#Catch and Kill

[lets-steal-an-archive]

As Donald Trump becomes the first US President to be convicted of felony crimes, take a look back at our reporting in the @NewYorker that exposed the first detailed accounts of the AMI "catch and kill" transactions that played a central role in the case:

On the effort to suppress an unproved rumor of a Trump love child:

On the effort to suppress Karen McDougal's affair:

For more detail, check out my subsequent episodes of "The Catch and Kill Podcast" detailing what prosecutors eventually described as a scheme to subvert an election, featuring interviews with the recipients of the payouts:

Dino Sajudin:

Karen McDougal:

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Aaron Rupar and Stephen Robinson at Public Notice:

By Stephen Robinson

Donald Trump has downplayed the $130,000 hush payment made on his behalf to adult film performer Stormy Daniels as a “simple private transaction.” In reality, it may have changed the course of US history. Trump, of course, is now on trial in New York for charges related to the October 2016 payoff, including falsifying business records with an intent to unlawfully influence an election. Arguably, the New York indictment is the least headline-grabbing of the four he faces, in part because the hush money scheme pales in comparison with stealing classified documents, inciting an insurrection, or trying to overturn an election. Politically, however, it can’t be overstated just how large a role the Daniels payment played in helping Trump squeak his way into the White House. Instead of getting lost in the legal weeds, it’s important to take a step back and examine the context surrounding the payoff and why it was an existential matter for Trump in the weeks leading up to his victory in November 2016.

Why Trump desperately needed to hush Daniels

About a month out from election day 2016, the Trump campaign was on the ropes. The infamous Access Hollywood tape that showed Trump boasting about groping women in September 2005 was the ultimate October surprise. In the wake of its release on October 7, a number of prominent Republicans withdrew their support, and swing state voters were abandoning him in droves. Days before the tape’s release, Trump had a narrow one-point lead in Wisconsin among likely voters. The first polling conducted after the poll’s release showed Hillary Clinton ahead by six points, and by October 10, her lead had grown to 19 points.

CNN’s Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake wrote on October 11 that “the 2016 electoral map is rapidly slipping away from Donald Trump.” Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania were all “lean Democrat,” and Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina were tossups. Cillizza and Blake estimated that “if the election were held today, Hillary Clinton would win 341 electoral votes to Donald Trump's 197.” Unfortunately for us all, the election wasn’t held on October 11, and less than a month later, Trump would sweep all six of those states. This improbable comeback is usually linked to FBI Director James Comey’s October 28 letter that publicly announced the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” into Clinton’s private email server use. The emails were only tangentially related to the FBI’s investigation into Anthony Weiner’s illicit text messages to a 15-year-old North Carolina girl, but this added an extra salacious element to the story, which soon appeared on the front page of the New York Times and dominated the news cycle.

Behind the scenes of the Daniels payoff

The Daniels affair wasn’t the only extramarital tryst Trump was trying to keep under wraps in the months before the 2016 election. In June 2016, a month before the Republican National Convention, Karen McDougal, an actress and former Playboy model, tried to sell her story about an alleged affair she had with Trump from 2006 to April 2007. (Trump married Melania in 2005 and their son Barron was born in March 2006.) The National Enquirer secured the rights to McDougal’s account for $150,000 but had no intention of publishing the story. National Enquirer publisher David Pecker confirmed last week during his testimony in Trump’s criminal trial that this “catch and kill” tactic was specifically done to benefit Trump’s campaign, bolstering federal prosecutors’ case that the McDougal deal was meant "to suppress [her] story so as to prevent it from influencing the election."

But with Trump’s campaign on the ropes in the wake of the Access Hollywood bombshell, Daniels became an urgent concern. She told National Enquirer editor-in-chief Dylan Howard on October 8 that she was willing to go on the record about her alleged affair. This was the day after the Access Hollywood tape’s release, so the timing of a new scandal about Trump having an affair with an adult film actress might have been fatal to his political hopes. Trump was spinning the Access Hollywood recording as merely “locker room talk” — not something he’d actually do in real life — but Daniels, like McDougal, claimed that Trump cheated on his wife who’d given birth to their son just a few months earlier. This revelation that Trump was cheating not only on his wife but on his mistress with an adult film actress would have solidified Trump’s sleazeball image with the undecided voters he needed to swing his way.

[...] Republicans and right-wing media have spent the past three years whining that suppression of the New York Post’s “blockbuster Hunter Biden laptop story” cost Trump the 2020 election. The utterly shameless Rep. Elise Stefanik claimed at a House select subcommittee hearing last year that “according to polling, of the people who were made aware of the Hunter Biden laptop story, 53 percent would have changed their vote, including 61 percent of Democrats. This is the definition of election meddling … it’s collusion, it’s corruption, and it’s unconstitutional.” It’s also a blatant lie, as PolitiFact gave Stefanik’s statement a “false” rating.

In the immediate aftermath of the release of the 2005 Access Hollywood tape in which Donald Trump infamously was caught bragging about sexual assault, Stormy Daniels sought to tell her story to the National Enquirer… only for them to kill it from being publicized.

Had that fact been publicized before the voters in 2016, it would have been a fatal blow to the Trump campaign. Alas, that didn’t happen, and Trump won in 2016.

[thepoliticalvulcan]

Me Too part 2: Electric Boogaloo?

