The ancillary payment

It seems that, not only did the Enquirer pay $150K to Karen McDougal for her story only to spike it, they also paid a large sum to a doorman to keep quiet.

The story of the ex-doorman, Dino Sajudin, hasn’t been told until now.

[...]

[T]he tabloid’s parent made a $30,000 payment to [the] former doorman at one of the real estate mogul’s New York City buildings.

[...]

The Associated Press confirmed the details of the Enquirer’s payment through a review of a confidential contract and interviews with dozens of current and former employees of the Enquirer and its parent company, American Media Inc. Sajudin got $30,000 in exchange for signing over the rights, “in perpetuity,” to a rumor he’d heard about Trump’s sex life — that the president had fathered an illegitimate child with an employee at Trump World Tower, a skyscraper he owns near the United Nations. The contract subjected Sajudin to a $1 million penalty if he disclosed either the rumor or the terms of the deal to anyone.

  AP

Thirty grand for a rumor? That's some rumor.

Cohen, the longtime Trump attorney, acknowledged to the AP that he had discussed Sajudin’s story with the magazine when the tabloid was working on it. He said he was acting as a Trump spokesman when he did so and denied knowing anything beforehand about the Enquirer payment to the ex-doorman.

I suppose New York's FBI will be noticing any evidence in the records it just seized from Cohen.

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.

Federal investigators have sought communications between Cohen, American Media’s chief executive and the Enquirer’s top editor, the New York Times reported.

[...]

On Wednesday, an Enquirer sister publication, RadarOnline, published details of the payment and the rumor that Sajudin was peddling. The website wrote that the Enquirer spent four weeks reporting the story but ultimately decided it wasn’t true. The company only released Sajudin from his contract after the 2016 election amid inquiries from the Journal about the payment.

It's just so hard to believe a rumor is worth thirty grand.

Asked about the payment last summer, Dylan Howard, the Enquirer’s top editor and an AMI executive, said he made the payment to secure the former Trump doorman’s exclusive cooperation because the tip, if true, would have sold “hundreds of thousands” of magazines. Ultimately, he said the information “lacked any credibility,” so he spiked the story on those merits.

Still. Thirty grand?

But four longtime Enquirer staffers directly familiar with the episode challenged Howard’s version of events. They said they were ordered by top editors to stop pursuing the story before completing potentially promising reporting threads.

They said the publication didn’t pursue standard Enquirer reporting practices, such as exhaustive stake-outs or tabloid tactics designed to prove paternity. In 2008, the Enquirer helped bring down presidential hopeful John Edwards in part by digging through a dumpster and retrieving material to do a DNA test that indicated he had fathered a child with a mistress, according to a former staffer.

John Edwards probably didn't threaten to sue them. Or kneecap them. He didn't have Michael Cohen for an attorney.

After initially calling the Enquirer’s tip line, Sajudin signed a boilerplate contract with the Enquirer, agreeing to be an anonymous source and be paid upon publication.

[...]

One week later, Sajudin signed an amended agreement, this one paying him $30,000 immediately and subjecting him to the $1 million penalty if he shopped around his information.

The Enquirer immediately then stopped reporting, said the former staffers.

[...]

In the tabloid world purchasing information is not uncommon, and the Enquirer routinely pays sources. As a general practice, however, sources agree to be paid for their tips only upon publication.

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[Jerry] George, the longtime former reporter and editor, said the $1 million penalty in Sajudin’s agreement was larger than anything he had seen in his Enquirer career.

“If your intent is to get a story from the source, there’s no upside to paying upfront,” said George, who sometimes handled catch-and-kill contracts related to other celebrities. Paying upfront was not the Enquirer’s usual practice because it would have been costly and endangered the source’s incentive to cooperate, he said.

[...]

The woman at the center of the rumor about Trump denied emphatically to the AP last August that she’d ever had an affair with Trump, saying she had no idea the Enquirer had paid Sajudin and pursued his tip.

The AP has not been able to determine if the rumor is true and is not naming the woman.

“This is all fake,” she said. “I think they lost their money.”

There could be any number of reasons for her to say that. And, of course, there's a very slim chance it could be true.

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. It acknowledged discussing the former doorman’s tip with Trump’s representatives, which it described as “standard operating procedure in stories of this nature.”

[...]

During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Enquirer published a string of allegations against Trump’s rivals, such as stories claiming Democratic rival Hillary Clinton was a bisexual “secret sex freak” and was kept alive only by a “narcotics cocktail.”

Stories attacking Trump rivals or promoting Trump’s campaign often bypassed the paper’s normal fact-checking process, according to two people familiar with campaign-era copy.

Let me guess...that Clinton story was one of those.

With just over a week before Election Day, Howard, the top editor, appeared on Alex Jones’ InfoWars program by phone, telling listeners that the choice at the ballot box was between “the Clinton crime family” or someone who will “break down the borders of the establishment.” Howard said the paper’s coverage was bipartisan, citing negative stories it published about Ben Carson during the Republican presidential primaries.

Sounds like Trump himself owns and runs the Enquirer.

For his part, Sajudin confirmed he’d been paid to be the tabloid’s anonymous source but insisted he would sue the Enquirer if his name appeared in print. Pressed for more details about his tip and experience with the paper, Sajudin said he would talk only in exchange for payment.

“If there’s no money involved with it,” he said, “I’m not getting involved.”

[...]

In a statement last summer, [Dylan Howard, the Enquirer’s top editor and an AMI executive] said the company doesn’t take editorial direction “from anyone outside AMI,” and said Trump has never been an Enquirer source. The company has said reader surveys dictate its coverage and that many of its customers are Trump supporters.

That well-informed sector of American society gets its news from Fox and the Enquirer. And perhaps the Weekly World News.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

“Today I awoke to learn that a confidential agreement that I had with AMI (The National Enquirer) with regard to a story about President Trump was leaked to the press,” Sajudin said in the statement Thursday.

“I can confirm that while working at Trump World Tower I was instructed not to criticize President Trump’s former housekeeper due to a prior relationship she had with President Trump which produced a child.”

[...]

Sajudin's ex-wife of 14 years cast doubt on his story as well, telling the New York Daily News that her former husband is a "pathological liar" and "infamous for making up stories."

“He’s seen the chupacabra. He’s seen bigfoot," Nikki Benfatto told the newspaper. "One of our friends who passed away, he saw him too, walking down the street.”

She added that she never recalled Sajudin mentioning the rumor to her. She said the two stopped communicating in 2014, a year before the former doorman reportedly approached the Enquirer.

  The Hill