David Pecker Pecker is the chairman of American Media Inc.
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According to Farrow, Pecker quickly alerted Cohen to the story, and Trump asked Pecker for help.
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Bezos' post was titled "No thank you, Mr. Pecker," a reference to AMI's chairman and CEO, David Pecker.
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I asked Pecker about Trump during our first lunch, at one of the posh Upper East Side restaurants that Pecker frequents.
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In a blockbuster blog post titled "No thank you, Mr. Pecker," Bezos on Thursday evening accused Pecker of an "extortion and blackmail" attempt.
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Trump allegedly returned the favor by introducing Pecker to potential investors, including a French businessman who connected Pecker with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.
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The affidavit further alleges that Cohen was in contact with Pecker and Howard — the AMI executives — and then again with Hicks before calling Pecker another time.
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Journalist Ronan Farrow and others have reported on a quid pro quo deal between AMI CEO David Pecker and Donald Trump, whom Pecker has described as a close friend.
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Bezos proved that Thursday when he published a post on Medium titled "No thank you, Mr. Pecker," referring to David Pecker, the chairman and CEO of American Media Inc.
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This apparently did not sit well with David Pecker, AMI's CEO and Chairman: Several days ago, an AMI leader advised us that Mr. Pecker is 'apoplectic' about our investigation.
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Mr. Cohen, those people said, was hearing rumors that Mr. Pecker might leave American Media for Time magazine — a title Mr. Pecker is known to have dreams of running.
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Pecker has cultivated ties with Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed since 2016, when President Donald Trump — a key ally of Pecker&aposs — won election to the White House.
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Pecker is said to have engaged in a practice called "catch and kill" — where Pecker would help cover up any news stories that might cast Trump in an unflattering light.
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In 1999, David Pecker bought AMI and became its CEO.
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Over the years, Pecker developed a friendship with Donald Trump.
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Pecker and Howard corroborated Cohen's account, according to Vanity Fair.
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What kind of god would have a pecker that small?
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What kind of God would have a pecker that small?
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"These are people that live their life failing," Pecker said.
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Trump is a longtime friend of AMI head David Pecker.
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AMI's chairman and CEO, David Pecker, is friendly with Trump.
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The Wall Street Journal: Pecker granted immunity in Cohen case.
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Pecker is also said to have reached an immunity deal.
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Besides Pecker, another AMI executive also has links to Trump.
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Pecker is the longtime chief executive of American Media, Inc.
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AMI publisher David Pecker and President Trump are longtime associates.
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It also shows Trump asked Pecker directly for campaign help.
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In talking with Mr. Cohen, Mr. Frommer mentioned Mr. Pecker.
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Mr. Pecker extended the White House dinner invitation shortly afterward.
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Pecker has been friends with President Donald Trump for decades.
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Imagine then, if the Pecker immunity deal also bears fruit.
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Pecker is expected to continue talking with prosecutors, sources said.
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Pecker and Howard were thought to have "flipped" on Trump.
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Donald went back to Pecker and negotiated a deal for me.
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David Pecker, CEO of the company, was a friend of Trump's.
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"It was really between him and David Pecker," Cohen told ABC.
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AMI owner David Pecker is an ally of President Donald Trump.
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The stakes for Mr Pecker and his company are particularly high.
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Go deeper: Attorney for David Pecker denies National Enquirer blackmailed Bezos
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Pecker was in attendance along with reported MBS intermediary Kacy Gine.
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But the idea of Pecker as the leader of Time, Inc.
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According to S.E.C. filings, A.M.I. paid Pecker $3.1 million last year.
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"They voted for Trump," Pecker told me, speaking of his readers.
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American Media's president and CEO, David Pecker, is a Trump friend.
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Cohen then called David Pecker, the president of American Media Inc.
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"I didn't see that," Pecker repeated, and the subject was dropped.
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Pecker has denied these charges through a lawyer who represents him.
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I'm losing David Pecker, the tabloid owner who covered my sleaze.
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The CEO of AMI, David Pecker, is a friend of Trump.
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David Pecker was born in 1951 in the Bronx, New York.
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Pecker, the CEO of AMI, is a longtime friend of Trump's.
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American Media's CEO, David Pecker, has a friendly relationship with Trump.
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Trump has been close with Pecker and the Enquirer for years.
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Pecker is up to his slimy neck in politically motivated messes.
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Above, Mr. Trump with A.M.I.'s chairman, David Pecker, in 2014.
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However, Bezos wrote, Pecker was "apoplectic" to learn about Bezos's investigation.
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AMI's Chief Executive David Pecker was a longtime friend of Trump.
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Mr. Pecker has been supportive of Mr. Trump's presidential aspirations since his run as a Reform Party candidate in 2000, when George magazine — part of the company Mr. Pecker ran then, Hachette — featured a friendly profile.
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"There was a falling out, we thought, between Pecker and Trump when all of a sudden the National Enquirer stopped covering him as lovingly as they did" and then when Pecker agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
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Representatives for AMI and Pecker could not be immediately reached for comment.
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According to Bezos, AMI chief David Pecker became "apoplectic" over the investigation.
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AMI's CEO David Pecker was granted immunity in the case in August.
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Representatives for AMI and Pecker did not respond to requests for comment.
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In fact, he and David Pecker, chief executive of American Media, Inc.
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"The guy's a personal friend of mine," Pecker recently told the magazine.
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" He did tell Bloomberg last year, "I happen to respect David Pecker.
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Shortly afterward, Cohen called Pecker and then received a call from Howard.
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AMI's CEO, David Pecker, has long maintained a friendly relationship with Trump.
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AMI boss David Pecker was a longtime friend and confidant of Trump's.
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Numerous headlines have portrayed Pecker and the Enquirer as "flipping" on Trump.
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The tabloid, run by Trump's friend David Pecker, never published the story.
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Like Pecker, Putin has denied he has any compromising information about Trump.
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Mr. Trump is a friend of A.M.I.'s chairman, David J. Pecker.
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The company's chair, David Pecker, was a longtime personal friend of Trump.
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Other targets include David J. Pecker, the chairman of American Media Inc.
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Mr. Pecker has acknowledged being friends with Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump.
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Mr. Pecker and Mr. Howard did not respond to requests for comment.
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Mr. Cohen and Mr. Pecker shared a commitment to protecting Mr. Trump.
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Pecker had been getting closer to the crown prince at the time.
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Pecker has a long reported history with the government of Saudi Arabia.
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Pecker put up his company's money, so he would be a suspect.
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The truth is that Trump's relationship with Pecker is long and close.
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Gail: Pecker politics definitely tops anything else we can possibly talk about.
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Near the very beginning of Trump's campaign, in August 2015, AMI's CEO David Pecker had a meeting with Cohen, at which Pecker floated the idea of buying the silence of women who came forward with allegations about Trump.
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Trump hosted a dinner for Pecker and a French businessman with ties to the Saudi royal family, for example, at a time when, according to the New York Times, Pecker was looking to expand AMI's business with the kingdom.
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On Thursday, Trump friend David Pecker, chairman of publishing giant American Media Inc.
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The company's chairman, David J. Pecker, is a close friend of the president's.
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The order also permanently bans Pecker and Vision from trading, the CFTC said.
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Pecker and Howard did not respond to Vanity Fair's multiple requests for comment.
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Has Jeff Bezos' impressive exposure of Pecker finally broken the curse of Weiner?
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For Pecker, the Tiger Woods story encapsulates the grim ethos of Enquirer readers.
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When Pecker gave a speech at Pace, his alma mater, Trump introduced him.
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This confirmed reports dating back to August that Pecker had been granted immunity.
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Pecker has emerged as a central figure in the scandal involving the payments.
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When the last one goes, the Dead Pecker Club will die with him.
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Over the next several weeks, Pecker and Howard negotiated the deal with McDougal.
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The president has longstanding ties to David Pecker, the chief executive of AMI.
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Here are five times that Mr. Pecker and his company, American Media Inc.
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Mr. Pecker has long used his media empire to protect Mr. Trump's image.
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Why would David Pecker say he did it if he didn't do it?
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Mr. Pecker would presumably have a great deal of information useful to them.
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In exchange, Pecker agreed to provide federal prosecutors information on hush money deals.
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Pecker fit that bill, so the prosecutors were willing to give him immunity.
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A lawyer for Pecker and New York DA's office both declined to comment.
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Mr. Bezos said he had been told that Mr. Pecker was personally involved.
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David J. Pecker, American Media's chairman, has a longstanding allegiance to Mr. Trump.
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Mr. Cohen and Mr. Pecker, the American Media chief, have done business before.
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After all, they never made the payment [to buy the rights from Pecker].
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The list also includes David Pecker, chairman of National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc.
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David Pecker, the chairman of parent company American Media Inc (AMI), is Trump's friend.
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He also cited Trump's alleged friendship with the CEO of the Enquirer, David Pecker.
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Pecker also would be able to discuss details about the payment to Stormy Daniels.
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But then, according to Catch and Kill, Pecker put a stop to the investigation.
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The Enquirer is published by Pecker, who has been friends with Trump for years.
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David Pecker, the chairman of parent company American Media Inc (AMI) is Trump's friend.
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The one thing we can do is saddle his character with a tiny pecker.
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Pecker combs his luxuriant hair straight back over the collars of his monogrammed shirts.
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When I asked him about the contretemps, Pecker explained it as a financial decision.
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" The magazine came out for five years and was, according to Pecker, "very successful.
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But Pecker and Howard, after some discussions, decided not to get their company involved.
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Bad show The hosts also addressed Trump's friendship with National Enquirer owner David Pecker.
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One former senior editor said Pecker specifically protected Trump, whom he considered a friend.
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It was an opportune moment for Mr. Pecker to showcase his White House connections.
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Bezos said he learned earlier this week that Pecker was "apoplectic" about the investigation.
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AMI's CEO, David Pecker, has a long-reported friendly relationship with the Saudi government.
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The Enquirer&aposs proprietor, David Pecker, has a longstanding relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed.
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"I think that there's a huge opportunity," Pecker told The New Yorker in July.
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Pecker was granted immunity in a federal investigation into former Trump attorney Michael Cohen.
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The allegations: Mr. Bezos said intermediaries for David Pecker, chairman of American Media Inc.
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" Multiplying fronts in Trump probes: NBC News: "Trump was the third person in the room in August 2015 when his lawyer Michael Cohen and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker discussed ways Pecker could help counter negative stories about Trump's relationships with women.
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Trump and Cohen call Pecker a dear friend and refer to the purchasing of the rights to McDougal's story—what's striking about [that] is that neither Trump nor Cohen express any question that Pecker would, indeed, sell the rights to the story.
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The report said Trump asked Pecker what he could do to help Trump's presidential campaign.
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Pecker also received public praise from Trump that may have helped him professionally and financially.
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They think too much of having shaded out A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
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The extramarital affair — and MBS's relationship with David Pecker — may have given him the opportunity.
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In the event Mr Bezos was able to stare down Mr Pecker, his alleged antagonist.
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While Weiner's weiner brought us Trump, Pecker's pecker-related threats may help to bury him.
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Pecker has proved to be a canny leader in a difficult time for print publications.
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Pecker said that the Enquirer's support of Trump is a straightforward response to its audience.
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" Pecker conveyed this admiration to Trump directly: "I'd tell him every time I'd see him.
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Trump is friendly with David Pecker, CEO of the tabloid's parent company American Media Inc.
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When asked about the arrangement, time and again, Pecker, Cohen, and Trump all denied it.
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According to the Associated Press, Pecker kept a safe full of negative stories on Trump.
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We also know that Cohen worked with Pecker to cover up embarrassing information about Trump.
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The newspaper publisher to whom Trump is closest is David Pecker of The National Enquirer.
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Among the records prosecutors subpoenaed last spring were communications between Mr. Pecker and Mr. Howard.
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Pecker and the Enquirer have often provided a friendly forum for news on the president.
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The Journal also said following the raid, investigators asked Hicks "about her contacts" with Pecker.
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David J. Pecker, the publication's owner, was not only a longtime friend of Mr. Trump.
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And David J. Pecker, the chairman of American Media, was famously close to Mr. Trump.
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Mr. Pecker reached an immunity deal with prosecutors in exchange for providing them with information.
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He accused David J. Pecker, the chairman of The Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc.
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In 2013, he tweeted several times urging Time Magazine to hire Pecker as its top executive.
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Pecker was subpoenaed by federal investigators in April, as were his company and the Trump Organization.
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I have a weird feeling I might show up in some of that David Pecker stuff.
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The tabloid is run by Trump's longtime friend David Pecker and Cohen helps negotiate the deal.
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This effectively buries the story; AMI's CEO, David Pecker, is a longtime personal friend of Trump's.
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And while Weiner's weiner brought us Trump, Pecker's pecker-related threats may help to bury him.
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Pecker joined Mar-a-Lago in 2003 and attended Donald's marriage to Melania there in 2005.
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"The last time I looked, I am the C.E.O. of this company," Pecker told a reporter.
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Sources told the Post that Pecker, chief executive of the Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc.
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American Media CEO David Pecker is a major supporter and personal friend of President Donald Trump.
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The newspaper reported that Trump asked Pecker what he could do to help his presidential campaign.
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Pecker has declined to comment on Trump, but prosecutors said on Wednesday that American Media Inc.
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That means Pecker and others are now at risk and could present additional risks for Trump.
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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Pecker has taken an immunity deal with federal prosecutors.
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That follows the news of another immunity deal with David Pecker, CEO of American Media, Inc.
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He bet on loyalty, believing friends like Michael Cohen, David Pecker and Omarosa would never turn.
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Cohen's response: Pecker, former Enquirer executive editor Barry Levine, and Enquirer chief content officer Dylan Howard.
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The magazine, whose chief executive, David Pecker, is friends with Mr. Trump, then killed the story.
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The cooperation of Mr. Pecker is another potential blow to the president from a former loyalist.
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One of the people briefed on the matter cautioned that Mr. Pecker could still face scrutiny.
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Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Enquirer owner David Pecker have a years-long business relationship.
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Pecker was granted immunity last summer to provide federal investigators information on such hush money deals.
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Pecker also provided investigators with details about payments Cohen made to the women, the sources said.
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Pecker considers himself a longtime friend of the President, whose relationship with Trump dates back decades.
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Cohen testified that Pecker had helped kill a prospective story on an alleged Trump love child.
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American Media's owner, David Pecker, is a friend of President Trump, who has criticized The Post.
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Several days ago, an AMI leader advised us that Mr. Pecker is "apoplectic" about our investigation.
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The most prominent concerns for the defense should be the discussion of [AMI executive] David Pecker.
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Trump had a decadeslong close relationship with AMI CEO David Pecker, and Pecker and the Enquirer protected Trump from his misdeeds through a tabloid practice called "catch and kill," in which the Enquirer bought the rights to embarrassing stories involving Trump and then wouldn't publish them.
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They struck a deal: Manigault-Newman would drop the lawsuit and Pecker would give her a job.
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Trump is reported to have supplied Pecker with information the National Enquirer could turn into juicy stories.
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Trump's election also opened up new avenues for more gossip exchanges and more business opportunities for Pecker.
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Bezos' post also notes the connections between Enquirer-publisher David Pecker, Donald Trump, and the Saudi government.
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This isn't the first time Reynolds has shared his strong opinion on pecker pics with the world.
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A.M.I's chief executive, David Pecker, has described Trump as a "personal friend," according to The New Yorker.
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" Trump has been friends for decades with "David Pecker, the longtime chief executive of American Media, Inc.
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Pecker and Bezos have sparred over a series of messages and photos National Enquirer has of Bezos.
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AMI's board of directors has four people, including its chairman, David Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump.
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Some people have implicated David Pecker in all this—the publisher of AMI and the National Enquirer.
