Tabloid paid $30,000 for tip Trump fathered illegitimate child, then spiked story

[RandySF]

NEW YORK -- Eight months before the company that owns the National Enquirer paid $150,000 to a former Playboy Playmate who claimed she'd had an affair with Donald Trump, the tabloid's parent made a $30,000 payment to a less famous individual: a former doorman at one of the real estate mogul's New York City buildings.

As it did with the ex-Playmate, the Enquirer signed the ex-doorman to a contract that effectively prevented him from going public with a juicy tale that might hurt Trump's campaign for president.

The payout to the former Playmate, Karen McDougal, stayed a secret until the Wall Street Journal published a story about it days before Election Day. Since then curiosity about that deal has spawned intense media coverage and, this week, helped prompt the FBI to raid the hotel room and offices of Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

The story of the ex-doorman, Dino Sajudin, hasn't been told until now.

The Associated Press confirmed the details of the Enquirer's payment through a review of a confidential contract and interviews with dozens of current and former employees of the Enquirer and its parent company, American Media Inc. Sajudin got $30,000 in exchange for signing over the rights, "in perpetuity," to a rumor he'd heard about Trump's sex life -- that the president had fathered an illegitimate child with an employee at Trump World Tower, a skyscraper he owns near the United Nations. The contract subjected Sajudin to a $1 million penalty if he disclosed either the rumor or the terms of the deal to anyone.

Cohen, the longtime Trump attorney, acknowledged to the AP that he had discussed Sajudin's story with the magazine when the tabloid was working on it. He said he was acting as a Trump spokesman when he did so and denied knowing anything beforehand about the Enquirer payment to the ex-doorman.

The parallel between the ex-Playmate's and the ex-doorman's dealings with the Enquirer raises new questions about the roles that the Enquirer and Cohen may have played in protecting Trump's image during a hard-fought presidential election. Prosecutors are probing whether Cohen broke banking or campaign laws in connection with AMI's payment to McDougal and a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels that Cohen said he paid out of his own pocket.



http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2018/04/tabloid_paid_30000_that_silenc.html

[applegrove]

1. Didn't the Enquirer put out the story about Ted Cruz's dad supposedly

Last edited Thu Apr 12, 2018, 04:27 AM - Edit history (2)

being involved in JFK's killing? Is that an in kind donation? Or does it not count because it was in the nomination race?

[Doodley]

2. They paid a doorman 30,000 not to talk about Trump fathering a child with an employee?

Why would they pay that if it wasn't true?

[no_hypocrisy]

3. It doesn't matter whether it's true or not.

The standard is whether it's believable/credible or not.

It's more or less a riff for being an attorney. Your prospective client comes to you and wants you to defend him/her from a murder charge. In order to be successful in court, you don't have to prove that your client didn't murder the victim; you have to make it unbelievable that your client murdered. You may have malingering doubts yourself, but you use every trick in the book to convince a jury that the charge is wrong.

Here, if Trump's doorman said that Trump fathered a child, it may or may not be true. What matters is that enough people will endorse that claim if only because it originated from the doorman. It will be believable and that's why $30,000 was paid for his silence.