A statement of facts detailing an alleged “catch and kill” scheme involving Dino Sajudin, a former doorman at Trump Tower, was filed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
In the scheme, Sajudin was given exclusive rights to a story about a child Donald Trump allegedly fathered with a worker in the 1980s in exchange for paying him $30,000.
The payment was then allegedly falsely recorded in the financial records of American Media Inc. (AMI), whose then-CEO, David Pecker, conspired with Trump and his former attorney Michael Cohen in the scheme to keep negative stories from being published about Trump by keeping an eye out for them.
The scheme allegedly ran from August 2015, after Trump declared his intention to run for president in 2016, to December 2017. The filing claims that AMI CEO Pecker discovered that doorman Sajudin was attempting to resell information about the alleged illegitimate child in October or November of 2015. AMI negotiated and signed a contract with Sajudin to pay him $30,000 for the sole rights to the story at Pecker’s direction.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office claims that AMI “falsely characterized the payment” in the company’s financial records. Because of CEO Pecker’s agreement with Trump, the company is said to have purchased the story from Sajudin without fully investigating his claims.
The doorman’s claims were later found to be untrue by AMI, but Trump attorney Michael Cohen gave CEO Pecker the order to keep doorman Sajudin under contract until after the 2016 presidential election.
After Trump won the election, Sajudin’s nondisclosure agreement with AMI was eventually terminated. According to the statement of facts, Trump invited Pecker to his inauguration and dinner at the White House as a way of saying “thank you” for his assistance in suppressing unfavorable stories.
In the alleged “catch and kill” scheme, the former president was accused of falsifying business records on 34 felony counts in the district attorney’s indictment. Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In order to shield himself from prosecution for his involvement in the payoffs, CEO Pecker signed a non-prosecution agreement in 2018. Due to the two-year statute of limitations on the case, he will also not be charged with falsifying business records. The next time Trump will appear in court is in December.
