pecker nat enq

see main nat'l enq, this is trump era

gossip category: gop goes back to hedda hopper; [Parnell]; took out Gary hart; bizzarely, HIDE/SUPPRESS sex scandal of trump (key b/c grab by pussy could have at long last been the bit that stuck, comey oct suprise hurt hillary, access hollywood?

4 24 maddow has natl eng ft pages hit man lesbo dying of cancer etc etc

trump hush trial

an 621

Knowingly and willfully': Another Trump ally gets caught by the law in the hush-money case

Jon Skolnik Salon

June 03, 2021

The tabloid publishing company that owns the National Enquirer will be fined $187,500 by FEC for a hush money payment to a woman with whom Donald Trump had an extramarital affair – a transaction which the FEC argues is in clear violation of campaign finance law.

The transaction occurred back in 2016, when American Media Inc. (presently known as A360 Media LLC) transferred $150,000 to former model Karen McDougal, who in exchange for the funds, relinquished the rights to tell her story about the affair. The transaction was first made public back in 2018 amid the prosecution of ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to tax evasion and campaign finance violations.

The FEC found that America Media chief executive, David J. Pecker, a Trump ally, "knowingly and willfully" broke campaign finance laws in conjunction with various Trump campaign officials as well as Cohen, who has for years been positioned as Trump's right-hand man in the coverup.

American Media has openly admitted that it routed the money to McDougal, though it disputes it broke any campaign finance laws, claiming that "payments for silence are not contributions or expenditures because silence is not a 'thing of value,'" according to the settlement agreement. Though, back in 2018, America Media had already agreed to a non-prosecution deal in which it acknowledged that hush money was intended to influence the results of the 2016 general election.

"The available information supports the conclusion that AMI's [American Media, Inc.'s] payment constituted an in-kind contribution to Trump and the Trump Committee," the FEC wote in an analysis obtained by Common Cause, a government watchdog group. "AMI and Pecker appear to have violated the Act by making and consenting to making a corporate contribution in the form of a payment from AMI to McDougal. As explained below, the record indicates that there is reason to believe that this violation was knowing and willful."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Saudi Arabia ‘had access’ to Jeff Bezos’ phone: Investigator drops bombshell allegation against the Middle East kingdom

Bob Brigham / Salon

Renowned celebrity private investigator Gavin De Becker “concluded with high confidence” that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had access to the cell phone of Amazon founder and Washington Post owner…

onfidence” that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had access to the cell phone of Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos.

In a new column published by The Daily Beast, De Becker laid out what he learned in his investigation into how the Nationale Enquirer published salacious details of Bezos’ private life.

“Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone, and gained private information,” De Becker wrote. “We did not reach our conclusions lightly.”

“The inquiry included a broad array of resources: investigative interviews with current and former AMI executives and sources, extensive discussions with top Middle East experts in the intelligence community, leading cyber security experts who have tracked Saudi spyware, discussions with current and former advisers to President Trump, Saudi whistleblowers, people who personally know the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (also known as MBS), people who work with his close associate Saud al-Qahtani, Saudi dissidents, and other targets of Saudi action, including writer/activist Iyad el-Baghdadi,” he explained.

“Experts with whom we consulted confirmed New York Times reports on the Saudi capability to ‘collect vast amounts of previously inaccessible data from smartphones in the air without leaving a trace — including phone calls, texts, emails’ – and confirmed that hacking was a key part of the Saudi’s “extensive surveillance efforts that ultimately led to the killing of [Washington Post] journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” he continued.

“Some Americans will be surprised to learn that the Saudi government has been very intent on harming Jeff Bezos since last October, when The Post began its relentless coverage of Khashoggi’s murder,” he said.

He added, “it’s clear that MBS considers the Washington Post to be a major enemy.”

