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As Joyce Vance said on MSNBC a few weeks ago, regarding David Pecker’s rather unusual name all you can do is laugh and move on. But Trump is surely not laughing now as his long time friend and owner of the National Enquirer has turned on him. Under Pecker, his company AMI was willing to bail Trump out by engaging in catch and kill in all those damaging stories. But evidently he wasn’t willing to go to jail.
UPDATE:
Pecker now has an immunity deal.
UPDATE 2.0: Pecker had looked to have avoided trouble with his immunity deal but with his threats against Bezos now becoming public you have to wonder if he violated the deal.
“The chairman of the company that publishes the National Enquirer was granted immunity by federal prosecutors as part of an investigation into President Donald Trump‘s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, NBC News reported Thursday.”
“The immunity deal was earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair.”
“Details of the agreement were not immediately known. But the Journal reported earlier Thursday that American Media Inc. Chairman David Pecker had given prosecutors details about the president’s knowledge of payments Cohen made to women alleging affairs with Trump.”
Now what are the odds that these two payments we know about to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal are the only times that happened during the campaign?
I'm pretty sure the two payments to keep stories quiet in the Cohen plea are the only times that happened during the whole campaign, right?
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) August 23, 2018
Right now a lot of bets are being placed on slim and none. And, indeed, we hear that the Enquirer has a safe of damaging stories.
You don’t need a safe for two stories. So evidently we’re still just at the tip of the iceberg.
FN: Perhaps though evidence of more stories never emerged which is hardly proof positive there are no more. Democrats should investigate and figure out why the SDNY’ hush money investigation was ended so abruptly.
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“The National Enquirer kept a safe containing documents on hush money payments and other damaging stories it killed as part of its cozy relationship with Donald Trump leading up to the 2016 presidential election, people familiar with the arrangement told The Associated Press.”
“The detail came as several media outlets reported on Thursday that federal prosecutors had granted immunity to National Enquirer chief David Pecker, potentially laying bare his efforts to protect his longtime friend Trump.”
No doubt this was a great source of power for Pecker.
“Five people familiar with the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because they signed non-disclosure agreements, said the safe was a great source of power for Pecker, the company’s CEO.”
“The Trump records were stored alongside similar documents pertaining to other celebrities’ catch-and-kill deals, in which exclusive rights to people’s stories were bought with no intention of publishing to keep them out of the news. By keeping celebrities’ embarrassing secrets, the company was able to ingratiate itself with them and ask for favors in return.”
However, things turned for Pecker after news of the catch and kill of McDougal’s story came out. Then the great power became a liability.
“But after The Wall Street Journal initially published the first details of Playboy model Karen McDougal’s catch-and-kill deal shortly before the 2016 election, those assets became a liability. Fearful that the documents might be used against American Media, Pecker and the company’s chief content officer, Dylan Howard, removed them from the safe in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration, according to one person directly familiar with the events.”
It was unclear whether the documents were destroyed or simply were moved to a location known to fewer people.
The policy of catch and kill begun under Pecker as a way to ingratiate himself.
“Jerry George, a longtime Enquirer reporter who left the publication in 2013, said the practice of catch and kill took root at the Enquirer under Pecker. Though George had no personal knowledge of Trump-specific catch and kills, he said that AMI generally paid hush money only if it believed it had something to gain.”
“It’s ‘I did this for you,’ now what can you do for me,” George said. “They always got something in return.”
Catch and kills were loathed by the National Enquirer’s reporters, he said, because they robbed the publication of juicy stories.
Court papers in the Cohen case say Pecker “offered to help deal with negative stories about (Trump’s) relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.”
“The Journal reported Pecker shared with prosecutors details about payments that Cohen says Trump directed in the weeks and months before the election to buy the silence of McDougal and another woman alleging an affair, porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels was paid $130,000, and McDougal was paid $150,000.”
“While Trump denies the affairs, his account of his knowledge of the payments has shifted. In April, Trump denied he knew anything about the Daniels payment. He told Fox News in an interview aired Thursday that he knew about payments “later on.”
Which makes zero sense-if there was no affair why was a payment made? And why would Trump agree to reimburse Cohen for making a payment to keep an affair quiet that Trump never had?
Of course, in the tape Cohen released in July, you had he and Trump discussing buying the story from the Enquirer.
“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.”
While Pecker is cooperating with federal prosecutors now, American Media previously declined to participate in congressional inquiries.
“Last March, in response to a letter from a group of House Democrats about the Daniels and McDougal payments, American Media general counsel Cameron Stracher declined to provide any documents, writing that the company was “exempt” from U.S. campaign finance laws because it is a news publisher and it was “confident” it had complied with all tax laws. He also rebuffed any suggestion that America Media Inc., or AMI, had leverage over the president because of its catch-and-kill practices.”