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You've written about the president's David Pecker, and those still in place, with McDougal and Stormy Daniels.
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"That jail photo—we would have had that first," Pecker told me, referring to Woods's mug shot.
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"What happened was, Tiger gets into the S.U.V., she came out of the restaurant," Pecker told me.
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That's what happened when Pecker bought US Weekly , which has heretofore largely been apolitical in its orientation.
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Pecker has no strong political views, but he has a fascination with, and a reverence for, celebrity.
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That document said Cohen, Pecker, and "one or more members of the campaign" met in August 2015.
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Pecker met with Cohen and "another member of the campaign" in August 2015, according to the agreement.
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The reports claim AMI CEO and chairman David Pecker protected Trump by "catching and killing" the piece.
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"Pecker really considered him a friend," Jerry George, a former AMI senior editor, told the New Yorker.
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Federal prosecutors in New York gave Mr. Pecker an immunity deal in its investigation of the arrangement.
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One was for David Pecker, a tabloid executive close to President Trump who oversees The National Enquirer.
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The people familiar with the investigation said prosecutors sought similar communications from Mr. Howard and Mr. Pecker.
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The prosecutors' agreement with Mr. Pecker adds another twist to a highly unusual case implicating the president.
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Pecker&aposs company recently produced a 97-page magazine extolling the "magic" of the new Saudi Arabia.
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But the relationship between the Enquirer&aposs proprietor, David Pecker, and the Saudi regime is inviting questions.
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According to the court filing, Cohen and Pecker worked to suppress potentially damaging claims against candidate Trump.
|
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Pecker then contacted Cohen, and Cohen negotiated with the woman's attorney to "purchase [her] silence" for $130,000.
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And a storybook villain named David Pecker, which is a name worthy of a Charles Dickens character.
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Also, David Pecker, the president's close friend and chairman of the parent company of The National Enquirer.
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David Pecker, the chair and CEO of AMI, has described Trump as a "personal friend," Farrow notes.
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American Media, whose chief executive, David J. Pecker, is close with Mr. Trump, never published her story.
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"That arrangement, combined with Cohen's past business dealings and friendship with Pecker, and the fact that Enquirer employees are reportedly not moving from AMI's Lower Manhattan headquarters, will undoubtedly lead to curiosity about whether Pecker might retain at least a dash of influence" over the Enquirer, Pompeo wrote.
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In addition, the list of potential subpoenas included David Pecker, chairman of National Enquirer parent American Media Inc.
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AMI Chairman and Chief Executive Office David J. Pecker and Trump are longtime friends, the Journal points out.
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Cohen's answers pointed to David Pecker, the chair and CEO of National Enquirer parent company American Media Inc.
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How he did it: In 2015, Trump asked American Media CEO Pecker to help him with his campaign.
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" As a former Enquirer staffer, who was generally critical of Pecker, told me, "This was his finest hour.
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Pecker was also invited to a lavish wedding that Trump organized for his ex-wife Ivana, in 2008.
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At Hachette, Pecker set out to learn about the sales, marketing, and manufacturing sides of the magazine business.
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Cohen, Pecker and Trump's current lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, did not respond to requests from the Post for comment.
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" He added "Several days ago, an AMI leader advised us that Mr. Pecker is 'apoplectic' about our investigation.
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Pecker worked with Trump and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to squash embarrassing stories during the 2016 campaign.
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What would have motivated Pecker to buy the exclusive rights to stories about Trump, only to bury them?
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That CEO is believed to be David Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump's who heads American Media Inc.
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But it would fit into Trump's pattern of behavior, as evidenced by the arrangement Trump had with Pecker.
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According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump attended this meeting and asked Pecker for help with his campaign.
|
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It also emerged that David Pecker, a tabloid publisher close to Mr. Trump, was granted immunity by prosecutors.
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Pecker is one of the board members, so legal analysts expressed skepticism about the legitimacy of the investigation.
|
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Bezos' noted that legitimate media outlets have speculated Pecker had used AMI and the Enquirer for political purposes.
|
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Cohen, then an attorney for the Trump Organization, was in touch with Pecker over the next few weeks.
|
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Pecker acknowledges their personal closeness, and reports have documented what looks like a significant amount of back-scratching.
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CEO David Pecker says his client did not engage in extortion or blackmail against Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
|
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Michael Sanchez is a California public relations executive who is close to Pecker, according to the Washington Post.
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Last year American Media, Pecker, and Chief Content Officer Dylan Howard struck an immunity deal with federal prosecutors.
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He wrote: Several days ago, an AMI leader advised us that Mr. Pecker is "apoplectic" about our investigation.
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Besides unbridled consumerism, Americans love nothing more than seeing a bully like Pecker get kicked in the groin.
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Going forward, I think we need to start describing all of these ties as the Axis of Pecker.
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David Pecker would be a brilliant choice as CEO of TIME Magazine — nobody could bring it back like David!
|
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David Pecker, the Trump ally who runs the company behind the Enquirer, reportedly had business interests in Saudi Arabia.
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Contrary to the speculation, it doesn't seem to reveal anything about the Enquirer or AMI; David Pecker isn't mentioned.
|
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In the post, Bezos reproduced emails that appear to show associates of David Pecker—chair of American Media Inc.
|
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The outcome of the crucial refinancing remained uncertain as Mr. Pecker weighed whether to proceed with the explosive story.
|
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McDougal was silenced by Trump's friend, David Pecker, who bought her story for National Enquirer and then spiked it.
|
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David Pecker, chief executive of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, was also granted immunity in the investigation.
|
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If that is accurate, Trump was a participant in the illegal blueprint, and Pecker could testify to as much.
|
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In exchange, Pecker has agreed to testify about hush money paid to women who had sexual affairs with Trump.
|
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He seemingly pledged not to sell Fortune to David Pecker, chairman and CEO of National Enquirer publisher American Media.
|
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CNN reported later Thursday that Trump had been in the room when Cohen and Pecker discussed the hush payment.
|
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Mr. Cohen describes the agreement with "our friend David," a reference to the company's chief executive, David J. Pecker.
|
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In admitting to the scheme, Mr. Pecker, his lieutenant Dylan Howard and A.M.I. are now protected from criminal prosecution.
|
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Mr. Trump has been a longtime public supporter of Mr. Pecker and the tabloid he has overseen since 1999.
|
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AMI is the publisher of the National Enquirer, which is led by David Pecker, a close friend of Trump.
|
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Their relationship grew over the years with Pecker frequently visiting Mar-a-Lago and flying on Trump's private planes.
|
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At the same time, the American Media chairman David J. Pecker sought business opportunities and financing in Saudi Arabia.
|
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Pecker now may share anything's he knows about these payments with federal authorities without fear or threat or prosecution.
|
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Last year, Pecker was granted immunity in the investigation into the hush money payments and subsequently admitted to them.
|
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The paper also said investigators "learned of calls" between Schiller and David Pecker, the head of American Media Inc.
|
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Pecker was granted immunity by federal prosecutors in 2018 to speak about the work he did in protecting Trump.
|
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David Pecker is the chairman of A.M.I.; he has acknowledged being "personal friends" with Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump.
|
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It's worth noting that Mr. Trump has not publicly called Mr. Pecker a "co-rat," at least so far.
|
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It also asked for all communications between Cohen and two top National Enquirer figures, David Pecker and Dylan Howard.
|
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In many ways, the tape confirmed what people have been saying about the nature of the David Pecker contract.
|
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Jubeir said he was not aware of any links between the Saudi government and AMI or its CEO David Pecker.
|
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In September 2018, CEO David Pecker and Chief Content Officer Dylan Howard reached a non-prosecution deal with federal officials.
|
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Pecker and another AMI executive were granted immunity as part of prosecutors' probe, Vanity Fair also reported over the summer.
|
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It's suspected that Levin or National Enquirer's David Pecker bought Trump's mysterious "elevator tape" so they could kill the story.
|
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Pecker is the owner of the National Enquirer, and prosecutors say he knows about three key moments in Trump's campaign.
|
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After being promised immunity by federal prosecutors, David Pecker, chairman of The National Enquirer, and Dylan Howard, American Media Inc.
|
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He intervened in a separate legal case on behalf of David Pecker , chief executive of Enquirer parent American Media Inc.
|
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"Donald threw this unbelievable party for her at Mar-a-Lago—maybe seven or eight hundred people," Pecker told me.
|
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Pecker is now considering expanding his business: he may bid to take over the financially strapped magazines of Time, Inc.
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At a hale sixty-five, Pecker looks as though he could be heading out for a night at the disco.
|
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Prosecutors also reportedly granted immunity to Trump ally David Pecker, the CEO of the company that publishes the National Enquirer.
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He intervened in a separate legal case on behalf of David Pecker, chief executive of Enquirer parent American Media Inc.
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Pecker has been accused of helping the president kill unfavorable stories about his past affairs during the 2016 presidential race.
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"Once she's part of the company, then on the outside she can't be bashing Trump and American Media," Pecker said.
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Cohen personally arranged the deal with Daniels after Pecker refused to get involved in a payment to a porn star.
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Pecker is a longtime friend of President Trump, who has railed against Bezos over his ownership of The Washington Post.
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Where Edwards had the late heiress "Bunny" Mellon and his campaign manager, Trump allegedly had Pecker and his personal counsel.
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That's significant because it shows Trump and Pecker had an understanding about hush money payments well before they actually happened.
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Per the Journal, AMI executives then tipped off Cohen, Cohen told Trump, and then Trump called Pecker asking for help.
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The man to his immediate right on a black leather sofa is David Pecker, the president of Hachette Filipacchi Magazines.
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In that meeting, Mr. Pecker agreed to help the campaign by identifying negative stories about Mr. Trump's relationships with women.
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Mr. Pecker, whose company is expected to be of continued interest in the investigation, has a similar arrangement with prosecutors.
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" Mr. Pecker made that promise, prosecutors said, "in coordination with" Mr. Cohen, "and one or more members of the campaign.
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Prosecutors also granted immunity to David Pecker, a longtime Trump ally and the CEO of tabloid publisher American Media Inc.
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In his blog post, Bezos said that "an AMI leader advised us" that Pecker was "apoplectic" about de Becker's investigation.
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And if all of this wasn't bad enough for Mr. Trump, enter David Pecker, the publisher of the National Inquirer.
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In October 2016, they said, Mr. Pecker instructed Mr. Cohen to "tear up" the document relating to Ms. McDougal's contract.
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This Kardashian shared her perfectly polished pecker on social media ... Can you guess the girl behind the glossy fish gape?
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The use of a surrogate like David Pecker to remove that political danger plays easily into a campaign-finance violation.
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But the paper, which is run by longtime Trump friend David Pecker, never ran the story, effectively keeping it silent.
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Even if they're not sure what Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne plan on doing with the property — and even if Marc Benioff seemed set on buying Fortune magazine until very recently — it is much better than other scenarios they'd envisioned, like working for the Koch brothers, or David Pecker (yes, that David Pecker).
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Chairman David Pecker had given prosecutors details about the president's knowledge of payments Cohen made to women alleging affairs with Trump.
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After signing off on the arrangement, AMI chief executive David Pecker allegedly told Cohen to rip up the paperwork, prosecutors allege.
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When Pecker got to know Jared Kushner, the pair bonded over their interest in the media and considered doing business together.
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In 1990, Pecker was named the president of Hachette, which later bought Premiere , a movie magazine, with the financier Ronald Perelman.
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Bezos in the Medium post accused AMI of threatening him after Pecker discovered he had initiated an investigation into the Enquirer.
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The CEO of American Media, David Pecker, was granted immunity by prosecutors pursuing Cohen, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.
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Pecker and the Enquirer have also been feuding with Jeff Bezos, the chief of Amazon and the owner of the Post.
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That Pecker and Cohen acted entirely independently, spending their own money to silence allegations that the president has said are untrue.
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I've actually come up and I've spoken — "Our friend David" is David Pecker, who chairs AMI and oversees the National Enquirer.
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David J. Pecker, the tabloid media mogul whose company owns The National Enquirer, has always showcased his ties to President Trump.
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The night of the dinner, Mr. Pecker got something from Mr. Trump: an unofficial seal of approval from the White House.
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How the National Enquirer's David Pecker, 'the bad boy of magazines,' went from betraying Trump to facing off with Jeff Bezos
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Last year AMI, the company's CEO David Pecker, and chief content officer Dylan Howard struck an immunity deal with federal prosecutors.
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AMI and its executives Pecker and Dylan Howard reached non-prosecution agreements and testified with immunity before the federal grand jury.
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Pecker then contacted Cohen, who in turn negotiated with Daniels' attorney to "purchase [her] silence" for $353,000, according to the filings.
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CNN has exclusively obtained a copy of the signed "source agreement" between Sajudin and AMI, which is led by David Pecker.
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Federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York gave Mr. Pecker an immunity deal in its investigation of the arrangement.
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But the Enquirer, which is owned by a friend of Trump's named David Pecker, never published anything — effectively burying the story.
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That's curious since Pecker had only recently purchased the rights to the story and insisted he did so for journalistic purposes.
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Trump, his lawyer Michael D. Cohen and Mr. Pecker have strategized about protecting him and lashing out at his political enemies.
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Immunity has been granted to his gossip shield, David Pecker, CEO of the National Enquirer's publisher; and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg.
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Experts said the deals were a sign Weisselberg, Pecker and Howard faced criminal exposure because the government did not grant immunity lightly.
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Pecker offered to use the National Enquirer to silence women who claim to have had sexual relationships with Trump, according to WSJ.
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The outlet also said that Pecker and Howard's conversations with investigators seem to have "informed the charging documents" in the Cohen case.
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The catch being that David Pecker, publisher of the Enquirer's parent company, American Media, and Trump are close old friends and associates.
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Bezos declined to comment to the N.Y.T. In the media world, Weinstein allegedly counted on allies like Pecker, whose American Media Inc.
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At A.M.I. board meetings, which are often held at Mar-a-Lago, Pecker boasts of his relentless cost-cutting at the magazines.
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"I was the one who was able to get the license, and I received the Dynomax in the Bronx," Pecker told me.
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Tabloid executive David Pecker, a friend and ally of the president, is also reported to have struck an immunity deal with prosecutors.
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In a Medium post Thursday night, the Amazon CEO vowed not to fall for "extortion" tactics from Pecker and American Media Inc.
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David Pecker, the chief executive of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, was also granted immunity, according to reports on Thursday.
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David Pecker, the chief executive of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, was also granted immunity, according to reports on Thursday.
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McDougal alleges that Trump friend and owner of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, paid her $150,000 for exclusive ownership of her story.
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President Trump and his old friend David J. Pecker, whose company owns The National Enquirer, have long had a mutually beneficial relationship.
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When Mr. Pecker's friend Harvey Weinstein suggested last fall that they team up to purchase Rolling Stone, Mr. Pecker expressed little interest.
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Mr. Pecker told Mr. Cohen in October 2016 that the deal was off, and told him to tear up the signed agreement.
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Mr. Burkle and David J. Pecker, American Media's chief executive, are said to be friends and have invested in media deals together.
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And in intriguing news: David Pecker, a tabloid executive close to President Trump, has been granted immunity by prosecutors, our reporters learned.
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But before the agreement was consummated, court papers say, the National Enquirer's owner, Mr. Pecker, told Mr. Cohen to tear it up.
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We don't know precisely what Bezos found in his investigation and what he meant by the "Saudi angle" that apparently alarmed Pecker.
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The "Saudi angle" of Bezos' own investigation into the leaks seemed to have "hit a particularly sensitive nerve" with Pecker, Bezos wrote.
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David Pecker, the CEO of National Enquirer publisher American Media, Inc, indicated he was interested in purchasing Time weekly titles last summer.
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That payment was to buy the rights to McDougal's story, which Pecker, a longtime Trump friend, had purchased but refused to run.
