by Pam Martens and Russ Martens, Wall St On Parade:
Editor’s Note: This article has been edited and updated from an earlier version, published in 2020.
Trump and Catch and Kill: Yesterday, David Pecker, the former Chairman and CEO of American Media Inc. (AMI), the parent company of the National Enquirer tabloid, testified for a third day in the 34-count criminal trial of former President Donald Trump in New York. Pecker continued to expand on the sordid details of a catch and kill operation he had agreed to operate with the active involvement of Trump and his then attorney, Michael Cohen. The operation involved buying up stories about Trump’s salacious affairs with women and then killing them from publication in order to help Trump’s campaign for the presidency in 2016. There was also an understanding that Pecker would run negative articles about Trump’s political opponents in the National Enquirer.
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During opening arguments in the trial on Monday, Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo explained the case to the jurors as follows:
“The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election. Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”
While Pecker was mapping out more of the slimy details of his catch and kill operation yesterday, shocking news broke that the New York Court of Appeals had overturned the sex crimes conviction of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The court ruled with a 4-3 vote (and scathing dissents) that the trial judge had erred by allowing witnesses to testify about other alleged crimes committed by Weinstein that were not part of the case. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office promised to retry the case.
Weinstein, who has been serving time in prison in upstate New York, was also sentenced last year in California to 16 years in prison for rape and sexual assault. That sentence is not impacted by the Appeals court ruling in New York.
There have also been allegations in the past of a catch and kill operation to protect Harvey Weinstein.
Ronan Farrow and the Harvey Weinstein Investigation: Ronan Farrow has previously cast a harsh light on NBC, suggesting that it may have been involved in a nuanced form of catch and kill during his investigation of Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual assaults on women. NBC failed to broadcast Farrow’s story despite having filmed witness interviews. After NBC told Farrow that his story wasn’t reportable, Farrow took it to the New Yorker, where the article was published on October 10, 2017. It won Farrow a Pulitzer Prize in 2018. That article includes allegations of three rapes by Weinstein.
Farrow appeared on the MSNBC Rachel Maddow program shortly after his article ran in the New Yorker. Farrow was asked by Maddow why NBC did not air the story. Farrow responded:
“I walked into the door at the New Yorker with an explosively reportable piece that should have been public earlier. And immediately, obviously, the New Yorker recognized that and it is not accurate to say that it wasn’t reportable. In fact, there were multiple determinations that it was reportable at NBC.”
Jeffrey Epstein and the U.S. Attorney’s Office: Catch and kill is also the only logical way to view what happened to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein at the hands of Alex Acosta, then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida when Jeffrey Epstein got the sweetheart deal of a lifetime.
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