By now, you know that Donald Trump has a lot of reason to be very afraid after Michael Cohen pleaded guilty. After all, he admitted under oath that he hammered out hush money deals with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal under orders from Trump.
But it turns out that someone else better be very afraid. Namely, David Pecker, publisher of Trump’s favorite tabloid, the National Enquirer.
Per CNBC, Cohen admitted conspiring with a media company to silence McDougal—a media company widely assumed to be American Media, parent company of the National Enquirer. The nature of that conspiracy? From Bloomberg:
The prosecutor told the judge the purpose of the payments was to ensure that the individuals did not disclose "alleged affairs with the candidate." Besides the $130,000 payment, Cohen admitted to making an illegal contribution of $150,000, which was how much McDougal received from the National Enquirer’s publisher to quash her story.
If I were Pecker or any other executive at American Media who had anything to do with this payment, I’d have a lawyer on speed dial. The Enquirer is already under fire for buying the rights to potentially damaging stories about Trump, then sitting on them.
When the Enquirer tried to brand Cohen as a turncoat this spring, I predicted that this would backfire on Pecker. Well, looks like it has—and bigly.
Tuesday, Aug 21, 2018 · 11:50:29 PM +00:00
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Christian Dem in NC
Since this made the rec list, I thought I’d note where the Enquirer was implicated in the actual indictment. The references begin on page 11. “Corporation-1”—obviously American Media—was implicated in buying two negative stories about Trump (“Individual-1”) in order to suppress them. One of those stories involved “Woman-1”—a model and actress who is obviously McDougal.