The safe contained documentation of payoffs and story details The Associated Press reports that the publication kept a safe with papers detailing hush money payments,…
The safe contained documentation of payoffs and story details
The Associated Press reports that the publication kept a safe with papers detailing hush money payments, as well as lurid details of damaging stories, all stories the publication had killed to maintain its cordial and cozy relationship with then-candidate Donald Trump. Now that he is the president, it seems the relationship continued.
American Media has denied that it has any leverage over the President due to these deals, and initially refused to cooperate with law enforcement, saying they had not disobeyed any laws. However, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s tapes feature a conversation between Trump and Cohen about buying back the rights so they don’t have to rely on the relationship any longer.
Court papers in the Cohen case say Pecker “offered to help deal with negative stories about (Trump’s) relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.”
With Pecker’s cooperation, more details about catch and kill stories are likely to be brought to light.
