PECKER INA VISE
Enquirer honcho grabs immunity as feds put squeeze on Trump’s catch-and-kill enabler
The publisher of the National Enquirer and close confidant of President Trump was granted immunity by federal prosecutors as they probed hush-money payments made by Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, according to reports Thursday.
Pecker, the chairman of American Media Inc., which owns the National Enquirer, gave prosecutors from the Southern District of New York details about the President's knowledge of the payments Cohen made to a pair of women alleging affairs with Trump, the Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair first reported.
Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts of tax fraud and campaign finance violations earlier this week. He said in court that he made the payments under Trump's direction in order to influence the election — implicating the President in potential criminal activities.
Prosecutors indicated they won't proceed with criminal charges against Pecker or editor Dylan Howard for their participation in the deals, sources told The Journal.
The Enquirer kept a safe containing documents on hush-money payments and other stories it killed that could have damaged Trump, the Associated Press reported.
Court documents revealed that the “chairman” of “a media company that owns, among other things, a popular tabloid magazine” put Cohen in touch with one of the women, who was paid $130,000 before the 2016 presidential election in exchange for her silence.
The woman, porn star Stormy Daniels, has since spoken about her alleged decade-old dalliance with the erstwhile reality TV star and is suing Trump to break the nondisclosure agreement she signed.
The other woman, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, was paid $150,000 in August 2016 by AMI. Her story was never published, a practice known as “catch and kill.”
In July, Cohen released an audio recording in which he and Trump discuss plans to buy McDougal's story from the Enquirer. Such a purchase would be necessary to prevent Trump from having to permanently rely on a tight relationship with the tabloid.
"You never know where that company — you never know what he's gonna be —" Cohen says.
"David gets hit by a truck," Trump says.
"Correct," Cohen replies. "So, I'm all over that."
Pecker reportedly backed out of the deal to sell the rights to Cohen after his lawyers advised him against it, because doing so would undermine any legal argument that the purchase was made for journalistic purposes, according to The Journal.
Campaign finance laws prohibit corporations from cooperating with a campaign to influence an election, but media companies are exempt if they're performing a journalistic function.
The Enquirer previously argued it reached a deal with McDougal for editorial reasons, not to aid Trump's White House bid.
According to court documents, Pecker offered as far back as 2015 to help Cohen find negative stories about Trump and his relationships with women.
Former Trump campaign adviser Sam Nunberg admitted that there were open lines of communication.
“It was obviously a very close relationship between the Trump campaign and the National Enquirer,” he told the Daily News.
However, he questioned whether there was any wrongdoing. “I don't understand where the illegality is here,” Nunberg said. “I think ‘immunity' is a loaded term here.”
Trump has denied the affairs — and has repeatedly changed his story as to when he knew about the payments.
In an interview with Fox News, Trump said Thursday that he knew about the payments “later on.”
Trump and Pecker have known one another for decades and the media mogul is a regular presence at the President's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.
During the 2016 campaign, the Enquirer endorsed Trump — the first time in the tabloid's 90-year history that it backed a presidential candidate. Throughout the campaign, the Enquirer embraced the reality TV star's White House bid and ran stories blasting his rivals.
One such story linked the father of Sen. Ted Cruz (RTexas), one of Trump's primary challengers, to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
“You can't knock the National Enquirer,” Trump said at the time. “It's brought many, many things to light, not all of them pleasant.”
In June, the Washington Post reported that the Enquirer regularly sent stories to Trump for review prior to publication, an ethically questionable maneuver the supermarket tabloid denied.
Pecker also dined with Trump at the White House last year, according to The Times.
Cameron Stracher, an AMI lawyer, indicated last month that the company was cooperating with the investigation. “A.M.I. respects the legitimate law enforcement activities by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York,” he told the New York Times.
But he suggested there was some give-and-take in what A.M.I. was willing to share, adding that it “has asserted and will continue to assert its First Amendment rights in order to protect its newsgathering and editorial operations.” Stratcher was on vacation as of Thursday and did not respond to requests for comment.