I didn’t — I felt this was exactly how it had been described to me, which was a rumor. Nonetheless, I wanted to make sure that I stayed on top of it before it developed any further, to try to contain it from spiraling out of control. And the person that made me aware of the rumor said that TMZ might be the person that has access to this tape. I knew Michael Cohen had a good relationship with Harvey Levin, who works at TMZ. So I reached out to Michael to ask if he had heard of anything like this; if Harvey contacted him, if he could be in touch with me.

But that testimony is not entirely consistent with something in the Mueller Report, which suggested (based off FBI interviews with both Cohen and Giorgi Rtskhiladze) that the one time Trump would have heard about a pee tape was later in October, after Cohen and Rtskhiladze discussed the tapes via text.

Comey 1/7/17 Memorandum, at 1-2; Comey I 1/15/17 302, at 3. Comey’s briefing included the Steele reporting’s unverified allegation that the Russians had compromising tapes of the President involving conduct when he was a private citizen during a 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe Pageant. During the 2016 presidential campaign, a similar claim may have reached candidate Trump. On October 30, 20 I 6, Michael Cohen received a text from Russian businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze that said, “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know …. ” 10/30/16 Text Message, Rtskhiladze to Cohen. Rtskhiladze said “tapes” referred to compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group, which had helped host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Russia. Rtskhiladze 4/4/18 302, at 12. Cohen said he spoke to Trump about the issue after receiving the texts from Rtskhiladze. Cohen 9/12/18 302, at 13. Rtskhiladze said he was told the tapes were fake, but he did not communicate that to Cohen. Rtskhiladze 5/10/18 302, at 7.

It’s certainly possible that this late October exchange was the fruit of earlier concerns about the pee tape, and that as part of chasing down the TMZ rumor, Cohen would have asked Rtskhiladze to help. But you’d think Mueller would have said that, especially if he knew that Trump had been on a call where it was all discussed.

Cohen offered a slightly different story, claiming that the call was about responding to the Access Hollywood video. But his answer to Eleanor Norton in which he raised the call moves directly onto the hush payments, as if they’re connected.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Cohen, at the center of the reasons you are going to prison is convictions for campaign finance violations, and they center around some salacious revelations. The Washington Post reported or aired an Access Hollywood video. It set a record for the number of people who watched, crashed the newspaper’s server. But this happened in early October on the cusp of the election. What was Mr. Trump’s reaction to the video becoming public at that time and was he concerned about the impact of that video on the election?

Mr. COHEN. The answer is yes. As I stated before, I was in London at the time visiting my daughter, who is studying there for a Washington semester abroad, and I received a phone call during the dinner from Hope Hicks stating that she had just spoken to Mr. Trump and we need you to start making phone calls to the various different news outlets that you have relationships with, and we need to spin this. What we want to do is just to claim that this was men locker room talk.

Ms. NORTON. Was the concern about the election in particular?

Mr. COHEN. The answer is yes. Then, couple that with Karen McDougal, which then came out around the same time. And then on top of that the Stormy Daniels matter.

Ms. NORTON. Yeah, and these things happened in the month before the election and almost one after the other. The Stormy Daniels revelation where prosecutors and officials—the prosecutors learned of that—of that matter and prosecutors stated that the officials at the magazine contacted you about the story. And the magazine, of course, is the National Enquirer. Is that correct, that they did come to you?

Mr. COHEN. Yes, ma’am.

Ms. NORTON. Were you concerned about this news story becoming public right after the Access Hollywood study in terms of impact on the election?

Mr. COHEN. I was concerned about it, but more importantly, Mr. Trump was concerned about it.

Ms. NORTON. That was my next question. What was the President’s concern about these matters becoming public in October as we were about to go into an election?

Mr. COHEN. I don’t think anybody would dispute this belief that after the wildfire that encompassed the Billy Bush tape, that a second followup to it would have been pleasant. And he was concerned with the effect that it had had on the campaign, on how women were seeing him, and ultimately whether or not he would have a shot in the general election.

Frankly, it may well be that everyone is mixing up the many sex-related scandals Trump was fighting in October 2016. Or it may be that Hicks, Cohen, and Trump responded to the Access Hollywood video by deciding that they had to try to chase down all of the potential sex scandals — the long-simmering pee tape allegations, the several hush payment demands, among others — and preemptively quash them. That would be consistent with Steve Bannon’s claim that Marc Kasowitz was chasing down hundreds of scandals. If such a discussion took place (which might explain why all three would get on the phone together), then Hicks might otherwise have forgotten knowing about the hush payments earlier, or she locked in testimony denying that knowledge in December 2017 when she testified, and continues to tell a partial truth to avoid further legal jeopardy.

