Why is David Pecker a crucial witness in Donald Trump’s trial? The publisher’s National Enquirer ‘catch and kill’ tactics helped Harvey Weinstein and Arnold Schwarzenegger – but not Jeff Bezos …

He was an ambitious executive who, with a group of investors in 1999, bought American Media Inc (Ami) – the publisher of tabloid newspaper the National Enquirer, among other titles. But while printing lurid celebrity revelations, David Pecker simultaneously shielded his friends from scrutiny by publishing positive stories about them and negative ones about their opponents, as well as operating a “catch and kill” scheme.

Now, Pecker is back in headlines as the first witness in former president Donald Trump’s current criminal trial, which opened on April 22 in New York. The trial concerns alleged hush-money payments totalling US$130,000 made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

The New York Times once called Pecker “the keeper of Donald Trump’s secrets”. But the Enquirer protected other powerful men too – including Harvey Weinstein and Arnold Schwarzenegger – and threatened to expose Jeff Bezos’ extramarital affair with his now-fiancée Lauren Sánchez.

Read on to find out what went down.

How did David Pecker and Donald Trump meet?

A courtroom sketch of David Pecker (right) testifying during the criminal trial of former US President Donald Trump on charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, in New York, April 2024. Photo: Reuters

Pecker and Trump met in the late 1980s at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, per Fox 59. Testifying in court, Pecker described a “great, mutually beneficial relationship” with the former president, saying, “[Trump] helped me throughout my career.”

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Speaking last month on the CNN chat show Anderson Cooper 360°, Jeffrey Toobin, the network’s chief legal analyst, said, “The relationship between Pecker and Trump was one of hero worship … Pecker revered Trump.” Toobin went on to mention how Trump and Pecker launched a vanity magazine in 1997, Trump Style, that “would be there with the Gideons Bible” when you checked into a Trump hotel.

What is “catch and kill”?

Playboy model Karen McDougal in 2010. She told CNN that Donald Trump tried to pay her after they had sex, which she said she refused, and that the two had a months-long affair. Photo: AFP

Also known as “chequebook journalism”, “catch and kill” is a technique whereby a media outlet buys the exclusive rights to a damaging story and then kills or buries it to protect its allies. In court on April 26, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass described a story about Trump’s alleged 2006-07 affair with Playboy model Karen McDougal as “National Enquirer gold” – that is, if Pecker had chosen to run with it in 2016.

Per The New Yorker, in August 2016, Ami paid McDougal US$150,000 to buy the rights to her story about her alleged nine-month affair with Trump – and then never published an article about it. Per the same publication, Ami was said to have paid a Trump Tower doorman US$30,000 in late 2015 for a story about a possible Trump “love child”, which turned out to be false.

Protecting Harvey Weinstein

Disgraced former film producer Harvey Weinstein appears in court in Los Angeles, California, in October 2022. Photo: AFP

Following The New York Times’ October 2017 investigative report detailing numerous allegations of sexual misconduct against Harvey Weinstein – which triggered the #MeToo movement – it was revealed that Ami had played a role in protecting the disgraced movie mogul.

In January 2015, Variety reported that the Weinstein Co. had struck a deal with Ami to produce a live daily talk show.

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What the public did not know at the time was that Weinstein and his team were desperately scrambling to protect the Hollywood producer’s image, as it became increasingly impossible to hide information about his many alleged crimes.

Journalist Ronan Farrow. Photo: @ronanfarrow/Instagram

In December 2017, The New York Times published a follow-up article about how Ami was known to use catch and kill to “help out allies in trouble”.

Journalist Ronan Farrow – who in 2017 said NBC News declined to publish his own investigation into Weinstein, with his article finding a home in The New Yorker in October of that year – told CNN last month that he and other journalists first heard the term “catch and kill” from Ami employees.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial run

Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks in London, in October 2023. Photo: Getty Images

Pecker testified that he was initially reluctant to pay off McDougal after an unsatisfactory experience of trying to catch and kill stories on behalf of Arnold Schwarzenegger, per AP News.

After Arnie announced his run for California governor in 2003, 30 to 40 women contacted the Enquirer, alleging either extramarital affairs or sexual harassment by the movie star, testified Pecker, as reported in the LA Times.

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Pecker told the court he spent hundreds of thousands of US dollars on the rights to such stories – only for the LA Times to publish, in the lead-up to the election, accusations by more than a dozen women that Schwarzenegger had groped them. The former bodybuilder still become California governor, of course.

Making an enemy of Jeff Bezos

Patrick Whitesell and Lauren Sánchez, married from 2020, were good friends with Jeff Bezos. Photo: @osaremengist/Instagram

In February 2019, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon – who has owned The Washington Post since 2013 – publicly accused Ami of attempted extortion and blackmail. He alleged that Ami had threatened to publish explicit photos of him and girlfriend – now fiancée – Lauren Sánchez, unless Bezos halted an investigation into how the Enquirer had obtained his private messages and photos.

In a Medium post, Bezos shared emails from Ami’s representatives detailing their demands and the explicit content they possessed. The story went viral and while Ami defended its actions, stating that it “acted lawfully in the reporting of the story of Mr Bezos”, the company agreed not to publish the photos.

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