Sure-they’re offended at the very idea. Meanwhile, we now know that the Enquirer had been catching and killing bad stories about Trump going back prior to the Apprentice days. While they insist their a news outlet they actually agreed to promote Trump’s possible run for President back in 2010.
“Former Enquirer employees who spoke to the AP said that negative stories about Trump were dead on arrival dating back more than a decade when he starred on NBC’s reality show “The Apprentice.”
“In 2010, at Cohen’s urging, the National Enquirer began promoting a potential Trump presidential candidacy, referring readers to a pro-Trump website Cohen helped create. With Cohen’s involvement, the publication began questioning President Barack Obama’s birthplace and American citizenship in print, an effort that Trump promoted for several years, former staffers said.”
“The Enquirer endorsed Trump for president in 2016, the first time it had ever officially backed a candidate. In the news pages, Trump’s coverage was so favorable that the New Yorker magazine said the Enquirer embraced him “with sycophantic fervor.”
“Positive headlines for Trump, a Republican, were matched by negative stories about his opponents, including Hillary Clinton, a Democrat: An Enquirer front page from 2015 said “Hillary: 6 Months to Live” and accompanied the headline with a picture of an unsmiling Clinton with bags under her eyes.”
So what made him take an immunity deal? The prospect of prison time.
And the big picture is that prosecutors now have at least two people-Cohen and Pecker-that state that Trump was aware of the payments. With his two co-conspirators stating he knew Trump’s defense is even less plausible.
Trump who talks about ‘loyalty’ like a mob boss
https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1032964791210520577
now sees all the rats leaving the sinking ship-Cohen, Omarosa, and now Pecker. Trump who demands total loyalty faces threats from friends, foes, and unknown places
“The Russia probe. His former lawyer’s records — and memory. Two women with lawsuits. A third with tapes.”
“President Donald Trump is facing real political threats following one electrifying hour Tuesday that brought a plea deal by his onetime lawyer, Michael Cohen, and the conviction of Paul Manafort, the former chairman of the his 2016 presidential campaign.”
“Much of the potential hazard comes from digging by special counsel Robert Mueller, New York prosecutors and lawyers for the women suing him. Other threats come from Cohen, who implicated the president in campaign finance crimes and made clear he’s happy to keep talking.”
“Trump has called the developments part of a “witch hunt” and “fake news.”
“Hovering over everything are the November midterm elections, when Americans will deliver another kind of verdict on Republican control of the presidency and Congress.”
Yes, America will get to decide if it wants to #MakeAmericaLegitimateAgain or legitimize his corruption, racism, and treason. If the GOP retains the House by one seat he consolidates his illegitimate regime.
FN: October 5, 2019
America chose to #MakeAmericaLegitimateAgain though it took the Dem leadership sometime to figure out what America elected them for-not solely for passing messaging bills that go nowhere in the Senate but to send Articles of Impeachment that may well nowhere in the Senate-though this is not really true; McConnell himself confirms there will be a trial. A Senate trial even where Trump’s GOP hacks exonerate him from accountability is hardly ‘nothing’-it may well be the best argument to turn the Senate blue of all-the Swing GOP Senators will be between a rock and a hard place.
End of FN
Meanwhile he’s left to wonder from where the next piece of ‘disloyalty’ will come from.
What’s known: The president who demands loyalty from his allies can’t depend on them for it. What’s not: from whom, and where in the Trumpian landscape, another bolt might strike.
“A look at the threats facing the president, his family and the Republicans defending their congressional majorities.”
The writer, Laurie Kellman enumerates a number of possible threats but these are all known threats: Mueller, Cohen, Omarosa, Manafort, Flynn, Roger Stone, more from Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Indeed, from what Michael Avenatti has said he has more clients who allege affairs with Trump.
That list is long enough-and not even exhaustive. But what about those threats no one has thought of yet? Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels only became such a threat thanks to Avenatti who no one saw coming. Similarly, no one saw Omarsoa coming but now she seems prepared to sit back and release her tapes at variously chosen inopportune times for the illegitimate ‘President.’
FN: How much credit Avenatti gets in retrospect can be debated as even Daniels has turned on him but no doubt these revelations were important-they led to Trump being labeled an un indicted co-conspirator.
Surely by now we should know that with Trump it’s always even worse than it looks.
Case in point: there’s the new bombshell that came out overnight that NYC prosecutors are considering criminal charges against the Trump Organization-where Trump along with, Donald Jr, , Ivanaka, and Eric Trump would be named as defendants.
Like John McCain said, there’s always another shoe to drop but guessing which shoe is so tough-there are a lot of shoes!
And remember there’s no pardons for state crimes.
UPDATE: Which is just as well as Mueller clearly punted not just on charging Trump or demanding an interview but charging his namesake son or even demanding an interview. The hush money case would be abruptly ended very soon after Bill Barr’s fake exoneration letter