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Why is Pecker "apoplectic" about Bezos' investigation into who leaked the story to the Enquirer and whether the leak was politically motivated?
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At that presser, Cruz also noted Trump's relationship with Enquirer CEO David Pecker as evidence that the Donald was behind the story.
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Trump is also a noted ally of National Enquirer chief executive David Pecker, as Adam K. Raymond writes at New York Magazine.
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Might the dynamics of the Trump-Pecker relationship provide insight into the perils of the continuing give and take between Trump and Putin?
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David Pecker, chairman and chief executive of National Enquirer publisher American Media (left) and Michael Cohen (right), former personal attorney for President Trump.
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Time magazine should name David Pecker of American Media to be its top guy...but they are not smart enough to do that!
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And Cohen and AMI's CEO David Pecker reportedly met in 2015 to discuss ways the media company could aid him in the election.
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Mr. Trump, who was from Queens, and the Bronx-born Mr. Pecker viewed themselves as outsiders looking in at an elitist Manhattan establishment.
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Along with cooperation from Cohen, investigators are being helped by Trump-friend National Enquirer publisher David Pecker and the tabloid's parent company, AMI.
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"Once she's part of the company, then on the outside she can't be bashing Trump and American Media," Pecker told the New Yorker.
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The Enquirer cost a dollar and forty-nine cents when Pecker bought it; the current price is four dollars and ninety-nine cents.
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Pecker created a custom-publishing division at Hachette, producing magazines for clients who would dictate the content and then distribute them to customers.
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During the campaign, Trump asked Pecker to stop McDougal from telling her story, and Pecker's company paid $150,000 to the former Playboy model.
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Bezos also suggested in his blog post that The Washington Post's coverage of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has upset Pecker.
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Pecker has denied burying negative stories about Trump, but acknowledged to the New Yorker last summer that McDougal's contract had effectively silenced her.
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It has now been established that Cohen worked with Pecker to set up a $150,000 payment to Karen McDougal before the 2016 election.
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Pecker has reportedly discussed with prosecutor's Cohen's involvement in the president's alleged nondisclosure payment deals with women prior to the 2016 presidential election.
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Because like Pecker, you can be sure that Putin, too, keeps a favor bank, including a record of all loans and other disbursements.
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He was referring to David J. Pecker, the owner of The National Enquirer, which published the allegations of sexual affairs against Mr. Cruz.
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If there is to be a new generation of the Dead Pecker Club, he'll no doubt be right at the center of it.
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Go deeper: Trump organization CFO Allen Weisselberg gets immunity David Pecker granted immunity in Cohen investigation GOP fears Cohen set road to impeachment
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Former AMI staffers told Farrow that buying stories with no intention of running them was common practice for the company's CEO, David Pecker.
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Mr. Cohen formed his own bond with Mr. Pecker, keeping in touch with him and Dylan Howard, a top executive, throughout the campaign.
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At the meeting, Mr. Pecker described his vision for expanding his events business, which includes the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition, into Saudi Arabia.
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At the time, Mr. Pecker was pursuing business there while also hunting for financing for acquisitions, The New York Times reported in March.
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In fact, the prosecutors said, Mr. Howard and Mr. Pecker connected Mr. Cohen with Mr. Davidson, the lawyer who represented Ms. Clifford then.
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The "Saudi angle" of Bezos&apos own investigation into the leaks seemed to have "hit a particularly sensitive nerve" with Pecker, Bezos wrote.
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After the Bezos allegations against Pecker hit last Thursday, AMI announced that its board of directors had convened and ordered an immediate investigation.
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The AP reports that Perrotta handled investigative work directed by the publisher's CEO David Pecker, who reportedly maintains a friendly relationship with Trump.
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And Cohen testified that Trump had an arrangement stretching back more than a decade with David Pecker, the CEO of American Media Inc.
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" An attorney for AMI CEO David Pecker, Elkan Abramowitz, said in February that the source for the tabloid's story was "not Saudi Arabia.
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Pecker has received immunity in the Cohen case for providing details of the payments to prosecutors, a source confirmed to CNN on Friday.
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That certainly fulfills the narrative that many people have of the Pecker contract—that it was, indeed, an effort to bury the story.
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This social media superstar has herself in a hairy situation ... can you guess the reality royalty behind the bushy brows and pink pecker?
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On Thursday, American Media Chairman David Pecker was granted immunity by federal prosecutors as part of an investigation of Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer.
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Cooperation with authorities by Pecker and Howard could further implicate Trump in connection with the payments, which prosecutors have said violated campaign finance laws.
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Also on Wednesday, it was reported that one of Trump's most powerful allies, David Pecker, chairman of The National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc.
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Trump allegedly used David Pecker, owner of the National Inquirer, to give former Playboy bunny Karen McDougal a well paid job as a writer.
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It now appears Cohen was informed of the $85033,000 deal, widely viewed as a "catch and kill" payment by Pecker to bury the controversy.
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The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Pecker was granted immunity by prosecutors pursuing Cohen, who pleaded guilty to criminal charges last week.
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Trump has had a longstanding relationship with the Enquirer and with Pecker, with the tabloid purchasing damaging gossip about Trump but making it public.
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According to the Post, this practice was part of Trump's close relationship with David Pecker, chairman of the Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc.
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The National Enquirer's publisher, AMI, is headed up by David Pecker, who has a friendship with President Trump that dates back to the 1990s.
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Bezos highlighted Pecker's reported personal ties to the Saudis, and wrote that "the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve" with Pecker.
|
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We know that Cohen played the fixer in Trump's dealings with Pecker and that he played a similar role in Trump's dealings with Putin.
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A.M.I. would not say who else was among the "select group of friends" Mr. Pecker took to the White House at the president's invitation.
|
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The prosecutors had already asked for communications between Mr. Cohen and American Media's chairman, David J. Pecker, and its chief content officer, Dylan Howard.
|
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Then, according to prosecutors, Mr. Pecker and Mr. Howard spoke with Mr. Cohen over an encrypted telephone line, persuading him to finalize the deal.
|
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Anthrax was found in AMI's Boca Raton, Florida offices and Pecker led the charge in representing the company in public appearances with federal investigators.
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Pecker and Trump are longtime friends and during the 2016 election the Enquirer often targeted Trump's political opponents, while providing him with glowing coverage.
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Pecker told prosecutors that Trump had knowledge of Cohen's payments to women who had alleged sexual encounters with the then-presidential candidate, CNN reported.
|
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The Southern District prosecutors declined to comment, but one can speculate about why they gave passes to Pecker, Weisselberg, Don, Jr., and the President.
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The meeting could result in Pecker being a potential critical witness down the road in any legal action against Trump or the Trump Organization.
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Catch-and-kill Cohen also resurfaced details of Trump's efforts to suppress unflattering stories with the help of Pecker, who received immunity from prosecutors.
|
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According to the Post's report, the Judiciary Committee believes there might be more information to be gleaned from AMI and David Pecker, its CEO.
|
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That led Pecker and Howard to tell Cohen about Daniels; he then negotiated a deal to pay her $130,000 in exchange for her silence.
|
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The political angle: Speculation ensued that the report had arisen out of the closeness of The Enquirer's chief, David Pecker, to the White House.
|
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Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court on Tuesday to campaign finance violations related to his role in brokering the deals with McDougal and Pecker.
|
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The immunity deal could hold significant consequences for Trump, as Pecker could have as much damaging information about the president as anyone in Trump's orbit.
|
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Pecker has also reportedly used his media holdings to shield Trump when the president was a New York real estate developer and reality television star.
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In this case, the editors' willingness shows the strength of the relationship between Trump and longtime friend David Pecker, chief executive of American Media Inc.
|
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Pecker provided information regarding Trump's knowledge on payments made to women alleging to have had affairs with the president, according to The Wall Street Journal.
|
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Cohen then called Hicks, then got a call from Pecker and then called Trump, with that final call lasting eight minutes, according to the documents.
|
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Pecker received immunity from federal prosecutors last year in exchange for providing information on Trump attorney Michael Cohen's payments to women alleging affairs with Trump.
|
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Pecker hired McDougal as a columnist and paid her a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the rights to the story, which he never published.
|
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The over-all decline in the marketplace, notwithstanding, Pecker persuaded the board to put up a hundred million dollars to buy US Weekly from Wenner.
|
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The result was a magazine called Trump Style , which today looks like a glossy preview of the coverage Pecker later gave Trump in his tabloids.
|
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AMI, which is led by Trump friend David Pecker, denied that Trump or Cohen played a role in its decision not to run the story.
|
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The real scandal isn't necessarily that Trump had another affair, but that a Trump ally—tabloid king David Pecker, the CEO of American Media Inc.
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The company said that AMI's publisher, David Pecker, an unabashed Trump supporter, had not coordinated its coverage with Trump associates or taken direction from Trump.
|
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Pecker, who has said in court filings that the decision to buy and bury McDougal's story was his First Amendment Right, defiles the journalism profession.
|
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Pecker became entangled with federal prosecutors thanks to evidence and testimony provided by the president's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who has also flipped on Trump.
|
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Putting ethical concerns aside, both Cohen and Pecker can note that (unlike the figures in the Edwards case) they did not hold any campaign position.
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Pecker started in the media business as an accountant, and he has attempted to impose a numbers-based rigor on the raucous world of tabloids.
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What we learned specifically from the tape is that Trump was well aware of Cohen's involvement with AMI and David Pecker in hushing up McDougal.
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In July, David J. Pecker, the chairman of the company that owns The National Enquirer, visited his old friend President Trump at the White House.
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Oh, by the way, there is a guy named "Pecker" (publisher of the National Enquirer) and a guy named "Harder" (one of Trump's attorneys) involved.
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Pecker first started working with Donald Trump in the late 1990s, when he started a new branch at Hachette dedicated to making magazines for clients.
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In 2013, Trump took to Twitter to write a slew of fawning tweets about Pecker, saying he should be put in charge of "Time" magazine.
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And Pecker took a guest with ties to the Saudi government to a White House dinner in July 2017, according to The New York Times.
|
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Bezos' investigation may have touched on Saudi Arabia, which apparently prompted a reaction from David Pecker, CEO of the Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc.
|
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In February, Bezos published an explosive blog post where he accused National Enquirer publisher AMI and its CEO, David Pecker, of attempting to blackmail him.
|
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The meeting between Pecker and the local prosecutors shows that investigators are still trying to connect the dots between Trump and the hush money payments.
|
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Chairman David Pecker is a longtime friend of Trump's, and the Enquirer was one of Trump's most reliable and enthusiastic media boosters during the campaign.
|
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Mr. Pecker had been steadfast in his support of Mr. Trump, equating any attack against him as an attack against A.M.I. But one associate of Mr. Pecker's, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Pecker felt betrayed when the president's legal team failed to push back against revelations in July that Mr. Cohen had recorded a conversation with Mr. Trump discussing the McDougal payment.
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AMI has previously denied any political motive behind its story about Bezos and Sanchez, though its chairman David Pecker is a longtime ally of Donald Trump.
|
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"Because of this focus, we feel the future opportunities with the tabloids can be best exploited by a different ownership," Pecker said in a statement Wednesday.
|
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Last July, he accompanied Mr. Pecker to a White House dinner with Mr. Trump, along with another A.M.I. financial backer, Anthony Melchiorre, of Chatham Asset Management.
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"Veep" star Sam Richardson says he knows one sure thing that'll make a man's pecker shrivel like a frightened turtle ... dating someone with opposing political views.
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There are no formal rules for the level of explicitness or vulgarity that the chains will tolerate, but Pecker is careful not to push the limits.
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" But Pecker had a condition for hiring her: "Once she's part of the company, then on the outside she can't be bashing Trump and American Media.
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In 1996, after Perelman questioned a Premiere investigation about financial problems at Planet Hollywood, a company to which Perelman had business ties, Pecker killed the story.
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Pecker had a home in Palm Beach, not far from Mar-a-Lago, and a neighbor there introduced him to Trump, who agreed to the project.
|
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A Justice Department official told the Journal that Pecker did not meet the regulations that would allow prosecutors to obtain records of members of the media.
|
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It's long been known that the president loves to cultivate the tabloid press and has a relationship with David Pecker, chief executive of American Media Inc.
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The settlement The 30-page settlement is signed by McDougal and David Pecker, the chairman and CEO of AMI, who also is a friend of Trump.
|
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Sessions and Pecker join a growing list of former Trump associates, friends and allies with whom the president is either feuding or entangled in legal battles.
|
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Details: Bezos notes that David Pecker, the owner of the National Enquirer and its parent company AMI, is suspected of using the publication for political purposes.
|
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AMI chairman David Pecker is a longtime friend of Trump's, and the Enquirer was one of Trump's most reliable and enthusiastic media boosters during the campaign.
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In 2016, Trump and his then lawyer Michael Cohen wanted to make a deal with David Pecker, the CEO of the company that runs National Enquirer.
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According to court filings, Trump was joined by Michael Cohen, who was his attorney at the time, and David Pecker, the chairman of American Media Inc.
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NBC News has reported that Trump was the third person in the room where Pecker and Cohen plotted to silence women to save Trump's election chances.
|
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The big picture: David Pecker, American Media's chairman and a Trump ally, ordered his tabloid to stay away from sensitive allegations about Trump for two decades.
|
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He also said the company did not plan to sell the titles to another possible suitor: David J. Pecker, the chief executive of American Media Inc.
|
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Mr. Pecker showcased that connection during a dinner at the White House last year, as he was seeking to expand his business interests into Saudi Arabia.
|
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Through an Oval Office visit and at dinner with Mr. Trump, Mr. Pecker showcased his access to the president — and word got back to Saudi Arabia.
|
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Mr. Grine and Mr. Pecker soon had a series of discussions about the investment landscape in Saudi Arabia, according to a person briefed on the talks.
|
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After the publisher cut a deal, it is unclear how close Pecker and Trump are today, and the president has yet to comment on the situation.
|
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The investigation appears to be continuing, and as a longtime friend and ally of Mr. Trump, Mr. Pecker could have additional information valuable to the prosecutors.
|
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According to prosecutors, when Ms. McDougal and Mr. Davidson approached American Media, Mr. Pecker, along with his top editorial executive, Dylan Howard, immediately informed Mr. Cohen.
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In March 2018, Pecker&aposs AMI produced 200,000 copies of a 97-page glossy magazine extolling the "magic" of the crown prince&aposs reformed Saudi Arabia.
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Investigators have interviewed Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal attorney, and David Pecker, a long-time confidant of Trump who ran the tabloid newspaper The National Enquirer.
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It isn't clear what arrangement Pecker has with the New York DA's office, but under certain non-prosecution agreements the obligation can continue to other investigations.
|
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That person is David Pecker, CEO of American Media, the New York-based publisher that owns the Enquirer, the other tabloids and Radaronline, its Web tabloid.
|
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On Tuesday, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to, among other things, working with Mr. Pecker to pay Ms. Clifford, at Mr. Trump's behest, to influence the election.
|
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Prosecutors granting Pecker immunity means he won't face criminal charges himself, but he'll be compelled to testify — even if that means against his old friend Trump.
|
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This Kardashian pursed her pecker while posing at a recent press tour ... Can you guess which member of the Kardashian krew this polished pair belongs to?
|
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Also like Pecker, Putin helped direct the release of disinformation meant to promote Trump and hurt Clinton, according to a report by the Director of National Intelligence.
|
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Speier also asked Cohen about stories purchased but never published by American Media Inc, publisher of tabloid National Enquirer, which is headed by Trump friend David Pecker.
|
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After the 2016 election, Pecker told a reporter that criticizing Trump was the same as criticizing AMI, because "the guy's a personal friend of mine," Farrow writes.
|
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If Trump followed Cohen's advice and purchased the rights, he would gag a woman with embarrassing information and clearly establish the Pecker payment as a campaign contribution.
|
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D. Claeys Bahrenburg, the publisher of Hearst, said Bazaar would give us $100,000, and then David Pecker of Hachette Filipacchi, the publisher of Elle, gave us $100,000.
|
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The indictment describes an array of individuals who knowingly participated in an alleged conspiracy to violate federal election laws; that would include Pecker, Trump and potentially others.
|
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" The tabloid publisher David J. Pecker — at the time still a close friend of Donald Trump — produced a hagiographic glossy magazine celebrating M.B.S. and his "Magic Kingdom.
