More documents may be released from Trump’s ex-doorman released from ‘catch and kill’ deal

Trump’s former doorman who claims the president had an illegitimate child with his housekeeper released the contract that forced him to keep quiet on Friday and his lawyers say more documents may be to come.

Dino Sajudin signed a contract with American Media Inc. in November 2015 that essentially bought his silence, offering him $30,000 for exclusive rights to the alleged affair story that was never published. 

Sajudin couldn’t share the details of his claims with anyone else as the document stipulated he’d have to pay AMI $1million. He would also only be compensated if the story was published. 

His lawyer revealed on Friday that he had been released from that binding contract and may come forward with a statement and more documents from the deal soon.

‘I do suspect he may release another statement and potentially new documents in the future,’ Sajudin’s attorney Marc Held said to the New York Daily News on Saturday. 

Trump’s former doorman Dino Sajudin may reveal more details on his claims that the president had an illegitimate child with a housekeeper, his lawyer says 

His lawyer confirmed Friday that Sajudin was released from a contract signed with American Media Inc. in November 2015, to buy the alleged Trump love child story. The White House has previously declined to comment on Sajudin’s claims when approached by CNN

‘Mr. Sajudin hopes the truth will come out in the very near future,’ he added.  

Sajudin, 46, who worked as a doorman at the Trump World Tower in Manhattan until after the 2016 election, is yet to comment on his claims following the contract release. 

The National Enquirer agreement he signed is believed to be a ‘catch and kill’ deal – a tabloid practice in which a publication pays for a story to never run, either as a favor to the celebrity subject of the tip or as leverage over that person.

The contract has few details on the story but does state: ‘Source shall provide AMI with information regarding Donald Trump’s illegitimate child, and any and all documentation … letters and any legal documents, and photographs.’ 

Yet, AMI never ran the piece, meaning Sajudin was forced to keep quiet – until this year. 

The National Enquirer formally endorsed Trump during the 2016 election and is owned by AMI, whose CEO David Pecker is an outspoken Trump supporter. 

AMI’s decision to formally free Sajudin from the contract happened ‘only recently and in close time proximity to the recent events’ involving Trump’s lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, according to Held.

On Tuesday Cohen was pleaded guilty to charges involving a $130,000 payoff in exchange for porn star Stormy Daniels’ silence on her alleged affair with the president. 

Cohen also acknowledged working with AMI on a catch and kill story deal with former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also claimed to have had an affair with Trump but was silenced due to her contract.

Held told CNN Friday: ‘Mr Sajudin has been unable to discuss the circumstances regarding his deal with American Media Inc. and the story that he sold to them, due to a significant financial penalty.

‘Just recently, AMI released Mr. Sajudin from the terms of his agreement and he is now able to speak about his personal experience with them, as well as his story, which is now known to be one of the ‘catch and kill’ pieces.   

Sajudin got $30,000 in exchange for signing over the rights, ‘in perpetuity,’ to a rumor he’d heard about Trump’s sex life — that the president had fathered an illegitimate child with an employee at Trump World Tower, a skyscraper he owns near the United Nations

He first came forward with the claims about Trump’s affair in April this year.

CNN said it understood that he was released from the contract in December 2016, after Trump had beaten Hillary Clinton.

The Associated Press and the New Yorker said that Sajudin got $30,000 in exchange for signing over the rights, ‘in perpetuity,’ to the claim that the president had fathered an illegitimate child with an employee at Trump World Tower, a skyscraper he owns near the United Nations.

He said that he had been instructed not to criticize Trump’s former housekeeper due to the ‘prior relationship she had with President Trump which produced a child.’

The woman has not been named but spoke to the Associated Press to deny having any relationship with Trump.  

The AMI contract release has turned eyes to Michael Cohen, who previously acknowledged to AP that he discussed Sajudin’s story with the Enquirer when the tabloid was working on it. 

He was acting as a Trump spokesman at the time and denied knowing anything beforehand about the Enquirer’s payment to the ex-doorman.

He said the payment was wasted money for a baseless story. 

The Enquirer signed the ex-doorman to a contract that effectively prevented him from going public with the juicy tale that could have hurt Trump’s campaign for president.

As the Enquirer signed ex-Playmate Karen McDougal to a similar contract, questions have been raised towards Cohen and the Enquirer’s roles in protecting Trump’s image during his 2016 election.   

Trump and AMI CEO David Pecker are known to be friends and Pecker was offered immunity on Cohen’s case for killing stories in the National Enquirer that portrayed the president in a negative light.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney who has just pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, acknowledged to the AP that he had discussed Sajudin’s story with the magazine when the tabloid was working on it

When the Enquirer’s top editor and AMI executive Dylan Howard was asked about the $30,000 payment last summer by AP, he said the payment was made to secure the doorman’s exclusive cooperation. 