Read his full column.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/theres-another-shoe-to-drop-it-sure-looks-like-the-enquirers-blackmail-of-jeff-bezos-was-meant-to-protect-the-saudi-crown-prince/

In Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ extraordinary letter revealing the National Enquirer’s apparent attempt to blackmail him, one detail has led to intense speculation:Bezos linked the effort to the tabloid paper’s ties to the Saudi Arabian government.

Bezos wrote in a Medium post that American Media, the parent company of the Enquirer, threatened to publish nude photos and details of his affair with former news anchor Lauren Sanchez unless he made a statement saying he had “no knowledge” that the Enquirer’s coverage of his affair was “politically motivated or influenced by political forces.”

Bezos noted that David Pecker, the head of AMI and a longtime associate of President Trump, “recently entered into an immunity deal with the Department of Justice related to their role in the so-called ‘Catch and Kill’ process on behalf of President Trump and his election campaign.”

AMI bought the story of former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s alleged affair with Trump and killed the story before the election,the company admitted.

“Mr. Pecker and his company have also been investigated for various actions they’ve taken on behalf of the Saudi Government,” Bezos added.

Bezos cited a New York Times report revealing that Trump “rewarded” Pecker’s loyalty by inviting him to a White House dinner with a guest linked to the royal family in Saudi Arabia, where Pecker was pursuing business opportunities.

The Times reported that Pecker traveled to Saudi Arabia after the trip to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and even believed that the Saudis would help fund his coveted acquisition of Time magazine.

Ahead of that visit, AMI published a 100-page glossy magazine that was essentially a promotional brochure for Saudi Arabia and Prince Mohammed.

Bezos’ revelations came on the same day that the Times reported that the Saudi prince told a top aide in 2017 that he would use a “bullet’ on Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist murdered last October, according to American intelligence intercepts. President Trump and his associates have repeatedly downplayed the U.S. intelligence findings and defended Prince Mohammed, who is reportedly close to Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

They also came on the same day that the Wall Street Journal reported that Prince Mohammed was actively recruiting American media outlets to remake his image in the west. According to the report, he met on a yacht with Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith to discuss “an international media empire to combat the kingdom’s rivals and remake its image in the West.”

Bezos wrote that an AMI “leader” told his team that Pecker was “apoplectic” about the investigation Bezos launched into texts and images that were stolen from his phone. “For reasons still to be better understood, the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve,” Bezos wrote.

It’s unclear what, if any, connections Saudi Arabia has to the blackmail attempt but Bezos security chief Gavin de Becker believes that the texts and photos were not obtained by hacking Bezos’ phone.

Instead, according to Washington Post reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia, de Becker believes “it’s possible that a government entity might have gotten hold of [Bezos’] text messages.”

In December, former longtime National Enquirer editor Jerry George linked Pecker, Trump and the Saudis in an interview with MSNBC, in which he explained that Pecker was using his company’s coverage to help the Trump campaign and the Saudis in order to get financing for acquisitions. George said Pecker was holding on to damaging information to use as bargaining chips.

“David got close to the Trump pals, including you know, Saudi money and Jared Kushner’s … banking friends,” George told host Ari Melber. “So he ultimately gathered some bargaining chips that he planned to use in time to get something he needed.”

George went on to cite the pro-Saudi propaganda glossy that AMI published as “suspicious” because the company was “cash poor” and “suddenly” got an “influx of cash.”

“I think there`s another shoe to drop,” he said. “I mean, the special counsel’s focus is now moving towards, you know, the Saudis’ role in all of this … they may not be out of trouble yet.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/national-enquirers-suspected-source-for-bezos-story-believed-trump-knew-and-supported-the-effort-report/

On Sunday, The Daily Beast reported that the National Enquirer’s likely source for the steamy text messages between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his mistress Lauren Sanchez was the mistress’ brother, Michael Sanchez.

