Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson has obtained a leaked recording of a “shocking” phone conversation between CNN anchor Chris Cuomo and President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen.
Cuomo is the brother of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is under investigation by the Justice Department for sending Coronavirus-infected patients into nursing homes, killing thousands or elderly people earlier this year.
“Cohen and the governor’s brother had a pretty shocking conversation,” Carlson said on Friday night. “Bottom line, Chris Cuomo is not the person he pretends to be on CNN. And there is more. This is a developing story. We’ll have all of it for you next week. Tune in.”
Carlson updated his viewers on Monday, saying the recording “raises a number of questions about [Cuomo’s] personal behavior off the air.”
Carlson said his team sent a copy of the recording to CNN’s head of strategic communications Matt Dornic and CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter.
“We haven’t heard back yet. We’re going to give them tonight to respond, and we’re going to update you tomorrow. We hope that they will respond,” Carlson said before signing off on Monday.
The FBI seized 12 tapes during a raid on Cohen’s New York office in the summer of 2018.
Cohen later pleaded guilty to charges of tax fraud, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations for hush money payments to women who claimed they had sex with Trump before he was elected president.
Kellyanne Conway, who last week announced her resignation as White House counselor, participated in a 32-minute interview with Cuomo in Aug. 2018. She pressed him to discuss what he said on the tape.
“Tons of stuff,” Cuomo said before explaining why he wouldn’t talk about the tape publicly.
“[Cohen] asked me not to record it, I said, ‘I won’t.’ He said, ‘Just to be careful, let me have your phone,’ I said, ‘Here.’ He then said, ‘We’ll take our phones. I’ll put them away.’ He did. He then recorded me on a secondary device.”
Asked how he felt about being secretly recorded, Cuomo said he believed Cohen’s actions were “dishonest” and “a bad thing to do.”
Cuomo claimed he had nothing to worry about.
“You know what we talked about in the conversation? I’m not going to tell you, you know why? Because it was off-the-record, and I respect that, even though he did me wrong. That’s called integrity,” Cuomo said.
