Michael Cohen's lawyer released secretly recorded audio of a 2016 conversation showing Trump and Cohen discussing payments to a former Playboy model, but no can agree on who said what

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Michael Cohen and Donald Trump.

• Michael Cohen's attorney released the audio of a secretly recorded, 2016 conversation between Cohen and Donald Trump, during which the two men discussed payments to a former Playboy model who claimed she had a sexual relationship with Trump years earlier.
• The existence of that recording was first revealed last week, but the audio was heard publicly for the first time on CNN Tuesday night.
• On the recording, Cohen and Trump can be heard discussing a number of issues, but later on, Cohen begins to explain how he planned to facilitate a payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
• The audio is not entirely clear, and commentators are disputing who said what.

Michael Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, released the audio of a 2016 conversation between Cohen and Donald Trump on Tuesday night. The recording shows the two men talking about how to pay a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who claimed she had a sexual relationship with Trump years prior.

The conversation was recorded two months before the 2016 presidential election, as Trump and Cohen brainstormed ways to bury unflattering stories about the then-candidate.

The existence of the audio recording was first revealed last week, but the audio was heard publicly for the first time on CNN Tuesday night.

On the recording, Cohen and Trump can be heard discussing a number of issues, but later, they focus on McDougal, who had agreed to give her story to the National Enquirer in exchange for $150,000. The publication - whose parent company, American Media, Inc. is helmed by David Pecker, a friend of Cohen and Trump, never ran McDougal's story.

"So, what do you we got to pay for this, one-fifty," Trump asks, according to a transcript of the tape published by The Washington Post.

"Funding ... Yes. Um, and it's all the stuff," Cohen responds.

At one point, Cohen proposes how to finance the payment, saying he would set up a company, now known as Essential Consultants LLC - to get the deal done.

Trump then appears to interject. The presidential candidate can be heard saying "pay with cash," to which Cohen says, "No, I got it," before Trump says, "Check."

The recording ends abruptly at that point.

Commentators on Tuesday night were quick to try to interpret the Cohen-Trump conversation, but there was no clear consensus about who said what, or what they meant.

Conservative pundit Alan Dershowitz said on Fox News: "There's no crime here. Worst-case scenario, take everything Lanny Davis says as true. There's no crime. There's no impeachable offense. This is all about how the president looks in the court of public opinion ... I think they will win that fight because the tape is ambiguous.

Michael Avenatti, lawyer to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress who is suing Trump and Cohen, said on MSNBC: "I'm hearing two criminal co-conspirators conspiring on making a payment, and I'm hearing Michael Cohen being the sycophant that he is for the president."

Trump's current lead defense attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said on Fox News: "There's no way the president is going to be talking about setting up a corporation and then using cash, unless you are complete idiot."