But the saga could be deeper than that. It turns out that Sanchez believed that the Enquirer, and its parent companyAMI, were acting with the blessing of President Donald Trump, who allegedly wanted revenge on Bezos for negative coverage about him in the Washington Post:

Documents reviewed by The Daily Beast show that Michael Sanchez believed the Enquirer pursued its story about Bezos with “President Trump’s knowledge and appreciation” — a chase encouraged, in Sanchez’s estimation, by Republican operatives “who THINK Jeff gets up every morning and has a WaPo meeting to plot its next diabolical attack on President Trump.”

Bezos, the richest man in the world, purchased the Post in 2013. However, there is no evidence he plays any role in the paper’s editorial direction, and the Post has actually run a number of articles critical of Amazon under his ownership without comment from him.

AMI and its owner, David Pecker, are facing backlash after Bezos revealed that the company tried to blackmail him with nude photos after he launched an investigation into how they acquired text messages from his affair.

Pecker, a friend of Trump’s, was granted immunity last fall as part of an investigation by the Southern District of New York attorney’s office into Trump’s hush payments to women prior to the 2016 presidential election, one of which — to cover up Trump’s encounter with Playboy Playmate Karen MacDougal — was brokered by AMI. If it turns out that AMI broke the law by blackmailing Bezos, which could constitute criminal extortion, this would violate the terms of their immunity agreement, meaning SDNY prosecutors could pursue charges against the company.

Moreover, there may be yet another side to Trump’s alleged involvement. The president has reportedly “rewarded” Pecker by putting him in touch with people connected to the Saudi royal family, at roughly the same time that AMI was attempting to secure funding from the Saudis to acquire Time Magazine and ran a special edition that lavished praise on Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

If it transpired that Trump tried to hook up his publisher friend with funding from a despotic foreign regime in return for helping to discredit a businessman at the center of a personal vendetta, then the Russia collusion allegations could be just the tip of the iceberg for the president’s wrongdoing. Sanchez’s belief that Trump gave his imprimatur to AMI’s actions does little to help him.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/federal-prosecutors-are-now-probing-national-enquirers-reported-blackmail-in-light-of-its-role-in-trump-campaign-crimes-report/

Pecker’s alleged attempt to blackmail Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos would not ordinarily attract my eye, except for this paragraph:

“And sometimes Mr. Pecker mixes it all together:

“After Mr. Trump became president, he rewarded Mr. Pecker’s loyalty with a White House dinner to which the media executive brought a guest with important ties to the royals in Saudi Arabia. At the time, Mr. Pecker was pursuing business there while also hunting for financing for acquisitions.…”

We knew that Pecker had brought the French investment banker and Saudi publicist Kacy Grine to the White House.

And Spencer Ackerman had reported on Pecker’s strange move to put a pro-Saudi glossy magazine in grocery store checkout lanes in spring of 2018.It is as though he thought American housewives would thrill to the soap opera in Riyadh, where the Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman had, in summer of 2017, sidelined his rival, Mohammed bin Nayef, dethroning him as crown prince and greedily taking his place, before he kidnapped many in the Saudi elite to shake them down for $100 billion while imprisoning them in the Ritz-Carlton. “Days of Our Lives” had nothing on the Saudis.

In short, there is every reason to believe that Pecker is entangled with the Saudi royal court of bin Salman, perhaps, as Bezos alleges, in search of investment opportunities.

One question I have long had is whether investigators looking at the Russian element in the election of Trump are not unduly downplaying a United Arab Emirates and Saudi angle. That is, did those two oil monarchies help put Trump in power in the first place, and is there a prehistory to their entanglements with his circle?

But what Bezos goes on to say is that he hired a private investigator to find out how Pecker got hold of his texts and exchanges of smartphone photographs with his lover, Lauren Sanchez.

And the investigator, Gavin de Becker, looked into whether Pecker’s National Enquirer is influence-peddling for Saudi Arabia for some sort of quid pro quo.

Bezos also hints that Pecker was upset about The Washington Post’s quest to get to the bottom of the Saudi government’s murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Oct. 2, 2018. Bezos owns the Post, though he maintains he is a hands-off owner.