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A.M.I. has previously acknowledged that Mr. Trump had been friends with Mr. Pecker, but said that he had never tried to influence coverage at the company's publications.
|
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Trump agrees, saying his friend David Pecker could get "hit by a truck" one day, meaning somebody else would be in charge of all the Trump dirt.
|
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Now that Mr. Trump is president, Mr. Pecker has showcased his access to him, including when he recently sought to do business with people in Saudi Arabia.
|
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He and Mr. Pecker were introduced last spring by Ari Emanuel, chief executive of Endeavor, the huge talent, entertainment and sports company based in Beverly Hills, Calif.
|
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The company's chair David Pecker is an ally of Trump's, and Times has reported that Cohen was "apprised" of the McDougal negotiations as they were taking place.
|
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"I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info, regarding our friend David," Mr. Cohen says in reference to Mr. Pecker.
|
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In quick order, Gus Wenner also sold Wenner's other two titles, Us Weekly and Men's Journal, to American Media, the magazine publisher led by David J. Pecker.
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It's not all that different from the deal Pecker made with former Playboy model Karen McDougal to keep her quiet about an alleged affair with Trump: As a personal favor to Pecker, Donald agreed to call me and talk me out of the lawsuit, but I was so angry they'd portrayed me as someone who'd seek publicity over my dead brother's body that I was reluctant to drop it.
|
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The Journal's story begins with an anecdote about Trump meeting with his friend, American Media Chief Executive David Pecker, in Trump Tower in New York City in 2015.
|
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Pecker stood by his friendship with Trump in a statement to the Journal, but said the Enquirer "set the agenda" when exposing Trump's 1990 affair with Marla Maples.
|
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AMI and its CEO David Pecker have had close links to Trump, who has attacked Bezos, Amazon and the newspaper he owns privately, the Washington Post, on Twitter.
|
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David J. Pecker, now the chairman of A.M.I., was the chief executive of Hachette in the 1990s and for a time published Mr. Trump's in-house hotel magazine.
|
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American Media Chief Executive David Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump, and the company's chief content officer, Dylan Howard, have also been granted immunity, Vanity Fair magazine reported.
|
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Soon after, A.M.I. decided to buy McDougal's story, but not publish it because A.M.I.'s owner, Pecker, "is close personal friends with Mr. Trump," the court papers say.
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Status: Cohen has already pleaded guilty, and National Enquirer's David Pecker, its parent company AMI, Cohen, and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg are all cooperating with investigators. 9.
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In addition, AMI and Mr. Pecker emphatically deny any suggestion that there might have been ... any 'partnership' created which might influence any business ties in regard to AMI.
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After the three-way call ended, Hicks and Cohen spoke again before Cohen "immediately" called AMI CEO David Pecker and spoke with AMI Chief Content Officer Dylan Howard.
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According to a Post source, Trump also suggested articles for the Enquirer "on a regular basis," to Pecker directly or through Cohen or former communications adviser Hope Hicks.
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She asked who might know about the "treasure trove" of documents in the office of David Pecker, chairman and CEO of National Enquirer parent company American Media Inc.
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AMI Chairman David Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump's, met with Cohen "and at least one other member of the campaign" in August of 2015, the agreement states.
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Mr. Bezos called out David Pecker, the chief executive of The Enquirer's parent company, American Media, who has been known to wield his influence to benefit Mr. Trump.
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As part of that plea deal, Pecker admitted to engaging in "catch and kill" agreements on Trump's behalf, killing negative stories about the businessman before they were published.
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Prosecutors said there had been discussions between Mr. Pecker and Mr. Cohen in which Mr. Cohen said American Media would be reimbursed for the payment to Ms. McDougal.
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The notoriously frugal Mr. Trump balked at doing so, causing Mr. Pecker anxiety about explaining the payout to his board, according to a person briefed on the discussions.
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In August 2018, Pecker reportedly entered into an immunity deal with federal prosecutors who were looking into the payments AMI allegedly gave these women to kill their stories.
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That day, Washington was abuzz with Trump's latest tribulations: His friend, National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, had been given immunity by federal prosecutors in the Michael Cohen case.
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Pecker, an old friend of President Trump's, never made an official bid, however, according to an American Media spokesperson in response to an inquiry by The Daily Beast.
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"I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David," Cohen said in the recording, a reference to Pecker.
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While Judiciary Democrats say Cohen has already provided testimony on the matter, they are considering bringing in David Pecker, the CEO of the company that publishes National Enquirer.
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And the committee has authorized subpoenas to three individuals tied to the hush-money payments -- including David Pecker, the chairman of National Enquirer parent company American Media Inc.
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By Thursday, Trump learns that David Pecker, a longtime friend who owns the National Enquirer's parent company, has been granted immunity by the Southern District of New York.
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She also claims former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and Pecker admitted the reason they were paying her was to "suppress McDougal's story" so it wouldn't derail Trump's campaign.
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David Pecker, CEO of the paper's publisher, spoke with Trump's then-lawyer Michael Cohen "to inform him about the story" before the payment was made, the suit says.
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The Amazon CEO has penned a now-immortal Medium post — "No thank you, Mr. Pecker" — describing what he calls an "extortionate proposal" by executives from American Media Inc.
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Cohen, Pecker, and Trump's current lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, did not respond to requests from the Washington Post for comment, but the National Enquirer and AMI vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
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Given what is now public information, the unnamed "Corporation-1" would be AMI, and "Chairman-1" would be AMI chair David Pecker, with whom Trump has a longtime friendship.
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A close examination of Bezos v Pecker suggests that it represents a last hurrah of the American tabloid, as well as a victory of sorts for the Amazon founder.
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American Media and its CEO David Pecker have had close links to Trump, who on Twitter has attacked Bezos, Amazon and the newspaper he owns privately, the Washington Post.
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In addition, AMI and Mr. Pecker emphatically deny any suggestion that there might have been be any 'partnership' created which might influence any business ties in regard to AMI.
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NBC News reported on Thursday that Trump, Cohen and Pecker had discussed ways that the publisher could help stifle damaging stories about the future president back in August 2015.
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The National Enquirer, which is not known for its restraint in publishing celebrity scandals, buried the story and former staffers have alleged that Pecker coordinated such decisions with Trump.
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In the recording, Cohen says, "I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David," likely a reference to Pecker.
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American Media CEO David Pecker confirmed the plan on Wednesday after the Washington Post reported that the company has come under "intense pressure" to part ways with the Enquirer.
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The two worked together in the late 1990s on Trump Style, a magazine for guests of the Trump properties, when Pecker was a magazine executive at Hachette Filipacchi Magazines.
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However, the company -- run by David Pecker, a friend of Trump's -- never ran her story and, according to The New Yorker, instead used the purchase to kill the piece.
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But American Media is privately held, and its board has been steadfast in its loyalty to Mr. Pecker through the most tumultuous year of his tenure with the company.
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Two, he could indict someone like Michael Cohen or David Pecker and name Donald Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator and could certainly later issue an indictment of Trump.
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As the Post reports, the FBI is trying to unravel the threads connecting Cohen with AMI, Pecker, and Dylan Howard, the chief content officer of the Enquirer: An FBI raid executed April 8 on Cohen's office and residences sought all of the lawyer's records of communications with AMI, Pecker and Howard regarding two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump while he was married, according to three people familiar with the investigation.
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Pecker then offered to have his supermarket tabloid newspaper, The National Enquirer, "buy the silence of women if they tried to publicize sexual encounters with Mr. Trump," The Journal reported.
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First at Hachette and later, when he took over chairmanship of A.M.I., Mr. Pecker acquired a reputation for buying and burying stories in ways that protected associates like Mr. Trump.
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Chief Executive David Pecker is close to Donald Trump and he used those methods to bury the evidence from women who claimed to have had affairs with the U.S. president.
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AMI's CEO David Pecker is also close friends with President Trump, and has been accused of using the Enquirer in 2016 to favor then-candidate Trump, per the Washington Post.
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" Attorney representing AMI CEO David Pecker on story in National Enquirer about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos: "I'm not permitted to tell you or confirm or deny who the source is.
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Pecker met with the prosecution to discuss Cohen's involvement in Trump's hush-money deals with women leading up to the 2016 presidential election, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
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Now he has another "flipper" to worry about: his longtime friend and political supporter David Pecker, CEO of American Media, the company that owns National Enquirer and many other tabloids.
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"I've supported Trump and probably still will, but if he won't disavow this guy Pecker and this story, I may withdraw my support," he said on the air on Friday.
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Shortly after, Bezos published a Medium post titled "No thank you, Mr. Pecker" that accused AMI, the publisher of the National Enquirer, of trying to extort him over naked photos.
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DAVID PECKER - The head of tabloid publisher American Media pursued "catch and kill" agreements with women who claimed to have slept with Trump in an attempt to buy their silence.
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The two men and other Pecker associates chatted with the president in the Oval Office and briefly met with Mr. Trump's son-in-law and Middle East envoy, Jared Kushner.
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Mr. Pecker was said to have helped Mr. Trump's candidacy through a deal to buy a story from a Playboy model who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.
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Here&aposs a timeline of how the scandal has played out:The meeting: Crown Prince Mohammad meets National Enquirer owner David Pecker in Saudi Arabia, according to The New York Times.
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In a piece entitled "No thank you, Mr. Pecker," Bezos accused The National Enquirer and its parent company, AMI, of using photos it obtained of him for extortion and blackmail.
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Later that day, The Associated Press reports that Pecker kept all of his "catch and kill" deals in a safe and the safe included several deals related to Trump. KERPLUNK!
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He survived a spectacular attempt by David Pecker to ruin him in January with a National Enquirer story revealing his affair with his married neighbor, Lauren Sanchez, a TV personality.
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More to the point, as the presidential race was heating up, Mr. Pecker had turned the Enquirer into something like an early-warning system for Trump-related scandals, prosecutors said.
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American Media's agreement with prosecutors extends for three years — and Mr. Pecker, as we've reported, is sitting on decades of Trump dirt that it refrained from publishing during the campaign.
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That line, "make [those floors] sparkle like a whale's pecker!" sure reminded me of Moby-Dick, though that book has lots of inaccuracies in it about whale anatomy and so on.
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Hayek and Cruz's allegations are plausible because, as The New Yorker details in a recent profile, Trump has a strong friendship with David Pecker, the chief executive of American Media Inc.
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The Enquirer tabloids were eventually sold to Evercore, as a part of the A.M.I. deal, in 1999, and David Pecker became the C.E.O. Meanwhile, competitors were eating into the Enquirer's circulation.
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They agree that it was unwise to leave the settlement with someone Cohen refers to as "our friend David" (likely David Pecker, CEO of the company that owns The National Enquirer).
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"Since Trump's become President and even before, [Pecker] openly just has been willing to turn the magazine and the cover over to the Trump machine," said one of the Post's sources.
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An attorney representing the publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, maintained on Sunday that "politics have nothing to do" with threats to publish intimate photos of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
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To open a recent meeting, Pecker, who was calling in on speakerphone from Dallas, asked Dylan Howard, A.M.I.'s chief content officer, to review the competition's covers from the previous week.
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The Dead Pecker Club says that the real problem is the death of industry, that Obama may have killed coal, but everyone was left for dead when the factories went overseas.
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He thought the dick scene in Bruno, in which a ludicrously long pecker swings around like a pinwheel, broke the mold in a way no other film has before or since.
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In a previously untold chapter in this relationship, a Times report looks at how Mr. Pecker used his powerful friend as he tried to expand his publishing business into Saudi Arabia.
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Prosecutors said in a statement that Mr. Cohen and another person associated with Mr. Trump's presidential campaign met with David A. Pecker, the chief executive of American Media, in August 2015.
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But they may never lodge charges against the company or its employees, given that the A.M.I. chairman, David J. Pecker, a close friend of Mr. Trump, has cooperated with the investigation.
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Pecker reportedly tried to boost Trump's chances of winning the 2016 election by publishing a series of flattering articles about the businessman as well as dozens of anti-Clinton front-pages.
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As prosecutors in New York built a case against Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump's longtime lawyer, that resulted in a guilty plea on Tuesday, Mr. Pecker emerged as an important figure.
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Meredith had fended off offers from multiple suitors, including a more than $325 million offer from David J. Pecker, a confidant of President Trump and chief executive of American Media Inc.
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That there would be a second contract keeping a separate alleged affair out of the news -- paid for by a sympathetic news outlet and his friend David Pecker -- is approaching incredible.
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It's not clear how the plea deal with Cohen might affect other entities that have been under scrutiny by federal prosecutors as part of the Cohen investigation, including AMI or Pecker.
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David Pecker The CEO of the company that publishes the National Enquirer reportedly was granted immunity in the investigation of Michael Cohen in exchange for providing info on hush money deals.
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Pecker and Trump's relationship dates back years but prosecutors are focusing on the year leading up to the presidential election when the magazine publisher discussed how he could help the candidate.
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In the Sunday-night tweet, Mr. Trump was effectively vouching for the credibility of Mr. Pecker and his newspaper — whose name in the Trump era hasn't exactly been equated with accuracy.
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The principal owner of American Media, the hedge fund Chatham Asset Management, led by Anthony Melchiorre, pushed Mr. Pecker to sell The Enquirer after the publication found itself under federal investigation.
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Mr. Pecker is said to have helped Mr. Trump's candidacy through a deal American Media struck with Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who said she had an affair with the president.
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If he had succeeded in carrying out this plan [to pay Pecker] he would have magnified the legal risks to Trump—it would have been an exponential increase of those risks.
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Pecker shared information with prosecutors about the payments to former Playboy model Karen McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for immunity, including details about the president's knowledge of the payments.
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Bezos contends that Pecker and AMI pressured him to call off his investigation by verbally, and then in writing, threatening to expose compromising photos of the billionaire (which included a naked selfie).
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A search warrant federal prosecutors in New York served to Mr. Cohen this week requests, among other things, all communications between him, Mr. Pecker and Dylan Howard, the business's chief content officer.
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In return, the CEO routinely killed damaging stories about Trump; one former editor estimates that over the years, Pecker axed about 10 fully reported stories about the Apprentice host turned presidential candidate.
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Immediately afterwards, Cohen rang up David Pecker — the media mogul and Trump supporter whose National Enquirer tabloid paid $150,000 to McDougal to effectively silence her story about having an affair with Trump.
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A judge with the U.S. District Court for Southern Florida found that Pecker and his firm fraudulently solicited approximately $3 million from U.S. and Canadian customers to trade off-exchange binary options.
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Vanity Fair magazine reported last August that Trump friend David Pecker, the then-chairman of AMI, had personally received an immunity agreement from prosecutors, as had AMI's chief content officer, Dylan Howard.
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Pecker had that information because he had long used his media empire to buy up and sit on embarrassing stories about Trump, a practice known as "catch and kill," according to CNBC.
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AMI and Pecker have been under the spotlight for their "catch and kill" tactic, in which the publication bought the silence of Karen McDougal, who allegedly had an affair with Donald Trump.
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Pecker, a longtime Trump confidant, has previously admitted that the National Enquirer worked with the Trump campaign to buy and cover up former Playboy model Karen McDougal's story by not publishing it.