I mean, maybe Hicks is outright lying to protect earlier lies she told in 2017, before the whole hush payment story broke wide open. But it is certainly possible that if you work for Donald Trump all the sex scandals merge into one, either in fact, or in years old memories.

Update: Because people are asking, this is something that Mueller could have chased down. Hicks’ testimony was December 7, 2017 and March 13, 2018; as noted above, Rtskhiladze testified on April 4 and May 10, 2018. The interviews in which Cohen is believed to have told the truth all took place on September 12, 2018 or later. But since this was referred out (for reasons that are unclear, since it was part of the Mueller investigation for 7 months), he may not have had jurisdiction anymore. But SDNY certainly may have chased it down.

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32 replies
      • Democritus says:

        I can’t believe this timeline, and I’m really going to (try really hard atleast) take this weekend of the news.

        I didn’t know most of these timelines and this has been bugging me. Thank you, and again props to your skills and intelligence. There is so much crazy stuff interlaced with bs and truth out there it’s hard to tell what’s what, especially if you don’t have a background in this stuff.

        I, and I’m sure others also, do appreciate all the work all the writers here do.

      • Desider says:

        Except that’s the Katie Johnson/Jana Doe who seems to be a mystery or complete scam, not that Trump Org’s response might have been criminal in some way.

        • Areader2019 says:

          Right….we do not know the truth about Katie Johnson/Jane Doe.

          But the campaign must have been worried about it. They managed to bury it. How? Why was she afraid of threats? Who threatened her?

        • P J Evans says:

          Non-existent people don’t usually have lawyers filing suits against others. She has solid reasons for keeping her actual identity secret. Look at what has happened to other women in the last three years who accused a Big Name GOP Male of sexual assault or actual rape.

          • Democritus says:

            There is some crazy stuff on twitter about her and Lisa Bloom, but twitter is also a huge disinfo platform and even well intentioned people pass bad stuff along.

            So *shrugs*.

    • RWood says:

      His links to Epstein make me wonder if the Moscow tape is not so much about what the “hookers” were doing, but rather what their age was at the time.

      • Areader2019 says:

        Exactly.

        And the way the KGB works kompromat…. it does not have to be true. They just have to hint they have tapes of Trump with 14 year olds and they have leverage.

        It is not about facts. It is about fear.

  1. Paul Handley says:

    Yeah but the round-robin of calls on Oct 8-9, one day after Access Hollywood, was Hicks-Cohen-Pecker-Howard-Davison, the latter Stormy’s lawyer. No reason to call them for Access Hollywood tape. Cohen couldn’t have helped on that either.

  2. Vicks says:

    What is the responsibility of the person being questioned to be prepared?
    Not bothering to refresh your memory could make almost any answer the result of “confusion” not to mention give them a real good case of “I don’t recall”

  3. Areader2019 says:

    It is possible Hope really does not remember Stormy… because she was on dozens and dozens of conference calls about burying the sex abuse accusation of the day.

    Haha. The Trump administration… not a single discreet scandal, just one giant continuing constant scandal.

    • Democritus says:

      It’s like a combo of a nonstop gishgallop and a firehouse of bs. Flooding the zone. I’ve seen it described all sorts of ways and lots of people are aware of it, but unfortunately it is still irking in part given how big corporate media has been playing this of late.

      CNN Trumps women interview normalizing his racist chants etc. NYT is whitewashing Ivanka with anon sources of the racism. BS she is complicit.

  4. Eureka says:

    (At least by) The day after the AH tape, as Hicks refers to, was also when former 1997 Miss Teen USA contestants were discussing– in a private FB group– Trump’s going backstage with them undressed (BF). Wonder if those were Pierson’s plausible “grassroots” “contacts.”

    TMZ later did one of their many cover stories for Trump on this, featuring a former contestant praising Trump (DB).

    I think Hopes is using PR- comms – whatnot strategery in referring to the already-well-heard-of but to date none-existent “pee tape” in this story.

    Of course, I have also always thought that the likeliest “pee tape” would be surveillance of Trump’s backstage pageant behavior at Miss Universe 2013, given renown re his pageant behavior (e.g. 2nd BF below. Links to CNN transcript of Stern interviews).