Bezos alleges that the investigation of the Saudi connection alarmed Pecker and precipitated the alleged attempt to blackmail the Amazon CEO into falling silent and backing off, with the threat of releasing further compromising photographs and text messages of a private nature.

Ronan Farrow said on Twitter that Pecker’s hired gun, Australian Dylan Howard, also attempted to intimidate him when he was investigating Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment of women in Hollywood.

This charge makes me wonder ifPecker isn’t America’s answer to Rupert Murdoch, whose British tabloids were famous for hacking Britons’ telephone messages and then blackmailing or smearing them with the stolen material. Former Prime Minister John Major alleged that Murdoch threatened him with bad press unless he bent to Murdoch’s will.

I have to say that I never took Pecker or the National Enquirer seriously, but maybe he is secretly one of the more powerful men in the world, holding files on politicians and celebrities and coercing them behind the scenes.

One piece of jeopardy for Pecker is that he was granted immunity, for cooperating with the Mueller probe, from charges of election fraud for paying off nude model Karen McDougall, Trump’s lover, to gain her silence during the 2016 election campaign. That immunity depends on his avoiding further acts of illegality. It is not clear that the courts would accept Bezos’ claim of extortion. But Pecker wouldn’t be so nervous about Bezos investigating his Saudi ties unless there was something to hide in that regard.

Finally, the Bezos investigator has been telling The Washington Post’s Manuel Roig-Franzia that he does not believe Bezos’ phone was hacked. He thinks that a “government entity” captured the signals from the phone somehow.

Speculation went immediately to Saudi Arabia, which used Israeli spyware to hack Khashoggi’s WhatsApp account.

Of course, Saudi Arabia and its partner in crime, the United Arab Emirates, are also good at hacking, and actually got into the cellphone of the emir of Qatar and then put out fake video of him.

And, since the far-right-wing government of Binyamin Netanyahu is hoping to be rescued politically by a normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia, the Israeli Mossad has a motive to protect Saudi allies like Trump and Pecker as well.

I’m confused, however, as to how a foreign government could capture text and photos from an AT&T or Verizon server (Bezos uses an iPhone). That is to say, the allegation is that the iPhone was not hacked and that the signals were scooped up in some other way. Moreover, the diction is “a government entity,” not a foreign government.

It appears to me that de Becker may be alleging that the U.S. National Security Agency captured that material, a capability that has been well documented. The NSA, of course, reports directly to Trump, Pecker’s dear friend and co-conspirator in election fraud through the suppression of the McDougall affair.

I pointed out in 2016, in a piece at The Nation, that the Bush and Obama administrations had made a huge error in not reining in the NSA on Fourth Amendment grounds, thus bequeathing to a maniac like Trump the ability to spy on all Americans. Are those chickens now coming home to roost? Did the NSA spy on Bezos at Trump’s request and then turn the material over to Pecker?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/federal-prosecutors-are-now-probing-national-enquirers-reported-blackmail-in-light-of-its-role-in-trump-campaign-crimes-report/

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are reviewing the conduct of the National Enquirer and its parent company, American Media, Inc., after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos alleged Thursday that the tabloid attempted to blackmail and extort him by threatening to publish his nude selfies, according to Bloomberg.

The Associated Press has also confirmed Bloomberg’s report.

Bezos said that a lawyer for AMI had formally demanded that he publicly denounce the suggestion that the National Enquirer’s recent coverage of his extramarital affair was driven by political motivation, perhaps because of coverage from the Washington Post, which Bezos owns, about the Trump administration or Saudi Arabia.

AMI and its CEO David Pecker have entered into a non-prosecution deal for their role in the campaign finance crimes carried out by Michael Cohen,President Donald Trump’s former lawyer. Cohen pleaded guilty to the crimes and said in court that Trump himself had directed him to arrange criminal hush money payments. Trump has a long history of a mutually beneficial relationship with AMI and Pecker.

