Rudy’s obsession with tapes is something worth focusing on. It ties the WH reaction to the Buzzfeed piece and why the SCO was pressured to issue a statement and why the SCO bent to the will of the WH and Rosenstein.
The tapes Rudy is referring to are the ones seized in the Cohen raid by the SDNY last April. Trump got access to that material when he intervened in the case (he was an interested party because the Feds were investigating a crime that Trump directed Cohen to commit. Honestly people, that’s enough for impeachment).
Trump/Rudy went through those tapes looking for a smoking gun. They didn’t find one and so they made the decision to not go out of their way to support Cohen. But on the campaign finance charge, Cohen combined with Pecker, Keith Davidson, Alan Weisselberg and National Enquirer provided more than enough evidence to tag Individual-1 with a federal crime.
But what I think Trump/Rudy were also looking for were tapes tying Trump to the TT Moscow Hotel project. They didn’t find any there either. Nonetheless, the Feds gathered a ton of incriminating evidence on the project, got Cohen to plead guilty and came to the doorstep of stating that Trump gave a direct order. Keep in mind that there are many lawyers who would argue that Trump already did enough to be indicted for a federal crime involving witness tampering even without smoking gun evidence of a direct order, but clearly that’s a grey area.
The reason the WH had a freak out about the Buzzfeed article is that it said that (1) smoking gun evidence exists, and (2) the Special Counsel has it. That’s why they pressured the SCO, as did Rosenstein. The SCO’s denial can basically boiled down to this, ‘We don’t have evidence of the smoking gun to which Buzzfeed refers, even though we have a ton of other stuff that’s pretty bad in its own right. Mr. Trump/Mr. Giuliani, good luck to you if either we or Buzzfeed get that smoking gun evidence before you do, cause if that gets out, you’re f***ed.’.
Rudy is pushing back at Buzzfeed and is obsessing over tapes to the point of a public (if not Freudian) slip, because he’s worried if he missed something. He’s also worried whether Cohen hid something (through Lanny Davis) or if someone else has such smoking gun evidence which Buzzfeed is aware of. If Buzzfeed has a line to direct, smoking gun evidence which is currently not in the possession of the SCO, that would indeed be explosive.
If such evidence exists, I would personally hope that it become public through the press as that would compel the SCO to act and also it would give the House the opening they need to advance the impeachment process and force the SCO to share their evidence with Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler.