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Bezos also suggested in his blog post that The Washington Post's coverage of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has upset Pecker, who has reportedly sought to do business with Riyadh.
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Altogether, the swampy goings-on referenced in Cohen's recording suggest that people who helped Trump in the past -- Cohen, Pecker and Weisselberg, to name just three -- pose a danger to him now.
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AMI and Saudi Arabia have reportedly denied any connections, but relationships within the White House, Saudi Arabia, and the tabloid involving figures like Pecker suggest there could be more revelations to come.
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A longtime friend and the publisher of The National Enquirer, David J. Pecker, was given immunity to detail Mr. Cohen's crimes and Mr. Trump's role, a person familiar with the investigation confirmed.
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But the prosecutors have provided at least partial immunity to Mr. Pecker, who is a key witness in their inquiry into payments made on behalf of Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign.
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But it has also gone out of its way to protect business partners and those known as "Friends of Pecker," even when their behavior was textbook fodder for scandal sheet cover stories.
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Mr. Bezos also cited the wooing of Prince Mohammed by David J. Pecker, the chief executive of American Media, the publisher of The Enquirer, who was seeking Saudi investment in the company.
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After Cohen failed to either execute the agreement immediately or pay the woman, she threatened, in late October -- 143 days before the election -- to Pecker to take her story to another publication.
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In his efforts to keep their stories under wraps, Cohen and Trump had an important ally— David Pecker , a longtime friend of Trump's, who was the chief executive of American Media, Inc.
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As for Schiller, the Journal said investigators "were aware" Schiller "had spoken by phone" to Pecker and were looking to find out if the bodyguard had ever given the phone to Trump.
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The Southern District rejected Cohen's offer of partial coöperation and raised the pressure, giving immunity to Pecker and Weisselberg, who could be witnesses against Cohen in a prosecution for campaign-finance violations.
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But later that day, NBC News reported that Trump was in the room when Cohen was discussing with AMI head David Pecker how to quash negative stories about Trump's relationships with women.
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It would be rather odd for Pecker to purchase the rights to the story and then turn around and sell it to a shell corporation under this scheme that Cohen was describing.
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Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker cut immunity deals with federal prosecutors, adding their names to the list of Trump allies who no longer seem so friendly.
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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.
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The Oscar winner's network included Hillary Clinton, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Chairman and CEO of American Media David Pecker and Creative Artists Agency managing director Bryan Lourd, among others, according to the article.
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Pecker was behind the National Enquirer's purchasing of a story from former Playboy model Karen McDougal, detailing her alleged affair with Trump, in an effort to silence her ahead of the 2016 election.
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The family that controlled A.M.I. before Mr. Pecker took it over in 1999, the Popes, moved early on to secure prime placement for The Enquirer in magazine racks at grocery store cash registers.
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A CENTRAL CURIOSITY of the contretemps between Amazon's boss, Jeff Bezos, and David Pecker, who runs the National Enquirer, is that an American scandal sheet sold in supermarkets holds such relevance in 2019.
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Then Friday David Pecker came into the skatepark [in the office, where they make videos for the website] and told us welcome to the company, we're AMI, and here's what we do, etc.
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Zakim referenced Trump because the president has been friends with Pecker for years, and the president has been a frequent critic of Bezos, founder of Amazon and the owner of The Washington Post.
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But AMI — headed by its C.E.O. and chairman David Pecker, who describes the president as "a personal friend" — did not run the story, allegedly because it could not confirm it to be true.
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Evercore sold its original equity stake in 2002, and in the past two decades A.M.I. has had various owners, with a changing cast of board members, but always with Pecker as chief executive.
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Photograph by Mark Peterson / Redux for The New Yorker Pecker denies telling Wenner that he killed stories for Trump or that he hired a columnist in order to suppress a story about Trump.
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After passing the C.P.A. exam, Pecker went to work as an accountant for CBS, which during the seventies had a magazine division that included Car & Driver , Road & Track , Field & Stream , and Modern Bride .
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Evercore recruited Pecker both as an investor and as the chief executive of the company, and closed a seven-hundred-and-sixty-seven-million-dollar deal for A.M.I. in March of that year.
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"I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David," Cohen said in the recording, likely a reference to American Media head David Pecker.
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The National Enquirer appeared to be a crucial part of the federal probe on the hush-money payments arranged by Cohen, as Pecker reportedly received an immunity deal in exchange for his cooperation.
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Trump reportedly used his friendship with Pecker, which goes back to the 1990s, to quash unflattering stories about him in the press as he began rising in polls during the 85033 Republican primary.
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" Prosecutors noted that the agreement also requires the company -- whose chairman and CEO, longtime Trump ally David Pecker, received immunity from prosecutors in their investigation of Cohen -- to "provide cooperation in the future.
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It is logical that the government has negotiated a non-prosecution agreement with AMI and with Pecker himself ("Chairman1"), as the sentencing documents show him to be a key witness to corroborate Cohen.
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Every Wednesday afternoon, in a windowless conference room in an office building at the tip of lower Manhattan, David Pecker decides what will be on the cover of the following week's National Enquirer .
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And the revelation that Trump attended the meeting with Pecker and Cohen makes it harder for the President to claim that "he didn't know what was going on at the time," Hasen added.
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A.M.I.'s chairman, David J. Pecker, is a close friend of the president and his former lawyer, and company leaders were in regular contact with Mr. Cohen, former employees have said in interviews.
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But McDougal's account does show that while it may once have been possible for men like David Pecker to keep Trump's secrets, we now live in a time when secrets are coming out.
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Mr. Pecker is said to have helped Mr. Trump's candidacy through American Media's deal to buy a story from Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who said she had an affair with the president.
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It was unclear on Thursday whether prosecutors had granted Mr. Pecker immunity for his involvement in the illegal campaign contributions, or simply agreed not to prosecute him based on the information he provided.
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In June 2016, when Ms. McDougal approached American Media, whose tabloids include The National Enquirer, about selling her story, both Mr. Pecker and Mr. Howard provided Mr. Cohen a heads-up, prosecutors said.
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Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, and David Pecker, the publisher of the National Enquirer and Mr. Trump's longtime friend, have also cooperated to some degree with federal investigators.
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During the presidential campaign, Mr. Pecker, who publishes The National Enquirer, suppressed the story of a former Playboy model who claimed to have had an affair with Mr. Trump, according to federal prosecutors.
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Bezos later wrote a blog post claiming that Pecker threatened to publish even more embarrassing information if he didn't drop his investigation into how the National Enquirer got the information about his affair.
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David J. Pecker, the chief executive of American Media, said in an interview that adding Men's Journal would give the publisher an opportunity to attract more premium advertisers, both in print and online.
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And they expose, through the criminal information filed against Cohen in court, that he acted with Trump and his allies, including David Pecker, the CEO of the National Enquirer's publisher, American Media Inc.
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Cruz went absolutely ballistic, denying the allegation and insisting the Enquirer story was the result of Trump's close personal relationship with David Pecker, the man who is CEO of the Enquirer's parent company.
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The paper has investigated A.M.I.; reports on President Trump, a longtime friend of Mr. Pecker; and employed Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi columnist killed by operatives from Saudi Arabia, where A.M.I. does lucrative business.
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Just as Trump was able to supply gossip to Pecker, Trump might have been able to provide interesting tidbits on Russian oligarchs outside of Russia, particularly given their affinity for investing in Trump properties.
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American Media CEO David Pecker — whom prosecutors said has information about President Donald Trump's campaign's efforts to silence women who claimed they had affairs with Trump — has reportedly been granted immunity by federal prosecutors.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal court in Florida ordered Neil Pecker and his company Vision Financial Partners to pay more than $6.5 million in restitution and fines, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Tuesday.
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"I need to open up a company regarding the transfer of that info for our friend David," Cohen says at the beginning of the discussion, in what appears to be a reference to Pecker.
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The Wall Street Journal three days before the election revealed a $232,000 payoff that [National Enquirer chief executive David] Pecker made to silence a Playboy centerfold who claims she had an affair with Donald.
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Over the course of the evening, Cohen had several calls with Hicks, AMI President David Pecker, a friend of Trump, and Dylan Howard, AMI's chief content officer, before calling Trump back for eight minutes.
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According to the report, Weinstein tried to leverage relationships with Hillary Clinton, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Chairman and CEO of American Media David Pecker and Creative Artists Agency managing director Bryan Lourd, among others.
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Photograph by Mark Peterson / Redux for The New Yorker During the outbreak, Pecker offered to bring in a team of doctors to dispense Cipro, an antibiotic, to hundreds of employees at his own expense.
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"However, the value of AMI and the value of Mr. Pecker becomes severely tarnished or diminished if they are themselves continuing to engage in criminal activity or saying incorrect or untruthful information," Tsai said.
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But just looking at in strictly political terms -- which is how Trump and company viewed it when they struck the deal with Pecker before election day -- would this have damaged Trump's candidacy at all?
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But the change came at the same time when prosecutors in the US Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York zeroed in on Michael Cohen's financial dealings with Pecker and American Media.
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If information provided by Weisselberg, Pecker, Cohen or anyone else reveals wrongdoing by the Trump Organization, that could squeeze the president in ways that his constitutional claim to immunity from prosecution would not cover.
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Why it matters: Pecker, who has been working with Trump since the late 1990s, and his chief content officer, Dylan Howard, are the latest to defect from Trump's close circle of confidants and advisors.
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Mr. Trump at times has praised Mr. Pecker's stewardship of A.M.I. He once endorsed Mr. Pecker to run Time magazine, whose cover, Mr. Trump has incorrectly asserted, has featured him more than anyone else.
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American Media's principal owner, the hedge fund Chatham Asset Management, pressed Mr. Pecker to sell the tabloid after it wound up in investigators' cross hairs, the people with direct knowledge of the matter said.
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Court papers say Mr. Pecker and an editor at the National Enquirer then reached out to Mr. Cohen, putting him in touch with Keith Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer who was representing Ms. Clifford.
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Cohen also claimed Weisselberg would have been read in on any other agreements Trump had with David Pecker, the head of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, to "catch and kill" unflattering stories.
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Mr. Pecker provided vital corroboration for the story told by Mr. Trump's former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, when he pleaded guilty last year to arranging the payments to Ms. Daniels and Ms. McDougal.
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As part of the deal, American Media, led by David J. Pecker, a longtime friend of Mr. Trump's, has also agreed to sell two of its other tabloids: the Globe and the National Examiner.
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David Pecker, the publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, has reportedly been granted immunity in the investigation into President Donald Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen and his payments to women during the 2016 campaign.
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He and Pecker have been friends since the 1990s, and have appeared to remain so after Trump became president — the media mogul even visited the White House last year, according to The New York Times.
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Mr. Pecker, a Bronx native who has reveled in upsetting the Manhattan magazine establishment since the early 1990s, has been open about his view that A.M.I. has good reason to connect itself to Mr. Trump.
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Pecker has called Trump a "personal friend of mine," and in the years leading up to 2016, Farrow reports, the AMI CEO enjoyed the perks of friendship with Trump, like flying on his private jet.
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During past refinancings, Mr. Pecker had barred American Media publications from acquiring controversial content or stories that could have imperiled the reshuffling of American Media's debt, said someone familiar with internal discussions at the publisher.
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De Becker went on to say that it is unclear if AMI was aware of the details, but pointed to what he called a close relationship between AMI chairman David Pecker and the Saudi government.
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When I asked Pecker about McDougal, who was Playboy's Playmate of the Year in 22003, he told me that he first met her when she modelled for the cover of Men's Fitness , another A.M.I. magazine.
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Pecker, a longtime friend of the president's, reportedly possessed a safe full of damaging stories on Trump that the company had purchased the rights to and "killed" in the months ahead of the 2016 election.
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Pecker met with the prosecution to discuss Cohen's involvement in nondisclosure agreements with two women who claim to have had affairs with Trump more than a decade ago, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
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The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Pecker met with prosecutors to discuss former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's involvement in the president's alleged nondisclosure payment deals with women leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
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American Media is led by David Pecker, who helped silence a woman who said she had an affair with President Trump by buying her story for $150,000 before his 2016 election and never publishing it.
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Here is the slightly longer version: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has penned a now-immortal Medium post — "No thank you, Mr. Pecker" — describing what he calls an "extortionate proposal" by executives from American Media Inc.
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Potentially as worrisome for Mr. Trump and his advisers, Mr. Pecker could be a particularly knowing guide through any other potentially illegal efforts made to protect Mr. Trump's candidacy from his own less savory exploits.
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And Mr. Pecker has portrayed the deal with Ms. McDougal as a business arrangement, noting that it also included rights to use her on its magazine covers and to publish fitness columns under her name.
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In 2015, Pecker was reportedly in the room with Trump and his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as they devised strategies for quashing reports on accounts from women who say they had affairs with Trump.
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Washington (CNN)Jeff Bezos' stunning accusation that the National Enquirer tried to blackmail him mentioned the close ties between the paper's publisher, David Pecker, and President Donald Trump -- and a second, less well-known connection.
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But it's no coincidence, either, that one of the Post's -- and the mainstream media's -- most vocal critics has been President Trump, who counts AMI chairman and CEO David Pecker as a friend and political supporter.
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"I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David," Cohen can be heard saying, which CNN notes likely refers to American Media head David Pecker.
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McDougal, the former Playmate, claims that Trump never leaves a paper trail, according to the Farrow article: Trump has friends in high places willing to protect him, including David Pecker, CEO of American Media, Inc.
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A few months earlier, prosecutors said, Mr. Cohen had worked with Mr. Pecker to catch and kill the story of the former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who had also claimed an affair with Mr. Trump.
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AMI employees told AP the company, owned by longtime Trump friend David Pecker, had a "catch and kill" policy in which it bought off sources who could potentially hurt Trump's chances at winning the presidency.
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During the interview, however, Elkan Abramowitz, a lawyer for AMI and the tabloid's CEO, David Pecker, did deny Bezos' allegations in a bombshell blog post last week that the tabloid had tried to blackmail him.
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The same document shows that, Pecker, along with top Enquirer editor Dylan Howard (referred to as Editor-1), told Cohen about Daniels' interest in telling her story and connected Cohen with her lawyer at the time.
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As Mr. Trump ramped up his campaign in 2015, he, Mr. Cohen, Mr. Howard and Mr. Pecker engaged in more serious discussions about how A.M.I. could be helpful, according to several people familiar with the efforts.
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David Pecker, the CEO of AMI, has been granted immunity by prosecutors investigating Trump's longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, who last week pleaded guilty to a number of federal charges, including making or abetting campaign finance violations.
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That now seems to be a clear lie, given that Trump is heard on the tape discussing the possibility of buying the rights to McDougal's story from Pecker with Cohen two months before that Hicks quote.
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While they appreciated the services that National Enquirer did on behalf of Trump, they worried about what would happen to the safe full of dirt if Pecker left the company or anything else happened to him.
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At one point during the campaign, they evidently began to fear Pecker had too much leverage and that they were too reliant on blessings from the tabloid, which has an average weekly circulation of around 265,000.
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AMI issued a statement categorically denying that the payments it was involved in had anything to do with Trump or Cohen or that there was any sort of partnership between Pecker, the company and the campaign.
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The man said Mr. Cohen first blew up at him, then steered him to David J. Pecker, chairman of the tabloid company, which sometimes bought, then buried, embarrassing material about his high-profile friends and allies.
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The tabloid is led by David J. Pecker, a longtime friend of Mr. Trump's, and there's word of a surprising potential buyer: the billionaire Ron Burkle, a Democratic donor with ties to former President Bill Clinton.
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Look at his own collaborators: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, David Pecker and lesser reprobates who either still serve in his administration (Alex Acosta, Jared Kushner) or did until they went too far (Tom Price, Scott Pruitt).
