National Enquirer owner says it buried stories for Trump

NEW YORK — The parent company of magazines including the National Enquirer, Us Weekly and In Touch has admitted to engaging in a journalistically dubious practice known as “catch-and-kill” in order to help Donald Trump become the U.S. president.

Federal prosecutors revealed Wednesday they had agreed not to prosecute American Media Inc. for secretly assisting Trump’s campaign by paying $150,000 US to Playboy model Karen McDougal for the rights to her story about an alleged affair with Trump. The company then suppressed McDougal’s story.

Wednesday’s development brought fresh attention to “catch-and-kill,” in which a publication pays for exclusive rights to someone’s story with no intention of publishing it, either as a favour to a celebrity subject or to gain leverage over the person.

AMI acknowledged that its payments to McDougal were done to assist Trump’s election bid and were made “in concert” with his campaign. Prosecutors said that makes the payment an illegal corporate campaign contribution.

AMI kept a safe that stored documents on hush-money payments to McDougal and other damaging stories it killed as part of its relationship with Trump, who is longtime friends with the company’s president, David Pecker.

According to AMI’s statement to prosecutors, Pecker approached Trump in August 2015 with an offer “to help deal with negative stories” about his relationships with women by identifying such stories “so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.”