Trump’s Hush Money Co-Conspirators Run the Biggest Conservative Newspaper Chain in Canada
AMI Executives David J Pecker & Daniel Rotman crafted the deals to bury the stories as they sat on the board of Postmedia, which owns most of Canada's newspapers.
In May, President Elect Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies for his role in covering up hush money payments to two women he had sex with. On January 3, 2024, Judge Juan Merchan announced that Trump will be sentenced on January 10, 2024, but that he will not face jail time.
The salacious nature of the trial means that it has been reduced to a story about Trump sleeping with an Stormy Daniels, an adult film performer, including in the NBC story linked above. It wasn’t just Daniels: another woman was also paid for her silence - a former Playboy model Karen McDougall.
This omission speaks to the superficial coverage of the entire case, when the details of what happened are appalling.
American Media Inc (AMI) owns the National Enquirer. In 2015, David J. Pecker an executive at AMI and the National Enquirer’s publisher met with Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer, and agreed to act as the Trump campaign’s “eyes and ears”.
What this meant, in practice, is that if a story came up that might be damaging to the Trump campaign, AMI and the National Enquirer would act to suppress it.
If someone had a story to tell AMI would pay them for the exclusive rights to the story. That would prevent it from being printed anywhere else. When people signed over their rights to a story, they were legally prohibited from taking it anywhere else. So AMI and Pecker weren’t just buying the story - they were buying their silence.
The people who sold the story - who might well have assumed the National Enquirer would print their story - end up not being able to tell it anywhere else, because instead of printing the story, AMI would bury it.
The person selling the story might expect it to show up in print, but it never would.
Non-Disclosure Agreements
For anyone who wonders how it is possibile to guarantee an individual’s silence so effectively, such contracts would often include a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) in which people are legally swearing themselves to secrecy, with punitive consequences for breaking it that are legally binding and are enforced by the courts. They are routinely used, and they can keep people under a legal gag order where people can speak the truth freely only in a court of competent jurisdiction: to a police officer or in a court of law.
NDAs routinely forbid people from telling anyone what happened. It is not just that people are forbidden from speaking publicly: they are forbidden from sharing what happened with family, including their spouse, friends, spiritual advisors, therapists, or employers. Even revealing that there is an NDA can be a violation of the NDA.
What is more, enforcement of the NDA can outlast the life of the person being protected.
NDAs are one of the most shocking uses of true private censorship that are being used to manipulate and oppress people. They enable and perpetuate corruption.
Aside from NDAs, “non-disparagement clauses” may be even worse. “Non disparagement” means you agree not to say anything negative about the other party, even if it’s a statement of fact.
NDAs are everywhere. If you wonder how it is that powerful and wealthy people are able to get away with terrible misdeeds for so many years - individuals like Jeffrey Epstein, and Harvey Weinstein and Peter Nygard, is that they are all able to use NDAs to silence people.
This is really, really important, because NDAs play a huge role in keeping these secrets locked tight. They’re like reverse blackmail, where if you speak the truth publicly, you’ll be punished for it. (I worked to have them banned in my home province of Manitoba.)
I say this, because when many stories of bad behaviour by famous people finally break loose, there is lots of speculation about who “must have” acted to keep people quiet. There may be an assumption that people could have spoken up, but chose not to, when an NDA does that instead.
NDAs do that job instead. They make sure the information can’t be shared and stories can’t spread. You don’t have to enlist the help of an entire network of conspirators. People are targeted for their silence.
Also, while a person with an NDA can disclose to the police, you would only go to the police if you witnessed a crime.
Though it may hard and hard to believe, there are lots of terrible things that people do that are not all crimes. That means there’s nothing to go to the police about - so no way to disclose. In terms of civil cases, you may have been a witness to or aware of an event where something happened which might give another person a reason to sue - but you weren’t the target.
NDAs are effectively a kind of prophylactic obstruction of justice. Their use should be strictly limited to the protection of intellectual property and trade secrets, and people should be given an opportunity to break their NDAs.
