Summary: The National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc, may have paid a Trump Tower doorman $30,000 to stay mum about Donald Trump’s sex life.
This week, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, had his office in New York raided by the FBI. The law enforcement agency reportedly was looking for information related to hush payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels and playmate Karen McDougal, and today, Business Insider reports that the parent company of a tabloid may have also paid off a doorman to keep mum about the businessman’s sex life.
In January, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that someone in Trump’s camp had paid Daniels $130,000 in 2016 in order to get her to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Daniels allegedly had an affair with Trump years prior when he was married to Melania Trump, and she reportedly was shopping around her adultery story when Trump was running for president.
This year, former Playmate Karen McDougal came forward that she too had an affair with Trump years ago, and she said that she had also signed a nondisclosure agreement for $150,000. In her case, the model said that she had sold her story exclusively to the National Enquirer, but that they had tricked her into giving away her right to speak out on her affair with the intention of never publishing the story.
Trump denied the affairs, and his attorney, Cohen, said that it was he and he alone who had paid Daniels.
On Thursday, Business Insider revealed that the parent company of the National Enquirer may have also paid a doorman $30,000 in order to silence him about speaking out on Trump’s sex life. The doorman, Dino Sajudin, worked at Trump Tower and allegedly knew of a rumor that Trump had fathered a child secretly out of wedlock.
“As it did with the ex-Playmate, the Enquirer signed the ex-doorman to a contract that effectively prevented him from going public with a juicy tale that might hurt Trump’s campaign for president,” Business Insider stated.
Trump’s alleged hush money prompted the FBI to raid Michael Cohen’s office, hotel room, and home in order to search for evidence about the payments, which potentially could violate campaign finance laws.
According to Business Insider, Sajudin was paid $30,000 by American Media Inc in exchange for the rights to his knowledge about Trump “in perpetuity.” The contract said that the ex-doorman could face a penalty of $1 million if he were to squeal about the rumor of Trump’s love child with an employee at Trump World Tower.
“The parallel between the ex-Playmate’s and the ex-doorman’s dealings with the Enquirer raises new questions about the roles that the Enquirer and Cohen may have played in protecting Trump’s image during a hard-fought presidential election,” Business Insider. “Prosecutors are probing whether Cohen broke banking or campaign laws in connection with AMI’s payment to McDougal and a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels that Cohen said he paid out of his own pocket.”
Cohen and Trump have publicly blasted the FBI raids, with Cohen calling them “inappropriate.” American Media said that they would comply with the FBI’s request as long as those requests “do not jeopardize or violate its protected sources or materials pursuant to our First Amendment rights.”
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