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For the better part of two decades, Mr. Pecker had ordered his staff at American Media to protect Mr. Trump from troublesome stories, in some cases by buying up stories about him and filing them away.
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But after speaking with a campaign finance lawyer, Pecker decided his company could agree to pay $150,000 for McDougal's story and the promise that she appear on the cover and publish content in his company's magazines.
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Cohen and Pecker "worked together to keep an individual from publicly disclosing" information that would have been harmful to a candidate, referring to McDougal who was paid $150,000 by AMI for her story in August 2016.
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Mr. Scarborough's account on Friday raised the question of whether Mr. Trump has brought those tactics into the West Wing, using The Enquirer and its wealthy publisher, the president's close friend David Pecker, as a collaborator.
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She zeroed in on the alleged "treasure trove" of "catch-and-kill" documents that AMI president David Pecker allegedly possesses and on the idea that Trump may have devalued his assets to pay less in taxes.
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Instead of rushing into print their scoop about a major party's candidate for president, Mr. Pecker, having caught the story, sent it to be killed by somebody he trusted: Mr. Trump's lawyer and fixer, Mr. Cohen.
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Pecker told the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin last year that Trump is a "personal friend of mine" — they met in the 2400s, he joined Mar-a-Lago in 230, and he attended Trump's wedding to Melania.
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News accounts revealed that Howard and his boss David Pecker, the chairman of American Media, worked with Trump and associates, including Michael Cohen, to suppress embarrassing stories about Trump and promote stories that were favorable for him.
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At the center of the campaign finance inquiries will be whether the ties between Mr. Cohen, Mr. Howard, Mr. Pecker, Mr. Trump and others led A.M.I. to act more like a political supporter than a news organization.
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On February 10th an attorney for Mr Pecker told ABC News that the company did nothing illegal, that the Enquirer merely reported on Mr Bezos's extramarital affair, and then conducted negotiations in which both sides wanted something.
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Pecker, the chairman and CEO of American Media, and Dylan Howard, one of his top executives, then met with McDougal and coordinated the payment to her, which was subsequently reimbursed by Cohen who was reimbursed by Trump.
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The committee will also vote to authorize subpoenas for Keith Davidson, the former attorney for adult-film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, as well as American Media executives Dylan Howard and David Pecker.
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Those two deals spell trouble for the president, one Trump ally told NBC, who said that the true danger lies in the testimony of American Media chairman David Pecker and Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg.
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Pecker, who reportedly kept a safe of documents related to these coverups, has been granted immunity by federal prosecutors, while Cohen has plead guilty to violating campaign finance law and implicated Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator.
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The intersection of the tabloid publisher with the Saudis, enhanced by the White House visit, is a previously untold chapter in the long, symbiotic relationship between the president and Mr. Pecker, which was forged in the 1990s.
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A.M.I., run by Mr. Trump's longtime friend David J. Pecker, had previously claimed it had paid $150,000 to the model, Karen McDougal, to secure the rights to publish her story of an alleged affair with Mr. Trump.
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David Pecker, publisher of the National Enquirer and a longtime friend to President Trump, received immunity from prosecutors to discuss Michael Cohen's hush payments to women during the 2016 campaign — and what Mr. Trump knew of them.
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A Medium post published by Jeff Bezos in February 2019 accused the National Enquirer&aposs parent company AMI and AMI CEO David Pecker of "extortion and blackmail," unless he stopped referring to the leaks as politically motivated.
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There was also a stunning report Thursday that David Pecker, the CEO of the company that publishes the National Enquirer -- which was once all but a propaganda organ for Trump -- has been granted immunity in the case.
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Mr. Pecker and his associates had helped orchestrate the deals involving two women who alleged past affairs with Mr. Trump in "catch and kill" deals: the former Playboy model Karen McDougal and the porn star Stormy Daniels.
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After all, the company's CEO, David Pecker, was a longtime friend of Trump's who is referenced on the tape, and after buying it, AMI sat on it, only relinquishing rights after McDougal successfully sued them this year.
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Alan Weisselberg, the chief financial officer at Trump Organization who signed some of the reimbursement checks, and David Pecker, the chief executive of American Media, which paid off McDougal for her story, were given immunity for their cooperation.
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Why it matters: We're now starting to get a picture of what Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, tabloid exec David Pecker and former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg have been telling federal prosecutors, Axios' Jonathan Swan says.
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On top of that, Pecker says that his company, American Media, is suspending all coverage of Rhoden in any and all of its subsidiary media brands, including Muscle & Fitness as well as FLEX, until his case is resolved.
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Already at this point, Cohen had worked with Pecker and Howard to pay off Karen McDougal, another woman who said she had an affair with Trump, so AMI could get exclusive rights to her story (and bury it).
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Regardless of their place in the pecker order, men susceptible to this type of body dysmorphia would do well to remember that length of intercourse and erectile function play a much larger role in partner's pleasure than size.
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This resembles a similar case from 2016, when the National Enquirer, whose owner David Pecker is a Trump supporter, paid a Playboy model $150,000 for rights to a story about an affair with Trump—and never published it.
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And CNN reported late Thursday that Trump had been in the room when hush payments to women who claimed to have had affairs with him were discussed by Cohen and David Pecker, whose company publishes the National Enquirer.
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In a statement, Mr. Pecker said that American Media had shifted its emphasis away from its tabloid publications, a group that includes Star, to its glossy magazines, such as Us Weekly and Men's Journal, and various multimedia ventures.
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Former American Media employees told The New Yorker that the company's chairman and chief executive, David Pecker, who is close with Mr. Trump, routinely bought stories with no intention of running them, sometimes using the pieces as leverage.
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The publisher, whose chairman, David Pecker, is a friend of Trump's, purchased the rights to her story for $150,000 ahead of the 2016 election but never ran any pieces on it, using a tabloid "catch and kill" maneuver.
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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.
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In a 2,000 word blog post published on Medium, the billionaire alleged that his investigation – and the charges of ethically compromised and possibly politically motivated tactics regularly undertaken by the Enquirer that it exposed – angered AMI CEO David Pecker.
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NBC News, citing a source, and other media outlets reported that Trump was in the room with Cohen and Pecker during discussions about how to help the campaign keep women quiet about their alleged affairs with the then-candidate.
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Pecker was behind the National Enquirer's purchasing in August 2016 of former Playboy model Karen McDougal's story of an alleged affair with Trump in an effort to keep that story quiet in the run-up to the 2016 election.
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Instead it was reportedly purchased as part of a "catch-and-kill" arrangement, in which American Media publisher and Trump friend David Pecker bought the rights to the story to keep it from coming to light during the campaign.
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Pecker's relationship with the president, described in the piece by Becker, is also well known—Pecker received immunity from federal prosecutors for information about Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, specifically hush money Cohen paid to women alleging affairs with Trump.
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According to the source, Enquirer publisher David Pecker, who is a longtime friend of Trump's, would not have allowed the publication of the story -- which featured a headline including the phrase "Trump's Fixer's Secrets & Lies" -- without the President's blessing.
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It would be curious if the Justice Department would indict the lawyer but not the other actors in such a crime, particularly someone like Pecker who actually put up the money to keep former Playboy bunny Karen McDougal silent.
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Interestingly, the Steele dossier — a series of raw intelligence reports compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele — outlines a deal between Trump and Putin that is very similar to what we now know existed between Trump and Pecker.
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"The entire question about whether the president committed an impeachable offense now hinges on the testimony of two men: David Pecker and Allen Weisselberg, both cooperating witnesses in the SDNY investigation," a person close to Trump told NBC News.
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Mr. Pecker, who had known Mr. Grine only for a few months, invited him to the dinner to thank him for advice he had provided about investing in the Middle East, according to someone who knew of the invitation.
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The magazine — which refers to Saudi Arabia throughout as "the Magic Kingdom" — includes an interview with Mr. Grine, accompanied by a photo of him posing with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office, taken during his visit with Mr. Pecker.
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That's what Bezos, the Amazon founder and owner of The Washington Post, told David Pecker, publisher of the National Enquirer, in a blog post on Medium that had a lot of people making the wide-eyed emoji face Thursday.
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If he declined to do so, the "Morning Joe" host alleged, then The National Enquirer, a tabloid controlled by Trump ally David Pecker, would publish a story detailing his romantic involvement with Brzezinski, to whom he is now engaged.
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Trump's long-time friend David Pecker, who publishes the National Enquirer, and Trump organization CFO Allen Weisselberg have both been granted immunity in connection with the investigation of Cohen and Trump paying hush money to help the 2016 campaign.
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According to the docs, she never had any communication with Trump about money -- instead, she claims it was Trump's confidante and former National Enquirer honcho, David Pecker, who negotiated with her lawyers in the summer and fall of 2016.
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Whenever the tabloid heard "negative stories" about Mr. Trump's relationships with women, the government said, Mr. Pecker and his staff would work to have them "purchased and their publication avoided" — a tactic that was known as catch-and-kill.
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Cardi went on Instagram Live and delivered this hilarious clip, sipping coffee and letting EVERYONE know just how much she wants Offset's pecker in and around her mouth, vagina and pretty much any place else you can think of.
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The House Judiciary Committee announced a list of President Donald Trump's associates Monday — including his own sons, AMI publisher David Pecker, Steve Bannon, and more — it will seek documents from as part of a sweeping investigation of the president.
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The reports of Weisselberg's cooperation with federal prosecutors come just days after Cohen, Trump's former personal attorney, pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the payments, and another Trump ally, American Media CEO David Pecker, was also reportedly granted immunity.
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In a post titled "No thank you, Mr. Pecker," Bezos claims he's being threatened with the publication of nude photos of him and suggestive photos of Lauren Sanchez, the news anchor and reporter with whom Bezos was having an affair.
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AMI CEO David Pecker, a close friend of President Trump, was allegedly awarded for running a "catch and kill" campaign to prevent a story about an affair Trump had with a woman from coming out just prior to his presidential campaign.
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Pecker ended up approving the deal with Michael Sanchez, the Journal wrote, but he later became furious over its terms, believing that the payments should not have been made up front and that readers would not care much for the story.
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The AMI agreement in connection with a hush-money payment given to Karen McDougal, the Playboy model who claims to have had an affair with Trump, caused a "falling out" between Pecker and the president, George told CNBC on Friday.
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I was skeptical about having a bunch of yarn jangling on my Johnson, but regardless, I ordered one for my very own, a blue-and-brown-striped sleeve ($23, plus shipping) that seemed like the perfect accessory for my preppy pecker.
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Under the agreement, AMI executives, including CEO David Pecker, agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in New York as they investigated an alleged hush money payment made to a woman who said she had a sexual affair with President Donald Trump.
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In the conversation, recorded in September 2016 at Trump Tower in New York, Cohen discusses setting up a company to make a payment apparently involving David Pecker, chief executive of American Media Inc (AMI) and a close friend of Trump's.
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"This pattern of behavior makes it clear that [National Enquirer publisher David] Pecker uses the National Enquirer tabloid both in total support of the leader of a political party and in furtherance of scabrous and potentially illegal schemes," Pascrell wrote.
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McDougal's contract with Pecker's company, which publishes the National Enquirer and other supermarket-aisle staples, effectively silenced her, Ronan reports: Six former A.M.I. employees told me that Pecker routinely makes catch-and-kill arrangements like the one reached with McDougal.
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According to Bezos, news of the investigation infuriated AMI chief David Pecker, whose close ties to President Trump have led to scrutiny over his role in the payments between Trump's team and multiple women who say they had affairs with Trump.
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"It appears that Cohen spoke frequently to Davidson, Howard, Pecker and Hicks around the time of this article's publication — just days before Election Day — about the importance of preventing the McDougal and Clifford stories from gaining national traction," the filing reads.
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" David Pecker, the head of American Media, which owns The Star and The National Enquirer, is a friend and supporter of Mr. Trump, so perhaps not so shockingly a recent Enquirer headline screamed: "JOHN F. KENNEDY'S SECRET SON ENDORSES DONALD TRUMP!
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"At the meeting, Pecker offered to help deal with negative stories about that presidential candidate'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 agreement read.
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A more plausible reason emerged when my colleagues and I reported that the publication coincided with A.M.I.'s efforts to strike business deals in Saudi Arabia, which included a meeting there between the company's chairman, David Pecker, and M.B.S. himself.
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At around the same time, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump were arranging with The National Enquirer and its chief, the Trump ally David Pecker, to buy and bury stories about Mr. Trump and women that could harm his political prospects.
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In September, Pecker entered into an immunity deal with prosecutors at the Southern District of New York in return for giving evidence against Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who reportedly coordinated between the Trump campaign and the National Enquirer.
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The move by Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen indicated just how concerned they were about all the information amassed by the company, American Media, and its chairman, David Pecker, a loyal Trump ally of two decades who has cooperated with investigators.
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In 2016, he kept his staff from going back through the old Trump tip and story files that dated to before Mr. Pecker became company chairman in 1999, several former staff members said in interviews with The New York Times.
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The move gives the company, led by David J. Pecker, almost full ownership of the print gossip market, leaving People magazine, owned by the Meredith Corporation, as one of the only major glossy gossip titles not under Mr. Pecker's umbrella.
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And as early as August 2000, prosecutors revealed, Mr. Cohen communicated with the chairman of American Media, David J. Pecker, who agreed to turn the organization's tip line into a trip wire that could detect potential trouble for Mr. Trump.
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The committee is expected to issue some those subpoenas in the coming weeks to seek testimony in September and October, potentially to Corey Lewandowski, Trump's former campaign manager; David Pecker, the chairman of National Enquirer parent company American Media Inc.
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And not only does AMI&aposs publications have a history of pro-Trump stories, but Pecker himself also came under investigation for allegedly paying off women claiming to be Trump&aposs mistresses in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.
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"I know all about flipping, 30, 40 years I have been watching flippers," Trump told "Fox & Friends" in an interview that aired Thursday, before the Pecker news broke, as he reflected on the Cohen episode, which leaves him dangerously exposed.
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And how might the potential withdrawal of legal immunity that Pecker obtained last year in connection with his handling of Trump's hush money payments to his mistresses affect the Southern District's investigation of Trump's probable violations of campaign-finance laws?
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" • But David Pecker, the head of the National Enquirer's parent company, was "concerned Mr. Bezos would sue, forcing debt-laden American Media to expend resources to defend itself for a story executives believed was unlikely to sell well on newsstands.
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But that's not all they wanted — the New York Times reports that they also wanted all communications Cohen had had with AMI's David Pecker, as well as National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard (who's embroiled in his own sexual harassment scandal).
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"Since Trump's become president, and even before, [Pecker] openly just has been willing to turn the magazine and the cover over to the Trump machine," one person with knowledge of the practice told the Washington Post, which published its story Thursday night.
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AMI's chief executive officer David Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump and Cohen, had met with prosecutors to describe their hush-money deals with McDougal and Daniels ahead of the 2016 U.S. election won by Trump, the Wall Street Journal reported in August.
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With Pecker at the helm, AMI has in recent years been expanding its reach by quietly buying up almost all of its rivals, bringing titles like Radar Online and Us Weekly into the fold and leaving People as the only main competitor.
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Levine had left the Enquirer in March 25 after 22002 years with the paper, and when his upcoming book was announced, many speculated that it could contain new revelations about the relationship between Pecker, the Enquirer, and the man who became president.
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On the recording, Cohen tells Trump: "I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David," a possible reference to David Pecker, Trump's friend and president of National Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc.
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AMI's chairman and CEO, David Pecker, received immunity from federal prosecutors in August 2018 for testimony about the president's knowledge of payments Trump's former attorney (and soon-to-be jailbird) Michael Cohen made to women who said they had affairs with Trump.
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AMI chief David Pecker is a friend of Trump's and has allegedly helped intercept negative stories about him before, but the lawsuit also alleged that longtime Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen had been involved in the negotiations over the agreement with AMI.