It’s not clear if AMI’s reported blackmail attempt of Bezos would violate the law, but if it did, it could nullify the non-prosecution agreement with SDNY and open up the company and Pecker to potential criminal charges.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/ronan-farrow-says-he-and-other-journalists-got-national-enquirer-blackmail-threats-related-to-trump-reporting/

no lnx

Ronand Farrow and at least one other journalist have allegedly received blackmail threats from the National Enquirer after reporting on the tabloid and President Donald Trump.

Farrow revealed the threats Thursday evening after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos published emails from the tabloid threatening to publish explicit photos taken from his phone if the Washington Post, which he also owns, did not stop investigating the publication, the Post reported.

Ronan Farrow

@RonanFarrow

I and at least one other prominent journalist involved in breaking stories about the National Enquirer’s arrangement with Trump fielded similar “stop digging or we’ll ruin you” blackmail efforts from AMI. (I did not engage as I don’t cut deals with subjects of ongoing reporting.)

Jeff Bezos

@JeffBezos

I’ve written a post about developments with the National Enquirer and its parent company, AMI. You can find it here: https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146e3922310f …

37.4K

5:57 PM - Feb 7, 2019

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Farrow published a story in April about the Enquirer‘s “catch and kill” practice,” which involves paying off sources and then burying the stories, that helped Trump during his 2016 campaign.

SPONSORED

Former Associated Press editor Ted Bridis also tweeted that the media organization had been warned that AMI, the Enquirer’s publisher, hired private investigators to target AP reporters looking into their efforts to help Trump, although he never saw evidence this took place.

The Daily Beast reported that attorneys for AMI aggressively responded, including unspecified threats, to two stories published last week about Bezos and the Enquirer.

The Post obtained documents that show AMI attorneys tried to pressure The Daily Beast not to publish reports suggesting that Trump’s allies were involved in efforts to reveal the Bezos affair.

The tabloid threatened to sue if the website used any material from a former Enquirer executive who has been hired by the website.

Bezos shared threatening emails purportedly from AMI officials, including chief content officer Dylan Howard, who also played a notable role in the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandal.

Farrow helped break the Weinstein story into widespread circulation in November 2017.

https://www.alternet.org/jared-kushner-was-key-player-trumps-national-enquirer-blackmail-scheme-against-msnbcs-scarborough

Kushner reportedly took part in an attempted blackmail scheme against his former friends Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

President Donald Trump's son-in-law, who also serves as a senior White House adviser, took over for former Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen as the main conduit between the president and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, reported The Daily Beast.

Both Cohen, who has pleaded guilty to charges filed by the special counsel and federal prosecutors, and Pecker have agreed to cooperate with investigators regarding potential wrongdoing by the president and his associates.

Pecker had hoped Cohen would continue serving Trump in the White House, but when he was left behind the American Media Inc. publisher settled on Kushner as his point person for business dealings with the president after the inauguration.

He and Kushner discussed everything from international relations to media gossip, according to four sources, and Pecker boasted to associates that he had regular contact with the senior White House adviser.

Both Pecker and Kushner forged close relationships with the Saudi royal family, and they also discussed possible dirt the Enquirer had dug up on the "Morning Joe" co-hosts.

Scarborough and Brzezinski revealed in late June 2017 that three senior Trump aides had urged them to "grovel" before the president or the tabloid would publish negative stories about them.

Brzezinski said the tabloid sent reporters to harass her family and friends as White House officials begged them to call the president to apologize.

The White House denied the MSNBC broadcasters' claims, but Trump essentially confirmed he had the ability to stop the Enquirer from publishing stories.

Watched low rated @Morning_Joe for first time in long time. FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017

The Daily Beast later reported that Kushner was involved in that matter, but Scarborough did not know that his friend had been in regular contact with the Enquirer's publisher.

Trump was reportedly angry that Kushner had offered in January 2017 to officiate a wedding between Scarborough and Brzezinski, who had been friends with the president but later became outspoken critics.

