Since 30 May 2024, Donald Trump is the first US President to be found guilty as a result of a criminal trial. The jurors, after two days of deliberation, found that the 45th President was guilty of all 34 charges held against him in what was referred to as a hush-money trial.
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During weeks of court proceedings, witnesses took the stand and revealed many things about Trump. Some of the most awaited testimonies were the ones of former adult-film actress Stormy Daniels and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. However, there was another one that gained traction: David Pecker’s.
According to Intelligencer, the former publisher of the Enquirer testified that ‘he negotiated to pay’ Trump’s doorman, Dino Sajudin, ‘$30,000 for [a] story, which the magazine did not run’.
A story about a love-child
This story dates back to 2015. At that time, Dino Sajudin, a man who according to him, started working as a doorman for Trump in 2008, was paid by a publication called Enquirer for a story. Reporting on it, The Independent explains that the man received $30,000 for it. But what was the story? Well, the former doorman alleged that Donald Trump had a secret child with a housekeeper.
As reported by The Independent, the story went like this:
[...] Mr Sajudin claims that he complained about the rude behaviour of the tower's concierge, a Colombian-born woman who spent ages away from her post on lunch breaks and luxury shopping sprees.
That was when a man known as "Mr C" told him that the woman was Mr Trump's secret daughter.
This ‘Mr C’ would have said, according to Sajudin:
"Dino when you have Trump’s kid, you can do whatever the hell you want to,"
Adding:
"Little Tiffany and Ivanka are not the only girls out there carrying the big guy’s DNA."
Though it is juicy, the story never made it out… and that’s why it was mentioned in the hush-money trial. Indeed, according to the prosecution and to the testimony of the Enquirer’s former publisher, David Pecker, the story was killed.
It also didn’t help that the story was unfounded and that further investigations led by Associated Press and The New Yorker in 2017 and 2018 showed no evidence to support it. The story is also denied by the housekeeper who would allegedly be the mother of said love-child.
A story kept out of the media that never had truth to it
As The Independent explains; though reporters were quickly assigned to the story when Sajudin first made his claim, they swiftly realised that they ‘had major doubts’ and later concluded that it was ‘nonsense’. In 2018, Sajudin was released out of his exclusivity clause as Enquirer saw no future in the story as details didn’t ‘pan out’.
What is interesting about this is the fact that it seemed to uncover a pattern of making hush payments. Indeed, as Intelligencer highlights, the prosecutors believe AMI (the parent company of Enquirer) had a ‘deal [...] with Trump to buy and suppress stories that could damage his presidential campaign’.
The lead prosecutor of the hush-money trial cited the doorman’s story in his opening argument saying:
It was the first time that David Pecker had ever paid anyone for information about Donald Trump
The opening statement continued:
At the AMI CEO’s direction, AMI negotiated and signed an agreement to pay the Doorman $30,000 to acquire exclusive rights to the story.
AMI falsely characterized this payment in AMI’s books and records, including in its general ledger. AMI purchased the information from the Doorman without fully investigating his claims, but the AMI CEO directed that the deal take place because of his agreement with the Defendant and Lawyer A.
Michael Cohen also confirmed that there was indeed a deal and that Pecker warned him and Trump that Sajudin was looking to sell his story and that Trump therefore told him to ‘handle it’.
Pecker also admitted to killing the story by paying the $30,000 to Sajudin with no intention of ever running the story. According to The Telegraph, that story was part of ‘the Trump presidential campaign’s operation to “catch and kill” negative stories’.
The story had been forgotten by many, mostly because it is not proven to be true, but the hush-money trial brought it back.
Did you know about it?
Read more:
⋙ Donald Trump's claims that the FBI planned his assassination during the Mar-a-Lago raid debunked
Sources:
Intelligencer: Hush-Money Trial Revives Doorman’s Trump-Love-Child Story
The Independent: What did Trump’s doorman say about his alleged lovechild?
The Telegraph: The curious Donald Trump lovechild claim hidden in the case against him