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While the quote only refers to Snow, and not Harington's own pecker situation, I'm sure the guy is a little less than pleased since he, you know, easily plays the part of a man with a smaller-than-usual you-know-what.
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Trump met in August 2015 at Trump Tower with David Pecker, the CEO of American Media, who offered to use the National Enquirer to buy the silence of women who might try to publicize sexual affairs with Trump, according to the Journal.
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First, Cohen may identify other witnesses to Trump's actions in addition to the two we know have already received immunity for their testimony, namely Allen Weisselberg, Trump Organization CFO, and David Pecker, CEO of AMI, the media company involved in the McDougal payoff.
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Pecker met with Cohen "and at least one other member of the campaign" in August of 2015, according to the non-prosecution agreement, which was struck with prosecutors from the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
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Pecker knows with some precision which stars sell (Kelly Ripa, Jennifer Aniston, Brad and Angelina, and, for the older generation, Dolly Parton and the Kennedys), and which phrases draw readers (headlines with the words "sad last days" and "six months to live").
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A non-prosecution agreement with the federal prosecutors also disclosed that AMI chairman David Pecker had met in August 2015 with Cohen and "least one other member of the campaign" to discuss how to deal with negative stories about Trump's relationships with women.
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Trump, his ex-fixer, Michael Cohen, and David Pecker, chairman of the parent company of the National Enquirer, talked about a plan to shield Trump from potentially damaging stories and pay hush money to women who claimed they'd had affairs with him.
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"I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, David," Mr. Cohen said in the recording, most likely referring to David J. Pecker, the chairman of A.M.I. and a friend of Mr. Trump's.
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On Thursday, Stephen Colbert unpacked the news that David Pecker — the publisher of The National Enquirer and a close ally of President Trump — had admitted to prosecutors that he made hush-money payments to a Playboy model to shield Trump's presidential campaign.
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In addition, Nadler is sending letters and demanding documents from David Pecker, the head of the parent company of the National Enquirer, which engaged in a "catch-and-kill" scheme to keep a story quiet about Trump's alleged affair with model Karen McDougal.
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And the former publisher of the recently sold National Enquirer, David Pecker — who cut a plea deal in the campaign-finance scheme revolving around Trump's porn star payoffs and often boasted of lounging with Trump in Mar-a-Lago — lived in Boca Raton.
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This past week, Pecker and his thugs upgraded to blackmail, threatening to print more sexts and louche pics that Bezos and Sanchez had exchanged unless Bezos made a statement in the press rebutting the idea that the Enquirer story was politically motivated.
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He pointed out AMI's ties to Trump, as well as to the Saudi government, and noted that "federal investigators and legitimate media have of course suspected and proved that Mr. Pecker has used the Enquirer and AMI for political reasons" in the past.
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By the end of the day on Friday, Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker had cut immunity deals with federal prosecutors, adding their names to the list of Trump allies who no longer seem so friendly.
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And even if it did turn out to be Trump's funds in the end, this would still give Pecker and AMI massive leverage over him — they'd know all about his sex scandal hush money, so he'd be very motivated to keep them happy.
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One person close to the campaign at the time recalled a meeting at Trump Tower in February 2015 between Mr. Pecker and Mr. Trump about how A.M.I. could help surface embarrassing information about Bill and Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, during a general election.
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Bezos used his post, "No thank you, Mr. Pecker," to allege that the National Enquirer is blackmailing him by threatening to publish nude photos of himself, along with sexually suggestive photos of Lauren Sanchez, the news anchor with whom he has been having an affair.
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Prior to having a near–vice grip on the industry, Pecker directed the National Enquirer to go all in for Trump during the 2016 campaign, converting the magazine from a celebrity-focused tabloid to one unabashedly heralding the "triumphs" of America's reality TV presidential candidate.
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" In a Thursday blog post headlined, "No thank you, Mr. Pecker," Bezos claims that AMI asked him to publicly deny any political motivation in the Enquirer's coverage of his divorce, in exchange for not publishing photos he texted Sanchez, including a "below the belt selfie.
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The National Enquirer should have known better than to approach Jeff Bezos over sexual photos and messages texted to his mistress, Lauren Sanchez, says Stu Zakim, a former spokesman for the tabloid media empire owned by David Pecker, a longtime friend of President Donald Trump.
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Bezos has hinted that Pecker could have been retaliating on behalf of Trump, who has a bizarre and mostly one-sided feud with Bezos, or the Saudi Arabian government, which tortured and murdered columnist Jamal Khashoggi of the Bezos-owned Washington Post last year.
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We know that the National Enquirer was Trump's enabler in helping him to bury the threat of adult-film star Stormy Daniels' story of their affair before the election; we know that Pecker and Trump have both been unusually tight with the Saudi regime.
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Nevertheless, last year the Wall Street Journal reported that Pecker paid a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to a woman named Karen McDougal, who had alleged that she had a months-long romantic relationship with Trump, beginning in 21976, during his marriage to Melania.
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With former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen now seemingly co-operating with the Mueller investigation and also talking to the press, we're learning more about the president's connections with The National Enquirer and David Pecker, the CEO of its parent company American Media Inc. (AMI).
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When the FBI raided Cohen's office and residences in early April, they sought -- among other items -- records of Cohen's communications with AMI, Pecker, and Howard about two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump, three people familiar with the investigation told the Post.
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Then, in March, McDougal sued AMI for allegedly tricking her into the deal: She claimed Cohen, who served as Trump's longtime personal attorney and fixer, was secretly involved in her contract with AMI, and that AMI Chairman David Pecker mislead her into signing it.
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In the taped call, Cohen tells Trump that he has talked to the mogul's trusted money manager and "Apprentice" guest star, Allen Weisselberg, about how to set up a company to reimburse David Pecker, the National Enquirer owner, for buying off Trump goomah Karen McDougal.
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The deal was apparently an example of a tactic called "catch and kill," in which David Pecker, the chair of AMI and a personal friend of Trump's, would buy the rights to a story only to make sure it never saw the light of day.
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This stroke-of-genius distribution apparatus was dreamed up by the man who made The Enquirer the nation's biggest gossip rag: its previous owner, Generoso Pope Jr. The Enquirer's racks, under the current chief, David J. Pecker, were given over to the Trump campaign.
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The principal owner of American Media, the hedge fund Chatham Asset Management, led by Anthony Melchiorre, pushed Mr. Pecker to sell the tabloid after it found itself in the cross hairs of the federal investigation and at the receiving end of Mr. Bezos' wrath.
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On the tape, you hear Cohen say ... "I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, David," who CNN suggests is a reference to David Pecker, the head of America Media, which publishes National Enquirer.
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In court documents filed on Tuesday, federal prosecutors cited "encrypted" communications among Mr. Pecker, Mr. Howard and Mr. Cohen regarding the payoff to Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film actress known as Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had a brief affair with Mr. Trump.
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News of Mr. Weisselberg's testimony came days after Mr. Cohen said Mr. Trump had directed him to commit campaign finance crimes and one day after another Trump loyalist, the tabloid executive David Pecker, was revealed to have agreed to help prosecutors in their case.
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Some of the names that Mr. Pompeo identified: • Jimmy Finkelstein, who owns The Hill • David Pecker, who owns the National Enquirer • Wang Jianlin of Dalian Wanda — Michael de la Merced The answer is yes, according to new figures from the market research firm eMarketer.
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Pecker, who was described in court filings as having struck a deal with Cohen to stymie potentially damaging stories and in one case pay $22,303 to one woman effectively to buy her silence, also provided investigators with details about payments Cohen made to the women.
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Last week, Jerry George, the former Los Angeles Bureau Chief for the National Enquirer, told CNN's Erica Hill on "Erin Burnett OutFront" that American Media head David Pecker kept a safe in which he held "particularly sensitive story files," including source agreements and contracts.
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The trigger for Bezos' post was his decision to hire a respected investigator to find out how texts to his girlfriend were obtained and published by the National Enquirer -- and to determine why the paper and Pecker, the AMI chairman, had made him a target.
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"We are excited to bring one of the most distinctive and powerful media brands to AMI and are looking forward to continuing its great editorial standards its loyal and growing audience expects," David J. Pecker, American Media's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.
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Neither should we be shocked to learn that during the recent presidential campaign, his buddy David Pecker reportedly used a "catch and kill" technique to purchase the tale of the affair for his supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer and then keep the whole thing secret.
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Mr. Bezos, too, has the ability to use his huge digital reach in all kinds of ways, and he may someday be tempted to do so in situations where the villains are not as obvious as Mr. Pecker and his band of media thugs.
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In 2018 American Media had entered into an immunity deal in connection with the successful prosecution of Michael Cohen, Mr Trump's former lawyer, in which Mr Pecker admitted to buying negative stories about Mr Trump in order to bury them, a practice known as "catch and kill".
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It&aposs also not 100 percent clear from the crosstalk whether the candidate is saying the payment (to reimburse the National Enquirer, owned by Trump pal David Pecker, which spent $150,000 to buy and bury the rights to Karen McDougal&aposs story) should be made in cash.
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Later, Pecker became concerned that publishing the Bezos story could result in a lawsuit and jeopardize his attempts to refinance some $400 million dollars in AMI debt, which had already run into trouble because potential partners were wary of his prior run-ins with federal prosecutors.
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On the recording, Cohen tells Trump: "I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David," a possible reference to David Pecker, Trump&aposs friend and president of the National Enquirer&aposs parent company, American Media Inc.
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In August, media reports said federal prosecutors gave Pecker immunity as part of an investigation into a hush-money scheme involving Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, to keep a porn star and a former Playboy model quiet about their alleged affairs with Trump.
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McDougal claims in the docs that Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, was secretly involved with AMI in the effort to pay her off and shut her up ... because the head of the company, David Pecker, is friends with Trump and he had just secured the Republican nomination.
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More on the National Enquirer's Pecker… While Cohen has already pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations surrounding payments he made on behalf of Trump to bury allegations from two women who maintain they had affairs with Trump, federal investigators are apparently not done looking into the matter.
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In November 2016, The Journal reported that AMI — the company that owns the tabloid, whose CEO is Trump friend David Pecker — paid $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claimed she had an affair with the then-Republican nominee, for her story on the relationship.
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The relationship between Pecker and President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE was also a concern, the Post reports.
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They will start with Allen Weisselberg, David Pecker, Don Jr., Rick Gates, John KellyJohn Francis KellyMORE, Donald McGahnDonald (Don) F. McGahnAmerica has no time to wait for impeachment Election agency limps into 28503 cycle The Memo: Mueller's depictions will fuel Trump angst MORE, and on and on.
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The government's sentencing recommendations in connection with Cohen's August plea reveal that the president was aware of the payments, probably even attending a meeting with Cohen and David Pecker, chairman of AMI (the National Enquirer's corporate owner), to discuss silencing scandalous reports about potential candidate Trump.
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In all three instances, Trump allies (Cohen in the case of Stormy Daniels; and AMI, which is run by his friend David Pecker, in the case of McDougal and the doorman) sought to snuff out a story that painted Trump's personal life in a negative manner.
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Federal prosecutors reached an immunity deal with the tabloid executive David J. Pecker, a key witness in their monthslong investigation into payments during the 2016 campaign to two women who said they had affairs with Donald J. Trump, according to two people familiar with the investigation.
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According to the court documents made public this week, Mr. Pecker and Mr. Howard had been in touch with Mr. Cohen about both Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model who said she had a 10-month affair with Mr. Trump that began in 2006, and Ms. Clifford.
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Separately, federal investigators with the Southern District of New York are looking into its arrangement with Ms. McDougal as part of its broad investigation into the president's lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, and have asked for Mr. Cohen's communications with Mr. Pecker and his lieutenant, Dylan Howard.
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Bezos also mentioned that Pecker, a close ally of President Donald Trump (who also had a cozy relationship with bin Salman), was "apoplectic" over coverage from the Bezos-owned Washington Post of the October 2018 murder of Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, allegedly on bin Salman's orders.
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"I went into stores and did everything from inventing new dances to standing on my head and pulling out my pecker trying to make them understand pickling spice and they dragged out everything from tomato paste to embalming fluid — everything and anything except pickling spice," Ellison wrote.
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Soon after Trump declared his candidacy, Pecker met with Cohen and at least one other member of the campaign in August 2015 to discuss identifying stories that may be damaging to candidate Trump, according to a non-prosecution agreement AMI signed with federal prosecutors in New York.
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It's difficult to not descend into a minefield of them (Jeff Bezos' Prime and Jeff Bezos' package are popular jokes on Twitter today, and HuffPost and The New York Post ran with "Bezos Exposes Pecker") and conclude that it is simply a field day for tabloids.
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In the recording, which aired on CNN Tuesday night, Cohen is heard telling Trump that he needs "to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David," apparently referencing David Pecker, owner of AMI and a longtime Trump friend.
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Two of the dozen names on the could-be-subpoenaed list: American Media's David Pecker and Dylan Howard, "suggesting the committee is also ramping up its probe of hush-money payments made to women during the campaign alleging affairs with Trump..." FOR THE RECORD -- Ross Perot died Tuesday.
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American Media Inc's (AMI) Chief Executive Officer David Pecker met with prosecutors to describe Trump and Cohen's involvement in hush-money deals with adult-film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources.
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" In the documents released Thursday, the FBI agent wrote: "I have learned that in the days following the Access Hollywood video, Cohen exchanged a series of calls, text messages and emails with Keith Davidson, who was then Clifford's attorney, David Pecker and Dylan Howard of American Media, Inc.
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Vanity Fair reported that, according to two sources briefed on the Cohen investigation, federal prosecutors have granted immunity to Pecker, as well as to A.M.I.'s chief content officer, Dylan Howard, in exchange for explaining Trump's potential involvement in Cohen's payments to Daniels and McDougal during the 2016 campaign.
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The Southern District also recently provided immunity to two former Trump confidants in exchange for their coöperation: Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, and David Pecker , the chief executive of the parent company of the National Enquirer , which made the payment to McDougal.
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According to the government, in October 2016 — one month before the presidential election — Ms. Clifford, who has a second career as an exotic dancer, reached out through her agent to the National Enquirer, the gossip magazine owned by David J. Pecker, a longtime friend and supporter of Mr. Trump.
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David Pecker, Chief of National Enquirer's Publisher, Is Said to Get Immunity in Trump Inquiry Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's former campaign chairman, was convicted on Tuesday of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account.
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More from Jim Rutenberg and Rebecca Ruiz of the NYT: As early as August 2015, prosecutors revealed, Mr. Cohen communicated with the chairman of American Media, David J. Pecker, who agreed to turn the organization's tip line into a trip wire that could detect potential trouble for Mr. Trump.
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While Pecker was not the one who sent the emails Bezos shared on Medium, the company has come under fire for questionable practices in the past -- including Pecker's work with ex-Trump fixer Michael Cohen to suppress former Playboy model Karen McDougal's story about Trump during the presidential campaign.
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The show's hosts wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Friday that top White House officials had threatened to publish a negative story in the National Enquirer, which is owned by Trump's friend David Pecker, if they did not personally call the president to apologize for past comments.
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Under the headline "No thank you, Mr Pecker", Mr Bezos wrote that American Media executives threatened to publish more revealing photos of him and his paramour unless he agreed to declare publicly that their pursuit of the story about his affair was not motivated by politics or any other "external forces".
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She's continued to act in movies, appearing in indie flicks such as Pecker (20073) and 200 Cigarettes (1999), but she's really found her home on TV, starring on four seasons of the sitcom Raising Hope and in a recurring role on The Good Wife that won her an Emmy in 2012.
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In addition to obtaining a guilty plea from Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, the prosecutors working for the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York have made immunity agreements with David Pecker, publisher of the National Enquirer, and Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization.