He added that if the tip turned out to be true it could have sold ‘hundreds of thousands’ of magazines.   

Ultimately, he said the information ‘lacked any credibility,’ so he spiked the story on those merits.

‘Unfortunately… Dino Sajudin is one fish that swam away,’ Howard told RadarOnline on Wednesday.

But four longtime Enquirer staffers directly familiar with the episode challenged Howard’s version of events. 

They said they were ordered by top editors to stop pursuing the story before completing potentially promising reporting threads.

Donald Trump, with wife Melania. Trump’s former doorman has confirmed he signed a contract with the National Enquirer owners regarding a possible story about Trump’s relationship with a housekeeper

They said the publication didn’t pursue standard Enquirer reporting practices, such as exhaustive stake-outs or tabloid tactics designed to prove paternity. 

In 2008, the Enquirer helped bring down presidential hopeful John Edwards in part by digging through a dumpster and retrieving material to do a DNA test that indicated he had fathered a child with a mistress, according to a former staffer.

The woman at the center of the rumor about Trump denied emphatically to the AP last August that she’d ever had an affair with Trump, saying she had no idea the Enquirer had paid Sajudin and pursued his tip.

The AP has not been able to determine if the rumor is true and is not naming the woman.

‘This is all fake,’ she said. ‘I think they lost their money.’

The Enquirer staffers, all with years of experience negotiating source contracts, said the abrupt end to reporting combined with a binding, seven-figure penalty to stop the tipster from talking to anyone led them to conclude that this was a so-called ‘catch and kill’ — a tabloid practice in which a publication pays for a story to never run, either as a favor to the celebrity subject of the tip or as leverage over that person.

One former Enquirer reporter, who was not involved in the Sajudin reporting effort, expressed skepticism that the company would pay for the tip and not publish.

‘AMI doesn’t go around cutting checks for $30,000 and then not using the information,’ said Jerry George, a reporter and senior editor for nearly three decades at AMI before his layoff in 2013.

Cohen has admitted he broke the law when he made payments to McDougal and pornstar Stormy Daniels (pictured) 

Despite claiming to have nothing to do with Trump, the Enquirer published a string of allegations against Trump’s rivals during the 2016 election with stories claiming rival Hillary Clinton was a bisexual ‘secret sex freak’ and was kept alive only by a ‘narcotics cocktail.’

Many of these stories bypassed the paper’s fact-checking process, according to two people familiar with the copy.   

Donald Trump was the tabloid’s first-ever endorsement as well. 

Yet top editor Dylan Howard stressed that the paper’s coverage was bipartisan, citing negative stories it published about Ben Carson during the Republican presidential primaries.

The company has said it paid McDougal, the former Playboy Playmate, to be a columnist for an AMI-published fitness magazine, not to stay silent. McDougal has since said that she regrets signing the non-disclosure agreement and is currently suing to get out of it

In a statement last summer, Howard said the company doesn’t take editorial direction ‘from anyone outside AMI,’ and said Trump has never been an Enquirer source. 

The company has said reader surveys dictate its coverage and that many of its customers are Trump supporters.

In regards to the National Enquirer’s deal with McDougal – who claims to have had an affair with Trump – the publication said it paid her to be a columnist in an AMI-published fitness magazine, not to stay silent. 

McDougal has said she regrets signing the non-disclosure agreement and is currently suing to get out of it. 

AMI CEO David Pecker admitted to the New Yorker last summer that McDougal’s contract effectively silenced her.  

‘Once she’s part of the company, then on the outside she can’t be bashing Trump and American Media,’ Pecker said.

In the tabloid world purchasing information is not uncommon, and the Enquirer routinely pays sources. 

As a general practice, however, sources agree to be paid for their tips only upon publication.

George, the longtime former reporter and editor, said the $1 million penalty in Sajudin’s agreement was larger than anything he had seen in his Enquirer career.

‘If your intent is to get a story from the source, there’s no upside to paying upfront,’ said George, who sometimes handled catch-and-kill contracts related to other celebrities. 

Paying upfront was not the Enquirer’s usual practice because it would have been costly and endangered the source’s incentive to cooperate, he said.

Sajudin got into the agreement with AMI after he called the Enquirer’s tip line. Reporters pursued the story in New York and California and Sajudin even underwent a polygraph test, which he passed. 

A week later he signed the $30,000 contract. But immediately afterwards, the reporting stopped, according to former staffers.   

Sajudin confirmed he was paid to be an anonymous source for the tabloid. When pressed for details, Sajudin said he’d only talk in exchange for payment.   

‘If there’s no money involved with it,’ he said, ‘I’m not getting involved.’ 

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk