NEW YORK — 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 confirmed the recording and said it 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 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.
WASHINGTON — The White House rejected on Friday a Vladimir Putin-backed effort to hold a referendum in eastern Ukraine on the region’s future, distancing itself from the idea in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s controversial summit with the Russian leader.
Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, said the two leaders had discussed the possibility of a referendum in separatist-leaning eastern Ukraine during their summit.
But Trump’s National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis said agreements between Russia and the Ukrainian government for resolving the conflict in the Donbas region do not include any such option and any effort to organize a “so-called referendum” would have “no legitimacy.”
The back-and-forth came as the White House outlined the agenda for a proposed second summit between Trump and Putin — in Washington this fall — that would focus on national security. Moscow signaled its openness to a second formal meeting between the two leaders as criticism of Trump over his first major session with his Russian counterpart kept up in the U.S.
SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — A year-old boy who became a poster child for the U.S. policy of separating immigrants and their children was back in the arms of his parents Friday, 5 months after he was taken from his father at the U.S. border.
Johan Bueso Montecinos arrived in San Pedro Sula and was reunited with his parents on a government bus. They were taken away for processing.
And so ended the amazing journey of a baby whose short life has ranged from Honduran poverty to a desperate dash across the U.S. border to the front pages of the world’s newspapers.
Captured by Border Patrol agents almost instantly upon arrival, Johan’s father was deported — and the 10-month-old remained at an Arizona shelter, in the custody of the U.S. government. Over the next five months, he would take his first steps, speak his first words, have his first birthday; his parents, hundreds of miles away, would miss it all.
When his mother and father last saw him, he had two tiny teeth. Now he has a mouthful.
WASHINGTON — With President Donald Trump intensifying his rift with U.S. trading partners, economists are growing more doubtful that any deal that might benefit American workers and companies is in sight.
Instead, many analysts say they expect the Trump administration to impose more tariffs on China and perhaps other key U.S. trading partners. With those nations almost certain to retaliate, the result could be higher prices for Americans, diminished export sales and a weaker U.S. economy by next year.
In an interview with CNBC that aired Friday morning, Trump renewed his threat to ultimately slap tariffs on a total of $500 billion of imports from China — roughly equal to all the goods Beijing ships annually to the United States. The president has already imposed tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese goods, and Beijing has retaliated with tariffs on an equal amount of U.S. exports. The White House has also itemized $200 billion more Chinese imports that it said may be subject to tariffs.
From Associated Press