On “Late Night With Seth Meyers” on Wednesday, Seth Meyers trotted out a new “A Closer Look” segment to tackle the big news of the day — that Michael Cohen had been secretly taping Donald Trump, and that one of those tapes was leaked to and released by CNN.
“This week we learned that Michael Cohen, who handled some of Trump’s most sensitive personal matters, had secret recordings in his possession when the FBI raided his office and home. And it wasn’t just one or two recordings, federal prosecutors reportedly obtained 12 audio recordings. Twelve! They basically came away with an Eagles box set,” Meyers joked to kick off the segment.
“And look, you can’t be a lawyer in charge of shady business dealings and also record everything. He’s like a hitman who decides to wear fingerless gloves. ‘I like to leave a calling card on all my victims: my fingerprints.’ ”
Meyers then went through Trump’s Twitter response to the leak, which included his complaint that: “What kind of lawyer would tape a client?”
“And what kind of lawyer would tape a client? The kind of lawyer you would hire. This kind. Look at him,” Meyers said as he pointed at a picture of Cohen, mouth agape. “He never closes his mouth, because he has a microphone under his tongue. ”
Then Meyers noted that Cohen keeping secret recordings would be in keeping with all the fake companies he’d set up to pay off Trump’s indiscretions.
“And let’s keep in mind, this is part of a well-established pattern,” Meyers said. “Remember, Cohen set up a secret shell company to pay off Stormy Daniels, called Essential Consultants LLC. And today The Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen set up a separate shell company to buy McDougal’s story. And the name of that shell company was Resolution Consultants LLC. Was Cohen naming all of his companies ironically, because he was not essential and he definitely didn’t provide any resolution. He should have named his shell companies This Is Gonna Come Back To Haunt Us, Incorporated.”
But the best bit of the new “A Closer Look” Wednesday night was when Meyers decided to remind us of Sean Hannity’s weird place in all this.
“And by the way, Trump and Giuliani aren’t the only ones stammering their way through awkward explanations of this tape. Just take Fox News host Sean Hannity, who was forced to admit a few months ago that he had secretly used Cohen’s legal services,” Meyers said. “Last night, Hannity was in the awkward position of having to defend Trump, while explaining his own relationship with Cohen.”
“Late Night” then played a clip of Hannity issuing that disclosure very awkwardly on Tuesday night: “I have known Michael a long time. I like Michael. He has a lovely family. I honestly think what they’ve done to him is wrong. I was not a client of his, although I did ask him a legal question on — we used to talk privately. I, so — but we didn’t have a business relationship, and — just to be totally transparent.”
And yes, that last “just to be totally transparent” really was the end of that sentence.
“Oh, oh, oh, oh,” Meyers said, clearly taking joy at watching Hannity just then. “Those are definitely the words of a man who just found out his lawyer secretly tapes his clients. Seriously, Hannity sounded like he was being interrogated by Dick Tracy.”
“Late Night” then capped off the joke with a clip of Dustin Hoffman as Mumbles screaming his nonsensical dialogue as he was being questioned in “Dick Tracy.”
You can watch all of “A Closer Look” from Wednesday’s “Late Night With Seth Meyers” in the video embedded at the top of this post.