The US media entrepreneur David Pecker has admitted to have supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election campaign with the settlement of a silent payment to an alleged former sex partner. Pecker, a longtime friend of the US president, according to the investigators, as part of a deal with New York federal prosecutors. In return, they granted him protection from prosecution.
The agreement between the publisher of the US scandal sheet „National Enquirer“ and the federal prosecutors was already taken at the end of September. She was now announced at the same time as imposing a three-year prison term for Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen.
Cohen had threaded $ 150,000 from Pecker’s media company American Media Inc. (AMI) on former Playboy model Karen McDougal. He paid another hiatus of $ 130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Schweiggelder are not illegal per se per se. In the case of Daniels and McDougal, however, they are considered by the investigators as illegal campaign donations – since it was their goal to avert by the suppression of sex stories damage from the Trump campaign. The US president had said that the money was not election campaign money. In that respect, he has nothing to blame. But with the verdict against Cohen and Pecker’s confession, the investigators are now working closer and closer to the president himself .
According to the prosecutors, Cohen admitted that he arranged the payments „in coordination with and on behalf of Trumps“ – bringing the president into direct contact with investigators‘ breach of law. „I covered up his dirty deeds.“
AMI had McDougal the exclusive rights to their story, according to the federal prosecutors „in consultation“ with Trump’s campaign team. The company had the investigators, according to the never intended to publish the story.
The prosecutors stated that AMI had provided „substantial and important assistance“ in the investigation and would continue to cooperate.
spiegel.de