I’m not normally a prognosticator but an original thought I think I just had was that I think an unexpected consequence of Trump’s trial for campaign finance fraud is the detailed analysis of how catch and kill and NDAs work to silence people who have receipts for messy business and downright scummy and abusive people. Now the ironclad-ness of NDAs was already being tinkered with prior but I foresee more messy business about awful people coming to light now that it seems legally safer to break what are now potentially illegal bindings.

[liminal-zone]

I have big “Ariana what are you doing here” energy about HW being back in the news. What the actual fuck.

[notacluedo]

jean baby boy

+ lil Andrew

[whatcha-reading-today]

Catch and Kill | Ronan Farrow

This is going to be a pretty triggering as there's descriptions of on page rape, assault, sexual abuse, abuse of power, etc. But Farrow's writing is clear, well-constructed and consistent throughout. I listened to the audiobook which also includes clips of abuse recorded by the victims. I have heard complaints about some of the accents and affectations that Ronan chooses but I was fine with it.

High recommend for fans of well-written nonfiction.

Read in: 2023

Format: audiobook

Favorites 2023

[taahko]

living in nyc is so fucking unserious you walk through a paramilitary operation (the nypd) to pay $2.fucking90 to use a form of transport that hasnt received maintenance since 1965 and when you get on the train youre greeted with this

[crimeronan]

CDC finally fuckin' recommended the new COVID boosters for everyone in the US. letting my american followers who don't check the news know because i've been turned away for wanting to get an extra booster & now won't be anymore & it's Lovely. most americans are not going to get these and are going to grumble about them, which sucks as far as spread goes - but DOES mean u can schedule with ur local pharmacy sooner rather than later. please do so. ur immunocompromised friends and ur own body will thank u.

[bonehearts]

ZAP ZAP

[hipsternumbertwo]

THE LORDS IN BLACK 6 hours left for the Kickstarter! Art by @shnikkles

[starrrbakerrr]

i read this really insightful post by @thesmileykate and it made me realize how sunrise on the reaping adds a whole new layer to snow’s “convince me.” katniss easily “convinced” the majority of panem and all of the capitol of her love for peeta in the 74th games. but not snow, because he thinks all covey women are deceiving to their lovers. he thought there was no possible way katniss truly loved peeta. he wanted to believe all of her choices were for her own self-preservation. but when he saw katniss’s reaction to peeta’s heart stopping in the quarter quell his belief about covey women was proven incorrect. and once peeta was captured he knew he couldn’t take away katniss’s love for peeta, but he could take away peeta’s love for katniss.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:

Donald Trump's theft of classified documents was worse than anyone knew, as additional documents were released Tuesday showing that, months after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, documents were found in Trump’s bedroom and classified material was allegedly copied to a laptop for Trump’s Save America PAC. 

Trump’s legal team is currently attempting to have all of the evidence thrown out, claiming that the search was unconstitutional and “illegal.” Judge Aileen Cannon is set to hold a hearing on Wednesday on a defense motion to completely dismiss the charges against Trump. How does The New York Times cover this—new evidence in what is arguably the biggest presidential scandal in history and a Trump-appointed judge holding the case in her hands—on its front page? It doesn’t. The Times does have a story on the documents, but it's hidden inside under the headline "Trump Lawyers Accuse Prosecutors of Misconduct in Documents Case." Like the headline, the first paragraph of the story focuses on how federal prosecutors are fighting “allegations of misconduct and politicization in how the government handled the investigation that led to an indictment accusing Mr. Trump of illegally holding on to classified documents after he left office.”

[...] Contrast this with The Washington Post coverage headlined “Unsealed motions in Trump’s Fla. case suggest new evidence of possible obstruction.” This article does more than announce that supporting documents were released. It even mentions how the documents contain evidence that a Trump employee avoided the view of security cameras when moving boxes of documents. The Post article also discusses how the FBI search warrant included standard language authorizing the use of deadly force, which Trump is now trying to politicize with claims that President Joe Biden sent the FBI to Mar-a-Lago to assassinate him.  Better still, contrast The New York Times’ coverage with how it covered the story when former FBI Director James Comey announced that the agency was reopening its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. The day after Comey spoke, every single column of the Times’ front page was devoted to the possibility that a document might appear on a laptop.  [...]

It’s not as if The New York Times doesn’t cover some Trump scandals. It had daily coverage of Trump’s criminal trial over charges of falsifying classified documents. With the trial happening blocks from its offices, that was a bit hard to avoid.  And it did dispatch Maggie Haberman, so she was there to hear former Trump fixer Michael Cohen testify that she was one of his go-to choices when he wanted to find someone to write favorable news about Trump. David Pecker, former publisher of The National Enquirer, disclosed new details during his testimony about the “catch-and-kill” deal that he, Cohen, and Trump worked out to protect Trump’s 2016 run for the White House. But it’s clear that Trump no longer needs that deal. Congratulations, Mr. Sulzberger. You’re the new David Pecker.

The New York Times seeks to help enable Donald Trump's crime spree by giving more attention to right-wing pseudo-scandals designed to hurt Joe Biden than Trump's actual crimes and scandals.

[chzy-doodles]

it's thanks to you

[scp-1296]

"In the end, the employees said, Jonathan’s routine had been so boring the subcontractor surveilling him had given up. 'I’m interesting!' Jonathan said, when I told him. 'I am a very interesting person! I went to an escape room!'"

-Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow

[hawkeshep]