https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/lawyer-cohen-testifies-about-covertly-recording-client-trump/
In Manhattan criminal court today, Michael Cohen testified about a recording the jury had already heard in the criminal trial of former president Donald Trump. It was a recording of a conversation between Cohen and Trump on September 6, 2016 (about two months before Election Day). At the time, Cohen was a lawyer working for Trump and the Trump organization. (He has since been disbarred following his sundry convictions for perjury and fraud.)
It is ethically dicey, to say the least, for a lawyer secretly to record a client. An attorney has a duty of fealty to the client — one that continues even after the representation ends. It would obviously be preferable for a lawyer to inform his client that he is recording their conversation; for such recording to be proper, with or without notice given to the client, the recording would have to be in the service of the client’s interests — the legitimate purpose of the attorney–client relationship. It could not be done to undermine the client, such as to have something to hold over the client.
Cohen has testified that Trump was unaware he was being recorded on Cohen’s iPhone as Cohen sat across from him. In the conversation, they discussed the need for Trump to reimburse David Pecker, then the CEO of American Media Inc., after AMI (which then owned the National Enquirer) had laid out $150,000 for the exclusive rights to Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story about a 2006 affair with Trump.
Cohen claims that he made the recording to keep Pecker “loyal” to Trump by easing his mind that Trump did plan to reimburse him. In the accounts I’ve read of today’s testimony, it’s not clear to me that Cohen ever played the recording for Pecker, just that he now says that’s why he recorded it. It seems to me at least equally likely that Cohen wanted some protection for himself in case Trump later tried to stiff him — i.e., that Cohen, a highly self-interested operator, recorded the conversation for his own benefit, not for Pecker’s and certainly not for Trump’s.
This demonstrates in small compass the weirdness of this case.