I make these points because the stuff people talk about when they refer to the trial was not illegal. The sexual allegations are nothing illegal, and paying people in exchange for an NDA is not illegal either.
The Crime Was the Cover-Up
What is a crime is forgery and fraud and the misuse of money.
The old saying after Watergate was “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.” For a crime to be a crime, you have to have a bad act and a guilty mind. The crime is the bad act. The cover-up shows you knew it was wrong - the guilty mind.
In the case of the 34 felony charges, the crime was the cover-up.
She [McDougall] was paid $150,000 (£121,000) in 2016 by the parent company of the National Enquirer for the rights to her story about the alleged relationship.
The story never ran after the newspaper suppressed it until after the election.
American Media Inc has acknowledged that its payments to Ms McDougal were done specifically to assist Trump's election bid and were made “in concert” with his campaign.
This is a practise known as “catch and kill”: catch the story, and kill it. It wasn’t just a one-off by AMI and David J. Pecker, it’s one of the ways that Pecker ran several of his publications - not just the Enquirer, but Health Magazines as well, for years.
Pecker was the lead witness for the prosecution.
AMI’s guilt is not in question. AMI admitted that they broke the law.
This is the New York Times reporting on David Pecker’s testimony in court:
Mr. Pecker, who began his four days on the stand on Monday and said that he had come to an agreement with Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen in a meeting at Trump Tower in August 2015.
There, Mr. Pecker said, he agreed to run what amounted to a covert propaganda operation for Mr. Trump, trumpeting his candidacy while publishing negative stories about his Republican opponents. Most importantly, Mr. Pecker said, he had agreed to be the campaign’s “eyes and ears,” watching out for potentially damaging stories.
Pecker remained on the Postmedia Board for almost two years until he resigned when news broke of his implication in the hush-money scandal, in August 2018.
Pecker’s business model of private surveillance, and hush money and private kompramat that could be used to threaten and intimidate wasn’t limited to the National Inquirer, but extended to everything from weightlifting and fitness magazines
It was not a one-off: it was part of Pecker’s business model.
He had made a practice of paying people to stay silent for years.
Mr. Pecker’s publications made deals with other celebrities as well, though not always for money. He traded away dirt about the golfer Tiger Woods in exchange for an exclusive interview in Men’s Fitness in 2007, according to people with knowledge of that episode.
Pecker did the same for Harvey Weinstein, as Ronan Farrow reported in ‘Catch and Kill” - a term for catching the source of a story so you can “kill” it.
DAVE DAVIES: how did the reporting on Weinstein lead to this stuff about efforts to protect Trump?
FARROW: Well, it's very simple because Harvey Weinstein was also working with the National Enquirer and its parent company at the time, AMI, in much the same way that Donald Trump was. The difference was this wasn't election-related in Harvey Weinstein's case. And so, you know, it didn't ultimately emerge in court as something with, you know, actual legal ramifications. But it was a tremendously important story just from the standpoint of the media suppression that was happening. And many of us who broke those initial stories about Weinstein became aware in the course of that reporting that one of the levers that he had used to keep allegations of serial rape against him so quiet for so long, at least in terms of mainstream public discourse, was that he had relied on AMI to help go after his enemies and dig up dirt on people he wanted to get rid of and also to help identify negative information out there about him and catch and kill it.
So that happened, for instance, with respect to Ambra Gutierrez, a model that he was accused of groping, and the same Manhattan district attorney, actually, Cy Vance Jr., who initially started this investigation into Trump that in a roundabout way led to this verdict in the end. He had dropped efforts to pursue Weinstein in the wake of that. And part of Weinstein's strategy to ensure that there weren't criminal repercussions was to really go after accusers, like this model Gutierrez, where there were war room meetings between the Enquirer folks and him and his people saying, you know, how do we destroy her, essentially?
