'National Enquirer' Sale: Who Gets the Trove of Trump's Darkest Secrets?
The National Enquirer – the tabloid infamous for buying, then spiking, damaging stories about Donald Trump and reportedly keeping the evidence in a safe – is up for sale.
Anthony Melchiorre, the hedge fund manager who owns the controlling interest in Enquirer parent company AMI, has reportedly grown tired of the publication’s red ink and reporting tactics. The Enquirer has also been at the center of a maelstrom, after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos accused the publication of “extortion and blackmail” in February, in relation to the threatened publication of a private photograph of the billionaire’s bulge. (AMI has denied wrongdoing.)
The proposed sale of the Enquirer threatens to unwind an informal protection racket that publisher David Pecker, the CEO of AMI, ran for his longtime friend Trump, as detailed in a 2018 Non-Prosecution Agreement with the Department of Justice.
In the run-up to the 2016 election, AMI worked “in concert” with the Trump campaign to pay Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 “to ensure that a woman did not publicize damaging allegations” about Trump – in an attempt to “influence that election.” As detailed in the document, the hush money payment followed an offer by Pecker “to help deal with negative stories about the presidential candidate’s relationships with women” by “assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so that they could be purchased and their publication avoided.” (AMI’s agreement with the feds included aiding in the investigation of Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and AMI’s commitment to “prevent future violations of the federal campaign finance laws.”)
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/national-enquirer-sale-ron-burkle-david-pecker-821307/
= new reply since forum marked as read
