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` Home About Murray Waas ← Older posts The Art of the Deal: How the CEO of the National Enquirer Suppressed Allegations of Donald Trump’s Misogyny Posted on October 17, 2016 by murrayw Story summary: Only two weeks after Donald Trump began his presidential campaign, a former hedge fund manager informed the Trump Organization that he might publish sexually suggestive photographs of Trump online—which would have early on raised the issue of Trump’s misogyny and treatment of women that has only belatedly come into focus. To suppress the photographs, Trump and his attorney turned to a close friend and political supporter, David Pecker, the CEO of the National Enquirer. Over a period of weeks, the hedge fund manager, Jeremy Frommer, sought out contracts with the National Enquirer worth hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars, and lesser favors from Trump personally, according to contemporaneous records, including emails, text messages, and internal company documents. Some National Enquirer executives privately worried that had they followed through, they would be using corporate funds to pay hush money to assist Trump’s presidential campaign, a potential violation of federal campaign finance laws. In July 2015, Michael Cohen, an attorney for Donald Trump, had just learned of some distressing news. A former Wall Street hedge fund manager named Jeremy Frommer, who now ran a small digital media and technology company, had somehow obtained sexually suggestive and salacious photographs of Trump and was about to post them online. Trump’s presidential campaign was then all of two weeks old, and Trump’s aides were already facing troubling questions about Trump’s divorce from his first wife, Ivana. During their divorce proceedings, allegations had surfaced in which Ivana charged that her husband had sexually assaulted her during their marriage. With the possibility that still other allegations of misogyny and disrespectful treatment of women might surface—a concern that has since been borne out in the course of the long campaign—Cohen was determined that the photos Frommer had obtained would never see the light of day. As he had done in similar circumstances in the past, Cohen turned for help to a close personal friend to both himself and Trump—David Pecker, the chief executive of American Media Inc. (AMI), and which is the parent company of the National Enquirer. With a great deal of urgency, Pecker and Cohen worked in tandem to make sure that the public would never see the photographs, according to contemporaneous records and interviews. As it turned out, Pecker and Frommer had done business of this sort before. Three years earlier, Frommer had been trafficking in pornographic photos of Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 2003, Pecker and AMI helped support Schwarzenegger’s run for governor of California by buying sexually explicit photographs and videos of Schwarzenegger , and even an account by a former alleged mistress of Schwarzenegger—not with the intent of publishing them, but of suppressing them from the public. When Frommer offered up his photographs of Schwarzenegger, AMI had just signed a new contract with Schwarzenegger to be the public face of the company’s men’s magazines. Among themselves, Pecker and Cohen spoke of the National Enquirer purchasing the photos of Trump from Frommer, so the public would never see them, as had been the case with Schwarzenegger, according to two people who had discussions together on the matter. But Frommer was seeking an even greater financial windfall. Frommer sought favors from Trump, along with lucrative business from Pecker and AMI for his small digital media company. According to contemporaneous records, Frommer first requested that Trump grant an exclusive interview to him for his company’s website. Not only did Frommer want to post an online transcript of the interview, Frommer also wanted to come to Trump Tower and conduct the interview face-to-face, and then post the video online. He also asked that Trump, his organization, and his presidential campaign publicize it. Later still, Frommer insisted that the interview project be a joint project of the National Enquirer, and his own company, Jerrick Media. Soon, however, Frommer became even more audacious. At one point, he proposed to Pecker that Jerrick Media take over and run the online presence of the National Enquirer, a deal worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even millions, depending on the duration of the contract. (The reason that Frommer had pornographic images of Schwarzenegger and sexually suggestive pictures of Trump was because he had a few years earlier purchased the estate of Bob Guccione , the late publishing and pornography magnate. The Schwarzenegger and Trump photos were some of the items that were part of the estate.) An AMI executive told me that Frommer’s proposal was unprofessional” and amateurish.” Yet, they were told to pretend to consider it, or at least go through the motions of doing so, to placate Frommer: David [Pecker] and Cohen said to play along. They said they felt like they were being shaken down…but they needed to buy time.” Thus began an often subtle—and sometimes less than subtle dance—between Frommer and Pecker and Cohen, whereby Pecker and Cohen worked to convince Frommer not to publish the photos as Frommer leveraged that desire as much as possible so that his fledgling media company would profit. Details of their various efforts that were underway between July and November of 2015 are contained in several dozen emails and text messages between Cohen, Pecker, and Frommer, as well as in phone records, business proposals, and other contemporaneous records provided by various people involved in these events. In addition to Frommer and Cohen, more then a dozen people (a smaller number for the record), spoke to me, and at considerable length, about their knowledge of these efforts. The contemporaneous records do not show a specific quid pro quo, with Frommer agreeing to keep the pictures under wraps in exchange for being considered or awarded lucrative business opportunities by AMI and the National Enquirer. But they show that in numerous instances the men often discussed the photographs and business ventures for Frommer during the very same meetings, the same phone calls and in the very same emails and texts. Frommer spoke to me numerous times over the course of several months about his interactions with Cohen and Pecker, after November 2015. Cohen answered questions from me over the course of two hours, and during a second phone interview as well. Cohen later abruptly canceled a meeting to talk to me further at his office in Trump Tower, saying that he wanted further questions relayed via email. In a number of instances, I am convinced that both men—Cohen and Frommer—misled me and even directly lied to me about issues central to this story. Frommer often gave me various accounts of his actions that contradicted his own earlier versions. Earlier in the year, a national magazine agreed to publish my story. But I pulled back, because so many questions had arisen for me about Frommer’s credibility, both small and large. It was at that point when I double-downed and obtained text messages and emails between the three men, and other contemporaneous records, which detailed a more accurate and true account of what occurred between them, often at odds with the accounts they provided me. Because of the severe questions about the credibility of Cohen and Frommer, in writing this report I have attempted as much as possible to rely on the voluminous text messages, emails and other contemporaneous records to tell the story in the most accurate and authoritative manner possible. I have often quoted both men in this story, so that they could tell their side, while also describing in detail their credibility issues, so readers can assess for themselves a small number of uncorroborated allegations both men have made. Beyond the...