So this being a kind of Byzantine part of the modern architecture of power and media influence was fascinating to me, and it was very apparent early on from my conversations with sources there who were doing that sort of thing for Weinstein at the Enquirer, that maybe the most consequential example of what they were doing in this vein was for and with Donald Trump.
Notably, while Pecker stepped down from Postmedia’s Board in 2018 when news of his involvement with the buying the silence of people making politically inconvenient and truthful disclosures, another AMI executive is still on the Board - Daniel Rotstein.
Daniel Rotstein (Director)
Mr. Rotstein serves as the Director of Human Resources/Risk Management for the City of Pembroke Pines, Florida and provides human resources, risk management, and administrative consulting services to companies in various industries, including American Media, Inc. Prior to that, Mr. Rotstein was the Executive Vice President, Human Resources and Administration, for American Media, Inc.
Not just any AMI Executive Vice President: an AMI Vice President for whom an invoice was prepared and funnelled in order to conceal that it was from the Trump Campaign.
Rotstein was mentioned in Trump’s hush money trial that led to 34 felony convictions.
From reporting on the case on Yahoo News.
In September 2016, Pecker testified, Cohen suddenly told Trump wanted all of the boxes of source material the Enquirer had amassed on McDougal, which was in storage, and held the damaging details of her stories. Trump was worried that if Pecker “got hit by a bus,” or if the company was sold, he wanted to ensure no one else would be able to obtain the information. Cohen was insistent that Pecker get the boxes to Trump as soon as possible, contacting him again and again during the month, pressing him on the issue.
Trump wanted Pecker and AMI to transfer the McDougall life rights to him, Pecker said. He explained that he believed McDougal’s “writing” duties were worth $25,000, and thus offered to knock Trump’s reimbursement down to $125,000.
“Michael Cohen wanted the contract done yesterday, and this was going on toward the end of September [2016],” Pecker said, explaing that he wanted to get paid back before Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal quarter. He said an invoice was prepared and funneled through AMI human resources executive Daniel Rotstein because money was flowing between AMI and the Trump Organization would “raise a lot of questions.” [emphasis mine.]
Pecker said he later spoke to AMI’s legal counsel about the updated plan, and subsequently decided he no longer wanted to be paid back. He was prevented from explaining what the lawyer’s advice was, by an objection from the defense, but he had previously mentioned his fear of being exposed to legal jeopardy.
Postmedia’s directors were operating the National Enquirer as an arm of the Trump campaign. David Pecker did it for Harvey Weinstein as well.
In fact, Rotstein joined Postmedia’s Board at the same time Pecker did - in October 2016.
Aside from the National Post and Financial Post, Postmedia owns many of the newspapers in almost every major city in Canada often both of them. This is the list media properties that Postmedia owns.
https://www.postmedia.com/brands/
In BC: The Province, The Vancouver Sun & the Prince George Post
In Alberta: Airdrie Echo, Bow Valley Crag & Canyon; Calgary Herald; Calgary Sun; Cochrane Times; Daily Herald Tribune; Devon Dispatch; Edmonton Examiner; Edmonton Journal; Edmonton Sun; Fort McMurray Today; La Nouvelle Beaumont News; Leduc Rep; Peace River Record-Gazette; Pincher Creek Echo; The Cold Lake Sun; The Drayton Valley Western Review; The Fairview Post; The Grove Examiner; The Hanna Herald; The High River Times; The Leduc-Wetaskiwin County Market; The Mayerthorpe Freelancer; The Nanton News; The Peace Country Sun; The Record; The Sherwood Park News; The Stony Plain Reporter; The Vulcan Advocate; The Wetaskiwin Times;The Whitecourt Star
Vermilion Standard