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Despite Bezos's victory over the National Enquirer—and by extension the president, who enjoys a mutually beneficial relationship with the paper's publisher, David Pecker—there's growing tension between Bezos's role as the savior of one of America's most important news organizations and his role overseeing an anti-democratic corporate behemoth.
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And Mr. Trump appeared to take a world-wearier view of the wisdom of leaving his sensitive personal secrets in someone else's hands: "Maybe he gets hit by a truck," Mr. Trump said of Mr. Pecker in a conversation with Mr. Cohen, musing about an unfortunate mishap befalling his good friend.
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Curiously, Davidson was also the attorney used by former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal, who was given roughly the same amount of $150,85033 to sign away her rights to her story in what appears a "catch and kill" agreement with the National Enquirer and its owner (and Trump friend) David Pecker.
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From The New Yorker: This piece about The National Enquirer in the age of Trump, by Jeffrey Toobin, has everything a great magazine piece should have — concise writing, a compelling character in The Enquirer owner, David Pecker, and high stakes, given The Enquirer's role as a ubiquitous billboard for Mr. Trump.
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American Media said Pecker met with Cohen and at least one other member of Trump's presidential campaign in August 2015 and offered to help with negative stories about Trump's relationships with women by buying the rights to those stories, according to a deal made public in December by federal prosecutors in New York.
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And one of Trump's longtime friends, David Pecker, the CEO of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, struck an immunity deal with prosecutors investigating a $200063,000 payment the president arranged to buy the rights to a story about an ex-Playboy model who claims to have had an affair with Trump.
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Bezos's investigators suggested last week that the Enquirer's coverage of his extramarital affair with former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez was driven by dirty politics, and the high-profile clash now pits the world's richest man against David Pecker, the leader of America's best-known tabloid and a Trump ally (The Washington Post).
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"He can say it's a political hit job all he wants, but there's a credible violation of New York State law" The National Enquirer tabloid, run by Trump's friend and supporter David Pecker, also paid $150,000 to Playboy model Karen McDougal to effectively silence her story about having an affair with Trump.
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Federal prosecutors have gathered evidence that Trump worked with his friend and media executive David Pecker to use the National Enquirer tabloid to buy the silence of adult-film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, according to interviews the Journal had with three dozen people with knowledge of the transactions.
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That's not to say there were lots and lots of women alleging affairs (we have no way of knowing at the moment) but it is to say that AMI -- and its head David Pecker, a longtime friend of the President -- may have helped bury other stories about Trump that were less than flattering.
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KURTZ: And what Rudy Giuliani in confirming the story said, Jessica, was that this was a possible payment and ultimately didn&apost happen, to reimburse The National Enquirer run by Trump&aposs pal, David Pecker, for buying McDougal&aposs story and killing it for $150,000, and what you said, Trump did nothing wrong.
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AMI said Chief Executive David Pecker met with Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen and at least one other member of the campaign in August 2015 and offered to help with negative stories about Trump's relationships with women by buying the rights to those stories, according to a document made public by prosecutors.
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Michael D. Cohen who paid $130,000 to who negotiated payment between says he made the payments at the direction of The National Enquirer Stephanie Clifford Karen McDougal whose chief executive is to cover up an alleged affair with to cover up an alleged affair with is a longtime friend of Donald J. Trump David J. Pecker Michael D. Cohen who paid $130,000 to says he made the payments at the direction of who negotiated payment between The National Enquirer Stephanie Clifford Karen McDougal to cover up an alleged affair with to cover up an alleged affair with whose chief executive is David J. Pecker Donald J. Trump is a longtime friend of By The New York Times Prosecutors left little doubt that A.M.I. Inc.
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" (An earlier el-Baghdadi thread describes the relationship between Pecker, AMI, and Saudi Arabia in good detail.) Bezos tiptoes right up to saying this himself in his original Medium post, in which he writes: "The Post's essential and unrelenting coverage of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles.
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The Enquirer is owned by David Pecker, a top ally of President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump pushes back on recent polling data, says internal numbers are 'strongest we've had so far' Illinois state lawmaker apologizes for photos depicting mock assassination of Trump Scaramucci assembling team of former Cabinet members to speak out against Trump MORE.
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"Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer," a documentary from Mark Landsman, presents The Enquirer as an unlikely haven of bona fide shoe-leather journalism, or at the very least a fun place to work, until — in this telling — David J. Pecker became the owner and sullied a halcyon tradition of dirt digging.
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"We have been keenly focused on leveraging the popularity of our celebrity glossy, teen and active lifestyle brands while developing new and robust platforms including broadcast and audio programming, and a live events business, that now deliver significant revenue streams," said American Media President and CEO David J. Pecker in a statement released Wednesday evening.
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Cohen's comments came after CNN and NBC reported Thursday that Trump was the third person in the room at a critical August 2015 meeting at which Cohen and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker discussed how to quash the women's stories — a plan federal prosecutors say was a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws.
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Jerrold Nadler, pictured above in February, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent demands for documents to 220 agencies, individuals and other entities including the White House; the Justice Department; the F.B.I.; Jared Kushner; David Pecker, chairman of The National Enquirer's publisher; the Trump campaign; the Trump Foundation; and the presidential inaugural committee.
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Shortly after American Media completed the arrangement with Ms. McDougal at Mr. Trump's behest, a troubling question began to nag at Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen, according to several people who knew about the discussions at the time: What would happen to America Media's sensitive Trump files if Mr. Pecker were to leave the company?
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That Trump's good friend David Pecker, CEO of the company that owns the National Enquirer, which sat on the story about Playboy model Karen McDougal's alleged affair, and the CFO of the Trump organization were given immunity for the Cohen investigation makes the possibility of further legal action all the more frightening for the President.
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The lawsuit details how media executive David Pecker and Trump's former lawyer and fixer Michael CohenMichael Dean CohenFormer Trump lawyer Michael Cohen asks judge to reduce sentence Trump request for Ukrainian 'favor' tops notable quote list Karen McDougal sues Fox News over alleged slander MORE negotiated with McDougal to buy her silence about her affair.
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"Big Pecker Brand" T-shirts, a cartoon strip called "Twatty Girl," and the lesbian biker group "Dykes on Bikes" — these lurid names are just some that are now eligible for U.S. trademarks after a Monday ruling by the Supreme Court found that potentially offensive trademarks are protected by the First Amendment's free speech clause.
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The alleged extortion raises questions among some legal observers about whether AMI and its chief executive David Pecker have violated a cooperation agreement AMI made last year with federal prosecutors in connection with a $150,000 hush-money payment given to Karen McDougal, the Playboy model who claims she had an affair with President Donald Trump.
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Also on the committee's list are others who worked on Trump's 2016 campaign or in the White House, such as Hope Hicks, Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer; Rhona Graff, a long-time executive assistant at the Trump Organization; and David Pecker, chief executive of American Media Inc, which publishes the supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer.
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" It's why some historians talk with undisguised admiration about the mean streak of President Andrew Jackson, who once killed a man for insulting his wife; the frontier-honed strength of the towering Abraham Lincoln; or even the Machiavellian cunning of Lyndon Johnson, who once said he couldn't trust a man "unless I have his pecker in my pocket.
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Based on his stewardship of his own publications, Pecker would almost certainly direct those magazines, and the journalists who work for them, to advance the interests of the President and to damage those of his opponents—which makes the story of the Enquirer and its chief executive a little more important and a little less funny.
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In a blockbuster investigative article, The Wall Street Journal reports that on two previously undisclosed occasions in 2015 and 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump met with David Pecker, chief executive of the firm that owns The National Enquirer, to plot out strategies for hush money payments to women that Trump had allegedly had extra-marital affairs with.
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Rust was a controversial one—though they all are, to some extent, because perhaps the world isn't ready for dongs—because it assigned every player a different-sized pecker based on their Steam ID. It was a masterstroke, but one that the players didn't quite appreciate, despite it being pretty similar to, you know, real life.
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Democrats approved one dozen new subpoenas for witnesses listed in Mueller's report, including several who have worked in the administration -- Sessions, Jared Kushner, John Kelly -- in addition to others who have not, such as Lewandowski and David Pecker, the American Media executive who helped buy the silence of women who alleged they had affairs with the President.
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Read more: DOJ veterans say Trump's latest defense in the Michael Cohen case is rarely successful and could spectacularly backfire on him The AMI non-prosecution agreement referenced a third person from the Trump campaign in the room with Cohen and AMI President David Pecker when they negotiated the deal to "catch and kill" McDougal's story.
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New York prosecutors say AMI Chief Executive David Pecker met in August 2015 with Cohen and "one other member of the campaign" to offer to help deal with negative stories about Trump's alleged affairs with women by assisting the campaign in identifying stories so they could be purchased and buried, a practice known as catch and kill.
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OK, and that has bearing on the broader possibility of a crime—that this purchase by Pecker, if it were on behalf of Trump as a political favor rather than a personal one and Trump and Cohen considered acquiring it themselves, that it amounted to a donation that was unreported and therefore a federal campaign finance violation, right?
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While the tabloid did publish a piece earlier this year with excerpts of text exchanges between the two, Bezos has accused AMI and its chairman David Pecker of holding pictures of Bezos in a state of arousal as well as compromising photos of his girlfriend in reserve—then threatening to publish them unless he ended an investigation into who AMI's source was.
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Prosecutors reportedly granted immunity to David Pecker, the CEO of the company that publishes National Enquirer, as part of their investigation into President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE's longtime lawyer Michael Cohen.
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President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump pushes back on recent polling data, says internal numbers are 'strongest we've had so far' Illinois state lawmaker apologizes for photos depicting mock assassination of Trump Scaramucci assembling team of former Cabinet members to speak out against Trump MORE's longtime friend David Pecker, who publishes The National Enquirer, also struck an immunity deal in the case.
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In standing up to Pecker, Bezos made an important stand against the culture of bullying that Trump and his allies have helped establish -- and gained so much more than he might have lost with the printing of those photos (which would have been embarrassing, surely, but very likely not revealing much of anything that his soon-to-be-ex-wife didn't already know).
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Two days after longtime Donald Trump crony Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to crimes including helping to pay off women who said they had affairs with his boss, and hours after the public learned National Enquirer boss and Trump ally David Pecker was granted immunity by the feds in that case, we got another hint at how the president's apparently extensively hush-money operation worked.
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The Journal added that Michael Sanchez secured an unusually generous $200,000 upfront payment from AMI with a contract saying he was free to keep the money and take the photos to another publication if the tabloid failed to publish them—something spurred by staffers' concerns that AMI CEO David Pecker would sit on it to protect a friend with family ties to Lauren Sanchez.
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Two months later, he was in Saudi Arabia, meeting with Mr. Grine and the crown prince about business opportunities there, according to A.M.I. And by January, Mr. Pecker was confident enough about his growing rapport with Saudi investors that he sought their help bankrolling a possible acquisition of Time magazine, which he had long coveted, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks.
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CNN reported Monday that Pecker spoke with prosecutors with the Southern District of New York as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the payments made by Trump through his former attorney, Michael CohenMichael Dean CohenTax and loan documents for Trump Tower show inconsistencies: report National Enquirer company chief speaks with New York prosecutors in Trump Org probe: report Will Republicans continue to engage in willful blindness?
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Mr. Trump ignored shouted questions about it from reporters as he left the White House on Friday afternoon and departed for a weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. David J. Pecker, the chairman of A.M.I., is a friend of Mr. Trump's, and Ms. McDougal has accused Mr. Cohen of secretly taking part in the deal — an allegation that is now part of the F.B.I. investigation.
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" Further placing Mr. Trump at the center of the scheme, American Media told prosecutors that all the way back in August 2015, Mr. Pecker had met with Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen and "offered to help deal with negative stories about that presidential candidate's relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.
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What we do know -- and to be clear, there's much more that we DON'T -- are two very basic things: 1) Donald Trump and AMI boss David Pecker have a very long friendship that, on at least one occasion, has led to the Enquirer paying a woman (Karen McDougal) for the rights to her story that she had an affair with Trump in the mid-2000s and then never running that story.
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According to Bezos, news of the investigation infuriated AMI chief David Pecker, whose close ties to President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE have led to scrutiny over his role in the payments between Trump's team and multiple women who say they had affairs with Trump.
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Prosecutors report that Mr. Cohen effectively moved to do that several weeks later, setting up a shell company to buy the rights to Ms. McDougal's story about Mr. Trump from A.M.I. The deal was coming together around the time that Mr. Cohen taped a conversation with Mr. Trump in which they appeared to come to a realization: As loyal as Mr. Pecker was, there was no guarantee he would always be in place to protect Mr. Trump's secrets.
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Melchiorre, a Chicago native who went to Northwestern before coming to the East Coast, owned the tabloid National Enquirer through American Media Inc, a conglomerate that includes magazines Star and Us.Melchiorre found his firm dragged into a presidential scandal when details of the National Enquirer burying a story about Trump's affairs with playboy models and porn stars leaked thanks to payment from the president's one-time fixer Michael Cohen, who worked with American Media Inc CEO David Pecker.
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David Pecker has reportedly resigned from his position on the board of Postmedia Network Canada Corp, a Canadian newspaper company, after increased scrutiny over his role in the affair concerning President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump pushes back on recent polling data, says internal numbers are 'strongest we've had so far' Illinois state lawmaker apologizes for photos depicting mock assassination of Trump Scaramucci assembling team of former Cabinet members to speak out against Trump MORE and hush-money payments made to multiple women.
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Pace "should cut all ties from Pecker and remove his name from all honors and buildings..." (Lohud) First Amendment Awards in DC on Wednesday ABC's Pierre Thomas will emcee RTDNF's 29th annual First Amendment Dinner in DC. The honorees are:- CNN (award accepted by Jeff Zucker; presented by Carl Bernstein)- James Goldston, president of ABC News- David Begnaud, CBS News correspondent- Shepard Smith, Fox News- NBC News 2018 election "Road Warriors"- Dale Hansen, WFAA-TV (Dallas) sports anchor and commentator- Sen.
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The National Enquirer kept a safe containing documents with details on hush money payments and other damaging details on President Trump leading up to the 2016 election, reports the AP. Why it matters: Details about the documents the Enquirer hid for Trump as part of an arrangement may come to light in the testimony of Enquirer chief David Pecker, who was granted immunity in return for providing information to federal prosecutors as part of the investigation in to Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.
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But in the Journal's telling, the alleged blackmail attempt came after AMI's financial backers demanded he find a way to make it clear the Bezos story was not a hit job on a Trump opponent:Amid reports on alleged links between the Enquirer story and Mr. Pecker's actions on behalf of Mr. Trump during the 2016 election, American Media's financial backers at Chatham Asset Management—who had been unhappy about the Bezos coverage—conveyed their displeasure and pressured Mr. Pecker to resolve the matter, said people familiar with the communications.
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The 71-year-old president's pathological inability to let go of slights; his strongman reflex to be the aggressor and bite back like a cornered animal, without regard for societal norms; his lack of self-awareness about the power he commands and the proportionality of his responses; his grotesque hunger for flattery and taste for Tony Soprano tactics; his Pravda partnership with David Pecker, the head honcho at The National Enquirer, which has been giving Trump the Il Duce treatment while sliming his political opponents, the "Morning Joe" anchors and Megyn Kelly — these are all matters that should alarm men and women equally.
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According to Bezos's post, titled "No thank you, Mr. Pecker," AMI responded to Bezos's investigation and the Post's coverage of the whole affair by threatening to publish what an alleged email from an AMI executive described as a "d*ck pick" along with photos that included, among others: Bezos went on to reproduce an email that he says is from an AMI lawyer stating that if he and his representatives release a statement "affirming that they have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AM's coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces, and an agreement that they will cease referring to such a possibility," the company won't publish the photos.
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