That leaves Trump in an increasingly isolated and legally precarious position, according to election law experts. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments made in 2016 to keep two women silent about alleged affairs are now firmly framed as illegal campaign contributions.
The news about the publisher, the parent company of The National Enquirer, came on the same day that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in part for his involvement in the payments. “I blame myself for the conduct which has brought me here today,” Cohen said, “and it was my own weakness and a blind loyalty to this man” — a reference to Trump — “that led me to choose a path of darkness over light.”
Cohen said the transactions were an effort to cover up the president’s “dirty deeds,” a claim that was buttressed when federal prosecutors announced that tabloid publisher American Media Inc. said it had bought one of the women’s stories to ensure she “did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate.”
“AMI further admitted that its principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election,” prosecutors said in a statement announcing they had struck a deal not to charge the company in exchange for its cooperation. As part of the deal, dated in September but previously kept private, the company also agreed to train employees in election law standards and appoint a qualified lawyer to vet future deals that may involve paying for stories about political candidates.
The cascading disclosures marked a turning point in the multiple investigations related to Trump and the campaign he led. Until recently, the inquiries had produced numerous guilty pleas and indictments but no direct accusations of illegality by the president. That changed with Cohen’s assertions, outlined in detail by prosecutors, that his own crimes were done “in coordination with and at the direction” of Trump.
Where the investigations go from here is not clear. The prevailing view at the Justice Department is that a sitting president cannot be indicted, though prosecutors in Manhattan could consider charging him after leaving office.
Investigators have continued to scrutinize what others in the Trump Organization may have known about the crimes described by Cohen, including its chief financial officer, according to people briefed on the matter. Prosecutors have met with campaign officials and asked how the campaign interacted with Trump’s company, which shared office space and employees.
Establishing a nexus between Cohen’s efforts to silence the women and Trump’s campaign is central to making a criminal case of election law violations. That is why AMI’s admission carries so much weight, said Richard L. Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California, Irvine.
“It’s looking a lot like an illegal and unreported in-kind corporate contribution to help the campaign, exposing the Trump campaign and Trump himself to possible criminal liability,” Hasen said.
AMI, run by Trump’s longtime friend David J. Pecker, had previously claimed it had paid $150,000 to model Karen McDougal to secure the rights to publish her story of an alleged affair with Trump. But the company never published it, and people familiar with its operations had said it was part of a long-standing practice, known in the tabloid trade as “catch and kill,” to suppress damaging stories about favored people.
Prosecutors said that Cohen had intended to reimburse AMI for its payment to McDougal by arranging a bogus $125,000 fee to an AMI affiliate for “advisory services.” Although Pecker signed off on the deal, he later contacted Cohen and called it off. He also instructed Cohen to tear up the paperwork, prosecutors said.
In addition to McDougal, Cohen said he arranged a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film actress, to squelch her story of an alleged affair with Trump. He said that he used his own money, but that Trump had agreed to pay him back, with the reimbursement eventually being couched as legal fees billed to the Trump Organization.
AMI was also involved in the early stages of Cohen’s dealings with Daniels. Rather than pay her, as it did with McDougal, the company notified Cohen that she was trying to sell her story.
Until this week, it was largely Cohen’s word against the president’s denials. That is why the admission by AMI is “highly significant, because it goes to corroborate” Cohen’s testimony, said Jeff Tsai, part of the prosecution team that accused Sen. John Edwards of campaign finance violations when he arranged for payoffs to a pregnant mistress during his 2008 presidential campaign.
“In any future prosecution, Mr. Cohen’s credibility is squarely at issue — as it should be — and that is where you see the nature of corroboration, either in the form of witnesses or documents, become such a pivotal factor in a prosecution,” Tsai said.
The Edwards case — which ended in an acquittal and mistrial — has been invoked by Trump allies as an example of prosecutorial overreach. Central to Edwards’ defense was that the payments were intended not to help his campaign but to hide the affair from his wife — that they were personal, not political.
Trump seemed to hint at this strategy in a tweet responding to Cohen’s admissions, in which he made an oblique reference to a “simple personal transaction” that was being wrongly called “a campaign contribution.”
Given the president’s stance, the disclosure of AMI’s understanding that the efforts were campaign-related — and its promise of future cooperation — shows that potential witnesses against Trump go beyond Cohen.
Indeed, the AMI agreement with prosecutors said there was at least one other person associated with Trump’s campaign involved in an initial discussion in August 2015, attended by Cohen and Pecker, in which they agreed that the publisher would help the campaign by identifying negative stories about Trump’s relationships with women “so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.”
But many details remain hidden. Among them, the statement did not say whether the other campaign member was Trump himself — identified by prosecutors last week as attending a similar meeting — or some other person. AMI had no comment Wednesday.
Pecker had been steadfast in his support of Trump, equating any attack against him as an attack against AMI. But one associate of Pecker’s, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Pecker felt betrayed when the president’s legal team failed to push back against revelations in July that Cohen had recorded a conversation with Trump discussing the McDougal payment. The recording seemed to support the notion that AMI was complicit in an illegal campaign finance scheme.
In admitting to the scheme, Pecker, his lieutenant Dylan Howard and AMI are now protected from criminal prosecution.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.