Shortly after the Scarborough-Brzezinski drama, Pecker visited Trump and Kushner at the White House, and Kacy Grine, a French businessman with ties to the Saudi business elite and royal family.

Scarborough said the president called him during the campaign and boasted that he was friends with Pecker, and suggested the tabloid was planting stories to attack his political enemies.

“He’d say, ‘Have you seen the Ben Carson story? Have you seen the Ben Carson story? Have you seen the story in the Enquirer,’ and then he’d talk about it,” Scarborough said.

Federal investigators are now questioning Pecker about those articles, which include payments to Trump's alleged mistresses and a story implicating Sen. Ted Cruz’s father in the Kennedy assassination, as possible campaign finance violations.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/here-are-5-wildest-wackiest-most-outlandish-things-david-peckers-american-media

During its 92-year history, the National Enquirer has never been known for its journalistic integrity. But the supermarket tabloid (founded in 1926) has had plenty of readers over the years, whether it was publishing pro-fascist and anti-Semitic articles in the 1930s and 1940s (many of them disparaging President Franklin Delano Roosevelt) or publishing accounts of flying saucers and zombies in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

And in 2015 and 2016, the National Enquirer (which is now owned by American Media Inc.) lived up to its terrible reputation by serving as a propagandist for the Donald Trump campaign and publishing a long list of outlandish articles attacking Hillary Clinton. But two of the key players at American Media, CEO David Pecker and Vice President/Chief Content Officer Dylan Howard, have potentially flipped on President Trump — and federal investigators have reportedly agreed to give them immunity from prosecution.

Here are five of the wildest and most outlandish things Pecker and American Media did in support of Trump and his associates.

1. Pecker Agrees to Suppress Negative Information on Trump’s Alleged Extramarital Affairs

In August 2015, Pecker made Cohen an offer: American Media would “catch and kill” any negative stories it found about Trump’s relationships with women. A “catch and kill” agreement, in the world of supermarket tabloids, is when one agrees to pay for exclusive rights to negative stories, then suppress them. And according to the Wall Street Journal, Pecker and Howard employed the catch-and-kill method when, in June 2016, they informed Cohen that Playboy model Karen McDougal was trying to sell American Media a story about an extramarital affair she allegedly had with Trump in 2006 and 2007. Cohen asked Pecker and Howard to purchase the story from McDougal, offering to reimburse them — and in August 2016, American Media offered McDougal $150,000 for the story it agreed to suppress.

2. The Enquirer Claimed That Hillary Clinton Gained 103 Pounds

One of the many ways in which the Enquirer, under Pecker’s direction, defamed Clinton in 2016 was publishing an article claiming that she had “gained 103 pounds and was eating herself to death.” It was a ridiculous claim: if Clinton had gained that much weight during her campaign, the major media would have noticed—and no “exposé” from Pecker and his colleagues would have been necessary. But then, credibility never was the Enquirer’s strong point.

3. The Enquirer Reported That Hillary Clinton Had Terminal Lung Cancer

In 2016, the Enquirer gave readers a long list of “reasons” to vote for Trump over Clinton, and one of them was a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer. Pecker and friends reported that Clinton, thanks to lung cancer, had only six months to live. Of course, Clinton was never diagnosed with lung cancer; it was a fabrication. And two years later, she’s alive and well — although she obviously regrets the fact that her 2016 campaign was unable to prevent the disaster that has been Trump’s presidency.

4. The Enquirer Claimed That Hillary Clinton Suffered 2 Strokes

During the 2016 presidential race, the Enquirer not only claimed that Hillary Clinton had terminal lung cancer — it also reported that she had suffered “two secret strokes.” Naturally, the strokes were as mythical as the lung cancer diagnosis; there were no signs of speech impairment when Clinton was on the campaign trail and was speaking publicly night after night after night. But facts were not high on Pecker’s list of priorities in 2016.

