The first 'catch and kill': Pecker's purchase of a rumor about Trump fathering a love child
“This was a way to lock it up?” a prosecutor asked. "That's correct," Pecker said.
BEN FEUERHERD
The jurors have been brought back in, and David Pecker is back in the witness box.
Pecker described the first “catch and kill” the National Enquirer executed in the lead-up to the 2016 election by paying a Trump Tower doorman for a story he was shopping at the time.
The doorman, Dino Sajudin, claimed to have information that Trump fathered a child with a housekeeper at his Trump Tower penthouse. Pecker said his top editor at the time, Dylan Howard, vetted the claim and determined it to be completely untrue. But Pecker nonetheless agreed to pay $30,000 for the story so another outlet would not buy and publish the story.
“This was a way to lock it up?” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked Pecker.
“That’s correct,” he responded.
Pecker also said that, if the story turned out to be true, he would have published it — but only after the 2016 presidential election. If the story was true and the tabloid published it exclusively, “it would be probably the biggest sale of the National Enquirer since the death of Elvis Presley,” Pecker said.
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