Source: Trump present for hush-money plan

President tweets he never directed his former lawyer to break the law

New York — Federal prosecutors said this week that at least one unidentified member of Donald Trump’s campaign joined his lawyer Michael Cohen and the publisher of the tabloid National Enquirer, David Pecker, in a 2015 scheme to kill unflattering news stories about the then-candidate as he sought the presidency.

The other individual present was Donald Trump himself, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified.

The U.S. said the plan involved Pecker, the chief executive officer of Enquirer parent American Media Inc., flagging negative stories about Trump’s relationship with women. He would then work with Trump’s nascent presidential campaign to purchase the stories to prevent their publication, according to a nonprosecution agreement with AMI and federal prosecutors in Manhattan made public Wednesday.

The emergence of Trump’s participation in a plot that federal prosecutors described as “secret and illegal” is just the latest in a series of legal and political headaches that have gripped the White House as the Justice Department further probes Trump’s conduct before and after he won the 2016 election.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

AMI’s participation in the scheme led the company to pay $150,000 to silence former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claimed she had an extramarital affair with Trump.

The practice of acquiring stories and not running them, common in the tabloid industry, is known as “catch and kill.”

Federal prosecutors said the expenditure amounted to an effort to influence the 2016 election and a violation of campaign finance law.

Cohen facilitated the payment, federal prosecutors said, which came “in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump. On Thursday, Trump wrote on Twitter that he never directed Cohen to break the law.

“He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law,” Trump said. He added that other lawyers, who he didn’t name, have said that he did nothing wrong and that Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations that weren’t criminal.

Trump’s involvement in the catchand-kill plan had been referenced in legal documents involving Cohen, but the president wasn’t named directly. On Wednesday, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for a variety of crimes including tax evasion and campaign finance violations.