Federal investigators have given plenty of evidence that President 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 according to The New York Times, Trump wanted to go even further. Along with his then personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, Trump 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 plan was never finalized. The Times writes that the existence of the plan has never 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, according to The Times.
This move by Trump and Cohen shows just how concerned they were about all the information gathered by the company, American Media, and its chairman, David Pecker, a loyal Trump ally of two decades who has cooperated with investigators. It is unclear whether the proposed plan to purchase all the information has attracted the interest of federal prosecutors in New York, but they 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.
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