Tabloid publisher's deal in hush-money inquiry adds to President Trump's troubles

With the revelation by prosecutors Wednesday that a tabloid publisher admitted to paying off a Playboy model, key participants in two hush-?money schemes say the transactions were intended to protect Donald Trump’s campaign for president.

That leaves Trump in an increasingly isolated and legally precarious position, according to election law experts. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments made in 2016 to keep two women silent about alleged affairs are now firmly framed as illegal campaign contributions.

The news about the publisher, the parent company of the National Enquirer, came on the same day that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in part for his involvement in the payments.

Cohen said the transactions were an effort to cover up the president’s “dirty deeds,” a claim that was buttressed when federal prosecutors announced that tabloid publisher American Media Inc. said it had bought one of the women’s stories to ensure she “did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate.”

“AMI further admitted that its principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election,” prosecutors said in a statement announcing they had struck a deal not to charge the company in exchange for its cooperation.

As part of the deal, dated in September but previously kept private, the company also agreed to train employees in election law standards and appoint a qualified lawyer to vet future deals that may involve paying for stories about political candidates.

The cascading disclosures marked a turning point in the multiple investigations related to Trump and the campaign he led. Until recently, the inquiries had produced numerous guilty pleas and indictments but no direct accusations of illegality by the president. That changed with Cohen’s assertions, outlined in detail by prosecutors, that his own crimes were done “in coordination with and at the direction” of Trump.

Establishing a nexus between Cohen’s efforts to silence the women and Trump’s campaign is central to making a criminal case of election law violations. That is why AMI’s admission carries so much weight, said Richard Hasen, an election law professor at UC Irvine.

“It’s looking a lot like an illegal and unreported in-kind corporate contribution to help the campaign, exposing the Trump campaign and Trump himself to possible criminal liability,” Hasen said.

AMI, run by Trump’s longtime friend David Pecker, had previously claimed it had paid $150,000 to model Karen McDougal to secure the rights to publish her story of an alleged affair with Trump. But the company never published it, and people familiar with its operations had said it was part of a long-standing practice, known in the tabloid trade as “catch and kill,” to suppress damaging stories about favored people.

Prosecutors said that Cohen had intended to reimburse AMI for its payment to McDougal by arranging a bogus $125,000 fee to an AMI affiliate for “advisory services.” Although Pecker signed off on the deal, he later contacted Cohen and called it off. He also instructed Cohen to tear up the paperwork, prosecutors said.

In addition to McDougal, Cohen said he arranged a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film actress, to squelch her story of an alleged affair with Trump. He said that he used his own money, but that Trump had agreed to pay him back, with the reimbursement eventually being couched as legal fees billed to the Trump Organization.

AMI was also involved in the early stages of Cohen’s dealings with Daniels. Rather than pay her, as it did with McDougal, the company notified Cohen that she was trying to sell her story.

One associate of Pecker’s, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Pecker felt betrayed when the president’s legal team failed to push back against revelations in July that Cohen had recorded a conversation with Trump discussing the McDougal payment. The recording seemed to support the notion that AMI was complicit in an illegal campaign finance scheme.

In admitting to the scheme, Pecker, his lieutenant Dylan Howard and AMI are now protected from criminal prosecution.