Saskatchewan: Regina Leader-Post; Saskatoon Star-Phoenix
The Journal (Melfort/Nipawin)
Ontario: Business, London, Chatham-Kent; This Week, Chatham;
Clinton News-Record, Clinton; Cochrane Times-Post, Cochrane; Community Press, Belleville; Exeter Lakeshore Times-Advance, Exeter; Gananoque Reporter, Gananoque; Goderich Signal-Star, Goderich; Grey Bruce This Week, Owen Sound; Kingston & Frontenac This Week, Kingston; Kingston Whig-Standard, Kingston; London Free Press, London; Lucknow Sentinel, Lucknow; Mitchell Advocate, Mitchell; Napanee Guide, Napanee; Norfolk & Tillsonburg News, Tillsonburg; North Bay Nugget, North Bay; Northern News This Week, Kirkland Lake; Farmer, London; Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa; Ottawa Sun, Ottawa; Paris Star, Paris; Pembroke Observer & News, Pembroke; Sarnia This Week, Sarnia; Sault This Week, Sault Ste. Marie; Seaforth Huron Expositor, Seaforth; Sentinel-Review, Woodstock; Shoreline Beacon, Port Elgin; Simcoe Reformer, Simcoe; St. Thomas Times-Journal, St. Thomas; Standard Freeholder, Cornwall; Strathroy Age Dispatch, Strathroy; The Beacon Herald, Stratford; The Chatham Daily News, Chatham; The County Weekly News, Picton; The Courier Press, Wallaceburg; The Daily Press, Timmins; The Expositor, Brantford; The Intelligencer, Belleville; The Kincardine News, Kincardine; The Londoner, London; The Mid-North Monitor, Espanola; The Observer, Sarnia; The Post, Hanover; The Recorder & Times, Brockville; The Sault Star, Sault Ste. Marie; The Standard, Elliot Lake; The Sudbury Star, Sudbury; The Sun Times, Owen Sound; The Timmins Times, Timmins; The Trentonian, Trenton; Today's Farmer, London; Today's Farmer, Chatham; Toronto Sun, Toronto; West Elgin Chronicle, West Elgin; Wiarton Echo Wiarton; Windsor Star Windsor;
Quebec: Montreal Gazette, Montreal, Quebec
New Brunswick: Bugle-Observer, Woodstock; Info Weekend, Edmundston;
Kings County Record, Sussex; L'Étoile Acadian Coast; Miramichi Leader Miramichi; Telegraph-Journal Saint John; The Daily Gleaner Fredericton; The Northern Light Bathurst; The Tribune Campbellton; Times & Transcript.
I’ll quote Bruce Bartlett, whom I consider to be one of the most interesting and insightful people in American politics. Bartlett is a lawyer and policy expert who worked for Ron Paul and Jack Kemp in the 1970s. He literally drafted the bill that became the “Reagan tax cut” before experiencing an intellectual crisis, where he realized that Keynesian economics worked. He felt compelled by his own sense of integrity to abandon the Republicans.
Of the Kamala Harris interview on Fox News, he wrote:
“For those watching Fox for the first time for the Harris interview, this crap goes on 24/7. It's first and foremost a Republican propaganda channel, with no resemblance to a true news channel. Every penny of the Fox budget should be considered a Trump campaign contribution.”
They are in the business of burying bad stories keeping secrets - and punishing whistleblowers as well.
And for anyone who wants to claim that this is all just politics, it’s not. It’s about much more than that.
H.L. Mencken wrote that journalists had two responsibilties: to “comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.”
Instead, Canada’s largest newspaper chain had two American directors on its board who were personally responsible for burying news stories with the express purpose of helping a favoured candidate win an election, and that candidate has been convicted of 34 felonies as a result.
So if you want to understand why this isn’t a story in Canada - now you know.
-30-
While I agree that Postmedia does indeed own "most of Canada's newspapers," I can't help but notice that Postmedia and its newspapers is also heavily subsidized by the current Canadian Liberal government, through Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) programs related to their Qualified Canadian journalism organization (QCJO) accreditation and other media grants from Heritage Canada.
So while Postmedia may be bad, the organization is favored by the Trudeau liberals.