Just like in the Watergate scandal, the circus around Donald Trump and his alleged crimes has come down to a dispute over an audio recording. James Comey claims that Donald Trump asked him to drop an ongoing investigation of Mike Flynn, and to pledge his loyalty to Trump personally in order to keep his job. Trump says he never said what Comey claims he said, and that he might have tapes to prove it.
Trump might actually have recordings. It wouldn't be a big surprise if conversations in and near the Oval Office were recorded. Several other presidents have routinely done it. The one-on-one conversations with Comey were a breach of protocol, but Trump doesn't seem to care or know about such things. However, it is also probable that any such recordings support Comey's story rather than Trump's, and that Trump had no intention of releasing them. He just wanted to intimidate Comey, but it backfired. Comey seems fine with any such recordings being released, and the Trump administration has now been ordered to release them if they exist.
Trump drags his feet in response, apparently to stall for time. Questions of the day are: Do the tapes exist? If so, will they be released? And will Trump try to alter the recordings to make them less incriminating for him? Technology has come a long way since Nixon, and we will not get anything as obvious as the 16 seconds silence where Nixon had deleted his direct admission of guilt. However, there are still methods to detect if a recording has been altered, even if Trump enlists the help of his Russian hacker friends to doctor the surveillance recordings before he releases them.
Those 16 seconds of silence on the Watergate tape was what ultimately brought Nixon down. Donald Trump had better think carefully before making alterations to any tapes he might have.
