Doorman’s story about alleged Trump affair and baby
UNITED STATES: The
parent company paid a New York City doorman US$30,000 for a story it never published alleging that Donald Trump secretly fathered a child, according to news reports.
Former doorman Dino Sajudin told the story to the tabloid newspaper in late 2015, when Trump was the top contender for the Republican presidential nomination, The Associated Press and
reported yesterday. Sajudin, who worked at Trump World Tower near the United Nations headquarters, told the
that he had heard from co-workers that Trump had ‘‘knocked up’’ one of his employees, who gave birth to a girl, according to documents posted on the website of Radar Online, a sister publication of the
The tabloid requested a polygraph examination, and the examiner concluded that Sajudin was telling the truth about hearing the story, the documents say. Four unnamed
employees said that top editors, despite the polygraph results, ordered them to stop reporting the story.
Sajudin signed a contract with the tabloid’s parent company, American Media Inc, which is led by Trump’s close friend, David Pecker. Sajudin, who received US$30,000 in return for giving American Media exclusive rights to the story, agreed to pay a US$1 million penalty if he failed to keep quiet, according to AP and
It is the second known case of American Media spending money in a way that protected Trump from a potentially harmful story during the 2016 presidential race – a practice known in the tabloid gossip world as ‘‘catch and kill’’.
Days after Trump won the GOP’s presidential nomination, American Media paid former
model Karen McDougal
US$150,000 for exclusive rights to her story of a nine-month affair with Trump, but never published it. McDougal is suing to void the deal, alleging that her attorney was secretly colluding with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.
The FBI raided Cohen’s office, home and hotel room this week under search warrants reportedly seeking records on McDougal’s non-disclosure deal with American Media.
The search warrant also reportedly sought records on a separate confidentiality agreement Cohen reached in October
2016 with porn star Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. He set up a shell company that paid Daniels US$130,000 to keep quiet about Trump’s alleged 2006 sexual encounter with her.
It is unclear what crimes federal authorities suspect were committed.
But McDougal’s lawsuit charges that AMI’s payment to her was an illegal secret donation that federal election law required the Trump campaign to publicly disclose. Non-partisan ethics group Common Cause has filed complaints with the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission alleging that the payments to McDougal and Daniels were illegal campaign contributions.