On August 23, Chelsea Clinton used Twitter to comment on the Enquirer's coverage two years ago, humorously posting, “I’d missed the lung cancer cover, the stroke story, the one about my mom @Hillary Clinton’s hitman (possibly my missing alien sibling?!) and goodness, I think all of them actually. As always, thankful for my mom’s enduring health, grace, grit & goodness.”

5. The Enquirer Alleged That Hillary Clinton Blackmailed the FBI

Trump repeatedly referred to Clinton as “crooked Hillary” during his 2016 campaign—and one of the examples of that alleged corruption, according to the Enquirer, was blackmailing the FBI. The Enquirer claimed that the FBI, under James Comey’s direction, was being blackmailed by Clinton. With that wacky conspiracy theory, Pecker and his colleagues managed to give Alex Jones a run for his money.

2. David Pecker

American Media publishes the National Enquirer, which has been a bastion of trash “journalism” since 1926. Back in the 1930s, the Enquirer published pro-fascist anti-Semitic propaganda and vilified Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency—although in the 1970s and 1980s, it was better known for goofy accounts of Americans encountering zombies or being kidnapped by flying saucers. Pecker was a major supporter of Trump’s 2016 campaign, publishing a series of over-the-top anti-Hillary Clinton articles—and in the 1990s, he had promoted Trump’s business interests by published the quarterly magazine Trump Style. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that in 2015 and 2016, Pecker and American Media had a “catch and kill” agreement with Cohen, meaning that the Enquirer would purchase exclusive rights to negative stories about Trump but wouldn’t publish them. According to federal prosecutors, Pecker offered, in August 2015, to help Cohen find negative stories about Trump’s relationships with women and kill the stories.

3. Dylan Howard

Federal prosecutors allege that in June 2016, Pecker and Howard contacted Cohen to inform him that McDougal was trying to sell them a story about her alleged affair with Trump in 2006/2007—and Cohen asked them to purchase the story and agreed to reimburse American Media. In August 2016, American Media agreed to pay McDougal $150,000 for the story, and Cohen created a dummy corporation called Resolution Consultants in order to purchase the story from American Media for $125,000. Now, with Howard agreeing to cooperate with federal prosecutors in exchange for immunity, it’s in his best interests to be as forthcoming as possible about his dealings with Cohen during the Trump campaign.

trump:

http://mediamatters.org/research/2017/01/02/media-outlets-poised-become-trump-s-personal-propaganda-machine/214773

The National Enquirer

CONNECTION: OWNED BY DAVID PECKER, TRUMP’S LONG-TIME FRIEND

The National Enquirer is owned by David Pecker, Trump’s close friend, and was, along with his son-in-law’s paper and Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, the only other national outlet to endorse Trump. New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman reported that while Trump’s “scandal-filled personal life would be yuge! for the supermarket tabloid,” he has been “exclusively celebrated in the Enquirer’s pages.” Trump himself has even written op-eds exclusively for the Enquirer, where he explained “I am the only one who can make America great again!”

The National Enquirer also undertook a strange and savage campaign against Trump’s electoral opponents. With thin sourcing, often only from noted liar/Trump supporter Roger Stone, the Enquirer alleged that Jeb Bush celebrated his father’s presidential win with a cocaine binge, that Hillary and Chelsea Clinton “covered up Bill’s cocaine rehab,” and that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had affairs with multiple women. Their most outrageous pro-Trump lie was that Cruz’s father was somehow involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Enquirer made this claim based on one blurry photograph, but that did not stop Trump from touring cable news shows to hype the absurd smear.

pecker nat enq

Knowingly and willfully': Another Trump ally gets caught by the law in the hush-money case

Saudi Arabia ‘had access’ to Jeff Bezos’ phone: Investigator drops bombshell allegation against the Middle East kingdom

The National Enquirer

CONNECTION: OWNED BY DAVID PECKER, TRUMP’S LONG-TIME FRIEND

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