Another blow for Trump: Pecker immunity

David Pecker, the chief executive of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, was granted immunity by federal prosecutors for providing information about Michael Cohen and President Trump in the criminal investigation into hush-money payments for two women during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to people familiar with the matter.

In exchange for immunity, Mr. Pecker, the CEO of American Media, Inc. and a longtime friend of Mr. Trump, has met with prosecutors and shared details about payments Mr. Cohen arranged in an effort to silence two women who alleged sexual encounters with Mr. Trump, including Mr. Trump’s knowledge of the deals, some of the people said.

  WSJ

In other words, prosecutors had enough proof of criminal involvement by Pecker to charge him as well, so he made a deal. Pecker's involvement as alleged in reports is that he bought stories of Trump's trysts from women and then shelved the stories. Since he was granted immunity in exchange for his information on Cohen, it follows there was a deal set up with Cohen and Trump to keep these stories hidden. I suspect we'll be hearing more about that as the Stormy Daniels case goes forward and the women whose stories were killed open up.

Mr. Pecker’s assistance appeared to have informed the charging documents made public on Tuesday as part of Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea to eight criminal charges, including campaign-finance violations tied to the payments.

[...]

Tuesday’s charging documents against Mr. Cohen revealed a closer level of coordination between American Media and the Trump campaign than previously known. Mr. Pecker is identified in the documents as the chairman and chief executive of a media company that owns “a popular tabloid magazine.”

[...]

American Media executives were involved in both hush-money deals that formed the basis of Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea to campaign-finance violations, prosecutors said. One was a $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford—a former porn actress who goes professionally by Stormy Daniels—to keep her from publicly discussing an alleged affair with Mr. Trump.

[...]

Prosecutors said that in August 2015, shortly after Mr. Trump announced he would run for president, Mr. Pecker offered to help Mr. Cohen find negative stories about Mr. Trump’s relationships with women and arrange for them to be purchased, but never published. This is a practice known in tabloid media as “catch and kill.”

[...]

Mr. Pecker has had a relationship with Mr. Trump for decades.

Sounds like they had quite a little racket going.

The second was a $150,000 payment made to former Playboy model Karen McDougal for her exclusive story of an alleged extramarital affair with Mr. Trump, a story that was purchased by American Media in August 2016 at Mr. Cohen’s urging and then never published.

[...]

The company ended last year with an outstanding debt load of $920 million and added approximately $80 million more in June when it acquired gossip titles In Touch, Life & Style and Closer, as well as other magazines. The deal gave American Media control over nearly every tabloid weekly sold in the U.S., aside from Meredith Corp.’s People magazine.

[...]

In the late 1990s, as chief executive of Hachette Filipacchi Magazines, [Pecker] published Trump Style, a quarterly magazine distributed to guests at Trump properties. Mr. Pecker has been a frequent guest at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

He's had his last visit, no doubt.

Nothing in this post's heading was meant to be funny. It's simply descriptive. But it's still funny.

His Lardship's world is closing in on him.