    There is also the “elevator tape” (DB) and whether that is a metaphor for something else itself…

    The interesting detail about the elevator tape (if the whole tale isn’t a side-show distractor in the first place) is that in that case, an ‘unusual’ lawyer (e.g. not a Davidson type/not part of that ‘scene’) was involved (one commonality with the Katie Johnson story, though of course not necessarily related).

    Also, TMZ sources told DB that Hicks, Graff, and Cohen were in regular contact with TMZ/Levin.

    DB article says it was just updated on July 14, 2019, though I cannot quickly ascertain what might be different.

    TMZ Goes MAGA: How Harvey Levin’s Gossip Empire Became Trump’s Best Friend
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/tmz-goes-maga-how-harvey-levins-gossip-empire-became-trumps-best-friend/

    Teen Beauty Queens Say Trump Walked In On Them Changing
    [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kendalltaggart/teen-beauty-queens-say-trump-walked-in-on-them-changing]

    “We Were All Naked” When Donald Trump Walked Through Beauty Queen Dressing Room
    [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jessicagarrison/we-were-all-naked-when-donald-trump-walked-in]

    • Democritus says:

      Yeah, I’ve read those rumors, but maybe not the same articles. Also Epstein wanted to model his modeling agency with teen girls after Trumps agency.

      Why does a real estate guy get into teen pageants? It’s gross.

      • P J Evans says:

        Attention. “Fame” – which is more like notoriety, for most of us. And he’s apparently been fond of teenage to early-20s females since he was in military school (college, especially – there should be stories/rumors from those years).

      • Americana says:

        Having a modeling agency under mysterious ownership might make it easier for Epstein to traffic in foreign girls who were here for so-called modeling gigs. Then, when Epstein’s done w/them, he returns them to their country of origin and no one would be the wiser. Many modeling agencies w/under-age models give them shared housing and almost no real oversight. It would be a perfect gambit for Epstein.

    • Eureka says:

      *Hicks
      *To clarify: while there also may be a tape with prostitutes, etc. (or worse), I have no doubt that there would be surveillance from the pageant (of which Trump may have been less wary).
      ●Also, the call periodicity described in the original warrant (first blockquote) seems oddly thin, even for a bunch of folks perhaps often in the same place.

      While later noting that the Trump campaign has been “reeling” “ever since the release last week of a 2005 tape,” BF attributes the discussion (“last weekend” would be Oct 8th, 9th, 2016) to BF’s reporting on the 9th:

      Discussion of Trump entering the room arose among the women themselves last weekend in a private Facebook group after BuzzFeed News reported that a contestant in an adult pageant said Trump had walked into the changing room when “we were all naked.” The Facebook group is open only to some former contestants in the 1997 pageant, according to several women who are in it and who described the exchange about Trump to BuzzFeed News.
      (internal link removed)

  5. Jenny says:

    Marcy, spot on statement. “But it is certainly possible that if you work for Donald Trump all the sex scandals merge into one, either in fact, or in years old memories.”

    Let us not forget the approximately 24 women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct since the 1970s. I sense there are more.

    And this for profit pageant predator is president. UGH!

    I miss “No Drama Obama.”

    • AndTheSlithyToves says:

      OMG, yes, yes, yes!! (Immediately reminding myself of the hilarious fake orgasm scene from “When Harry Met Sally!”) Obama was a mature adult. Trump is not and never will be.

  6. Frank Probst says:

    I agree that it’s most likely a case of all of the sex scandals blurring together. Would there be any real benefit to anyone if she were lying about this?

    • Ken Muldrew says:

      Hicks might count it a benefit to stay out of prison (talking to Cohen about hush payments would bring her into a conspiracy to commit campaign finance crimes).

  7. orionATL says:

    talking details and speculations are interesting, but just a reminder:

    these trump-machine machinations were all about covering up multiple examples of highly inappropriate sexual behavior for a presidential candidate like trump which, had they become public, would have guaranteed that he would have lost the 2016 election.

  8. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Criticizing one’s government is why there’s a First Amendment. It’s everyone’s right, the same as it is the right of every private soldier to bellyache about the hierarchy under which she serves.

    A citizen always has plenty to bellyache about: pot holes, speed traps, corrupt mayors, state legislatures that cut school funding to “pay” for tax cuts for the wealthy, Congresses that let presidents piss all over them and say, “Please sir, may I have another.”

    But what citizens – and immigrants – do that Donald Trump tries never ever to do, because he’s so smart, is pay their taxes, work hard, and obey the law. That’s how much Trump loves his country.

