US President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen is in negotiations with federal prosecutors to possibly plead guilty in the investigation into his business dealings, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Federal investigators have provided ample evidence that President Donald Trump was involved in deals to pay two women to keep them from speaking publicly before the 2016 election about affairs that they said they had with him.
But it turns out that Trump wanted to go even further.
He and his lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, devised a plan to buy up all the dirt on Trump that the National Enquirer and its parent company had collected on him, dating back to the 1980s, according to several of Trump's associates.
The existence of the plan, which was never finalised, has not been reported before. But it was strongly hinted at in a recording that Cohen's lawyer released last month of a conversation about payoffs that Cohen had with Trump.
"It's all the stuff — all the stuff, because you never know," Cohen said on the recording.
The move by Trump and Cohen indicated just how concerned they were about all the information amassed by the company, American Media, and its chairman, David Pecker, a loyal Trump ally of two decades who has cooperated with investigators.
It is not clear yet whether the proposed plan to purchase all the information from American Media has attracted the interest of federal prosecutors in New York, who last week obtained a guilty plea from Cohen over a $130,000 payment to the adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, and a $150,000 payment to a Playboy model, Karen McDougal.
But the prosecutors have provided at least partial immunity to Pecker, who is a key witness in their inquiry into payments made on behalf of Trump during the 2016 campaign.
The people who knew about the discussions would speak about them only on condition of anonymity, given that they are now the potential subject of a federal investigation that did not end with Cohen's plea.
Lawyers for Trump and Cohen declined to comment for this article as did American Media.
It is not known how much of the material on Trump is still in American Media's possession or whether American Media destroyed any of it after the campaign. Prosecutors have not said whether they have obtained any of the material beyond that which pertains to McDougal and Clifford and the discussions about their arrangements.
For the better part of two decades, Pecker had ordered his staff at American Media to protect Trump from troublesome stories, in some cases by buying up stories about him and filing it away.
In 2016, he kept his staff from going back through the old Trump tip and story files that dated to before Pecker became company chairman in 1999, several former staff members said in interviews with The New York Times.
That meant that American Media, the nation's largest gossip publisher, did not play a role during the election year in vetting a presidential candidacy — Trump's — made for the tabloids.
Pecker also worked with Trump and Cohen to buy and bury McDougal's story of an affair with Trump, a practice known as "catch and kill." Cohen admitted as much in making his guilty plea last week.
In August 2016, American Media acquired the rights to McDougal's story in return for $150,000 and commitments to use its magazines to promote her career as a fitness specialist. But American Media never published her allegations about a relationship with Trump.
Shortly after American Media completed the arrangement with McDougal at Trump's behest, a troubling question began to nag at Trump and Cohen, according to several people who knew about the discussions at the time: What would happen to America Media's sensitive Trump files if Pecker were to leave the company?
Cohen, those people said, was hearing rumours that Pecker might leave American Media for Time magazine — a title Pecker is known to have dreams of running.
Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen. Photo / Jeenah Moon, NY Times
There was perennial talk about American Media's business troubles. And Trump appeared to take a world-wearier view of the wisdom of leaving his sensitive personal secrets in someone else's hands:
"Maybe he gets hit by a truck," Trump said of Pecker in a conversation with Cohen, musing about an unfortunate mishap befalling his good friend.
Cohen captured that conversation on a recording that his adviser released roughly a month before his guilty plea, which included two counts of campaign finance violations relating to the payments to Clifford and McDougal. The recording was given to CNN after Trump's main lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, acknowledged its existence to The New York Times.
When The Times first reported that the recording had been discovered by the FBI, people close to Cohen and Trump initially described it in the narrow context of McDougal's deal.
But Cohen, in fact, indicates in the audio that he and Trump are speaking about an arrangement involving far more.
"I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info, regarding our friend David," Cohen says in reference to Pecker.
The plan got far enough along that Cohen relays in the recorded conversation that he had discussed paying for all the information from American Media with the Trump Organization's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg.
"I've spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up," he says, adding about Pecker, "We'll have to pay him something."
In the end, the deal never came together.
When Cohen pleaded guilty, prosecutors said in court documents that Cohen and American Media did enter into a deal in which Cohen agreed to pay the company $125,000 for the rights to McDougal's story.
After the deal was signed but before Cohen paid, prosecutors said, American Media backed out of the arrangement and warned Cohen to shred the paperwork (he did not).
Prosecutors said there had been discussions between Pecker and Cohen in which Cohen said American Media would be reimbursed for the payment to McDougal.
The notoriously frugal Trump balked at doing so, causing Pecker anxiety about explaining the payout to his board, according to a person briefed on the discussions. It was unclear whether Trump ever provided a reimbursement.
Weisselberg ultimately provided information about Cohen under a deal that protected him from self-incrimination. As prosecutors continue in their investigation, Weisselberg could serve them as a particularly helpful guide through the Trump Organization's operations.
Pecker, whose company is expected to be of continued interest in the investigation, has a similar arrangement with prosecutors. Potentially as worrisome for Trump and his advisers, Pecker could be a particularly knowing guide through any other potentially illegal efforts made to protect Trump's candidacy from his own less savoury exploits.
"The only thing better than a single piece of evidence is multiple pieces of evidence," said Jeff Tsai, a lawyer now in private practice who, as a Justice Department public integrity section lawyer, had served on the team that prosecuted John Edwards, the former Democratic senator and presidential candidate from North Carolina, on campaign finance charges in 2012.
He added, "Look to whom the government is reportedly giving immunity to. Those individuals are the ones who would have knowledge about what, if anything, the campaign at the highest, or lowest, or any level in between had on this issue."
People with knowledge of American Media's operations, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, described the files on Trump as mostly older National Enquirer stories about Trump's marital woes and lawsuits; related story notes and lists of sensitive sources; some tips about alleged affairs; and minutia, like allegations of unscrupulous golfing.
As The Associated Press reported last week, some of the information was kept in a safe devoted to particularly sensitive material.
Many of the older National Enquirer stories are often not accessible through Google or databases like Nexis.
Several former American Media staff members said that at the very least, the material the company had on Trump would have put its flagship, The Enquirer, in a prime position to dominate on coverage of Trump's scandalous past.
