The publisher of National Enquirer has said it coordinated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to pay a Playboy model $150,000 in hush money, placing the president and his inner circle in further legal peril.
American Media Inc (AMI) told prosecutors it worked “in concert” with Trump’s campaign when it bought Karen McDougal’s story of a sexual affair with Trump, which it suppressed “to prevent it from influencing the election”.
The publisher revealed details of the so-called “catch and kill” deal for McDougal’s story in an agreement with federal authorities that means the company will not face charges, prosecutors in Manhattan announced on Wednesday.
The agreement raises the possibility that Trump’s presidential campaign, which is currently making early preparations for his re-election bid, could be indicted for violating campaign finance laws through its involvement in the payout.
An unidentified member of the campaign who was involved in the arrangement with AMI could also be vulnerable to prosecution. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and legal fixer, previously pleaded guilty to involvement in the scheme.
Cohen previously testified that he arranged the payment to McDougal, along with a $130,000 payout to buy the silence of the porn star Stormy Daniels, at the direction of Trump. The president has denied involvement in the payments.
US law bars corporations from spending money to influence elections in coordination with a candidate or campaign. Prosecutors said that AMI’s payment to McDougal amounted to a secret in-kind contribution to Trump’s campaign.
Prosecutors elsewhere have in the past struggled to prove that suspect payments related to politicians amounted to campaign contributions, such as in the case of the former senator and Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Edwards, who was acquitted of such a charge in 2012.
But Wednesday’s agreement – struck in September but kept secret until now – means that federal prosecutors in New York now have testimony from two witnesses, Cohen and AMI, that the Trump payments were made to women in a deliberate attempt to influence the 2016 election.
The agreement said that in August 2015, Cohen and “at least one other member of the campaign” met AMI’s chief executive David Pecker, who “offered to help deal with negative stories” about Trump during the presidential campaign.
Pecker suggested he could buy the rights to problematic stories and prevent them from being published, according to the agreement, and put this plan into action when an attorney for McDougal offered her story to National Enquirer.
In August 2016, AMI paid McDougal $150,000 for the rights to the story of “her relationship with ‘any then-married man’,” according to prosecutors, which was “substantially more money than AMI otherwise would have paid”.
The deal said AMI would feature McDougal on magazine covers, but AMI actually had no intention to publish her story. Prosecutors said: “Despite the cover and article features to the agreement, AMI’s principal purpose in entering into the agreement was to suppress the model’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.”
Instead, National Enquirer published a series of wild attacks against Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent. Remarkably, as the election approached in October 2016, the magazine falsely alleged that Clinton had covered up “sleazy affairs” and bribed reporters “to bury truth”. The magazine’s cover promised an “explosive story that will change the election”.
Prosecutors said that following Trump’s election victory, AMI published articles by McDougal in some of its other magazines, including OK! and Star, in an attempt to keep her from talking publicly about the $150,000 deal.
The Wall Street Journal reported in August that Pecker had himself been granted immunity by US authorities in return for testifying about what he knew about Trump, Cohen and the payments.
Cohen was on Wednesday sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to the campaign finance violations, lying to Congress about a plan to build a Trump Tower in Russia, and personal financial crimes.