  9. AndTheSlithyToves says:

    “The short version is that Jeffrey Epstein is Michael Cohen, but with a darker and more successful racket. He dropped out of college in the early 70’s and spent a few years teaching math. One of his students was the son of Bear Stearns Chairman Alan Greenberg. He got a job at Bear Stearns in ‘76, rising quickly, if oddly and without explanation. He left the firm in ’81 to start his own financial management company, with his first two clients being Greenberg and Bear Stearns CEO Jimmy Cayne. There’s no explanation of why these men were doing business with Epstein.” –excerpt from Chris Ladd Website
    https://www.politicalorphans.com/jeffrey-epstein-and-the-wheel/

    Perhaps Trump and/or Epstein has/have outlived his/their usefulness to the Trans-National Mob.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      Yes, a lot of mysteries about Epstein that are not explained by the vignette of a barrow-boy with ambition and strong ability in maths.

      His hiring at Dalton is peculiar. That Epstein left two universities without a degree, at first glance, suggests a guy with too much ambition and not enough discipline, direction, and patience. A Dalton School would train its students how to rid themselves of such traits.

      Epstein’s Coney Island working class background doesn’t fit either. Social filtering and the training in it are as important as any item on the official curriculum.

      Epstein’s hiring by Bear Stearns is odd for the same reasons. “My son recommended his hip maths teacher who likes girls,” is not a normal hiring process. Nor was his rapid rise to limited partner and then being told to get out.

      That’s not much of a resume for starting your own, billionaires-only-please investment fund in a town filled with high-profile firms hungry for that business. But that’s the mythology. It needs to be pierced with a little aggressive investigative reporting.

      • Democritus says:

        Blackmail and sex traffickers though can get places.

        Threads galore on twitter, but there is also a ton of bs and it’s hard to tell what’s what. It’s part of why I appreciate this site, I do trust all the writers here so it’s good to see the other likely less spectacular explanations that fit also. It would be easier if I trusted our institutions as much as I used to, though I perhaps also trusted too much before, but it does point to the damage Trump is doing.

        Trusted:
        https://twitter.com/jkbjournalist/status/1152391113745018882

        With grains of salt:
        https://twitter.com/PersuasivePR/status/1152061864500781056

        I posted a couple other theories in a different thread , but I’m not sure if they are bs, or maybe the theory is possibly onto something. But I really don’t want to spread bs and red herrings, so I’ll skip reposting those.

  10. Vicks says:

    I read this post again this am.
    My god, it’s one thing to work for this “thing” that is Donald Trump, or join his golf clubs or be a hang-er on trying to build status, but THESE people knew so much more about thier monster than this handful of incidents that squirted through the team’s cover up attempts.
    These people wanted a world where thier monster was OUR president.
    OT I also would like to point out how Hicks attractiveness has almost magically protected her.

    • Tom says:

      “Better to look good than to feel good.” The actions of Cohen, Hicks et al. may make more sense if one recalls how few people expected Trump to win in 2016. His hangers-on may have thought they were just helping their boss out of another PR scrape in the midst of his branding exercise run for the Presidency, after which their lives would return to normal. The idea that they might have to answer for their behavior in the full glare of Trump’s Presidential win probably never occurred to them.

    • Americana says:

      Hope Hicks outed herself as a typical Trump weasel employee when she lied about not having helped craft the exoneration statement about Don Jr’s role in the Trump Tower NYC meeting. Hicks has lied about everything which she’s been asked to lie about by the Trump White House. Hicks knew she was on the wrong side of the law and was fearful about what she had done in her role as White House Communications Director. Hicks decided to cut and run once she’d spoken to the House Judiciary committee for the first time. Hicks seemed to realize she wouldn’t be able to get away w/the scope of what Trump wanted her to lie about after that one experience before the House Judiciary Committee and she turned tail and dumped her WH badge and ran.

      This is her latest interview before the House Judiciary Committee:

      https://judiciary.house.gov/news/press-releases/house-judiciary-committee-releases-transcript-hope-hicks-interview

      https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/02/politics/trump-lawyers-statement-trump-tower-russians/index.html

      From the above link:

      After the initial statement came out, news outlets reported Trump was involved in preparing the statement. Some reports said he helped draft it, others said he personally “dictated” the words. Trump Jr., meanwhile, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in private testimony in September, released last month, that he didn’t speak to his father about the statement, but that the President “may have commented through Hope Hicks,” the then-White House aide, and that some of those comments might have made it into the statement.

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