Joe Palazzolo - The Fixers: The Bottom-Feeders, Crooked Lawyers, Gossipmongers, and Porn Stars Who Created the 45th President

D ONALD T RUMP SAT in his office on the twenty-sixth floor of Trump Tower, facing David Pecker, the sixty-four-year-old publisher of the tabloid of record, the National Enquirer. The wall to Trumps left was tiled with awards and photos of the recently announced presidential candidate. Young Trump on framed covers of Playboy,GQ, and Fortune. Trump mugging with Ronald Reagan. Trump with John F. Kennedy Jr. His desk was covered in stacks of papers and more magazine covers with his face on them.

Two months before the August 2015 meeting, Trump had wafted down the escalator into the atrium of his midtown high-rise to announce his presidential candidacy. Pecker, a self-made millionaire from the Bronx, and Trump, the Queens-born scion of an outer-borough developer, had been confidants for two decades, though neither man regarded the other as a close friend. Their relationship was a series of chits accrued and favors cashed in.

Peckers celebrity gossip and personal lifestyle empirehis company, American Media Inc., also published Globe and Star, and several sports and fitness magazineshadnt printed a bad word about Trump since 1999, the year he became chief executive. In more recent years, the publisher had assiduously promoted Trumps political rise. Trump, in return, fed American Media tips, offered Pecker business advice, and lent the mustached publisher entre into Trumps world of wealth and celebrity.

Their conversation at Trump Tower had been arranged by Michael Cohen, Trumps special counsel at the Trump Organization, the family business. Cohen had styled himself as the loyal guardian of Trumps image and reputation. A former personal injury lawyer and taxi medallion owner who hailed from the suburbs of Long Island, Cohen had in recent years transformed himself into Trumps armed press attachhe wore a gun in an ankle holsterwho made liberal use of legal threats to keep bad headlines about his boss to a minimum.

Pecker and Cohen had collaborated on an ad hoc basis in 2011, the last time Trump made a show of contemplating a presidential run. With Cohens encouragement, the National Enquirer had breathlessly promoted Trumps exploratory bid, while Globe had propelled the birther conspiracy theory that Trump used to attack President Barack Obama and raise his own political profile. Now that Trump was running for real, the collaboration needed to be more intentional.

When the Trump Tower meeting began, Pecker had taken the single seat opposite Trump at his desk, while Cohen remained standing. After a while, Cohen went looking for a chair and pulled it over.

What can Pecker do to help the campaign? Trump wanted to know as they sat in his office. Pecker had some ideas. He could use the Enquirer to slime Trumps political opponents, both Republican and Democrat, he said. Pecker warned Trump that opportunists might come forward trying to peddle dirt about him, including tales of his exploits with women. Peckers tabloids, which paid for scoops, were a natural destination for tipsters with information to sell. Pecker told Trump he could intercept harmful stories and make sure they never surfaced.

Pecker already had a template to follow. In 2003, the Enquirer had vacuumed up damaging information about the sexual proclivities of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a soon-to-be business partner at Peckers muscle magazines, when the action hero ran for governor of California. American Media paid potential purveyors of salacious information about the movie star, bottling them up with exclusive source contracts. The practice was known in the tabloid world as catch and kill. A decade later, Peckers company shelled out $20,000 for a photocopied image of Schwarzenegger as a young bodybuilder naked on a couch, taking it off the market.

Peckers offer to Trump wasnt based on idle speculation. On the heels of his 2011 presidential flirtation, an adult movie star named Stormy Daniels and her manager had shopped her story of a one-night stand with Trump to celebrity publications. A legal threat from Cohen prevented the story from taking off, but it was a close call. Not long after that, reporters sniffed around rumors of an affair between Trump and Karen McDougal, the 1998 Playboy Playmate of the Year. McDougal had called Trump, who told her not to worry, and the rumors subsided.

Even since the campaign launch, Pecker and Cohen had worked to stanch a possible problem. Trumps office had been contacted by a digital media outlet that had found old pictures of Trump in which he appeared to be leaning in to autograph a strippers bare breasts. Cohen referred the companys founder to Pecker. Pecker already knew the manthe same one whod sold him the naked photocopy of Schwarzeneggerand assured him the Trump pictures were worthless. Then Pecker stalled him with discussions of business they might do together.

At their meeting, Trump welcomed Peckers willingness to assist. Work with Michael, he said. When an issue came up, Pecker would call Cohen, who would dutifully inform Trump.

Pecker left Trumps office that day with his mission assigned. Within three months, his purpose had become even clearer. A former doorman at a Trump building approached the Enquirer in November 2015. He said he had heard that Trump had fathered a daughter out of wedlock with a female employee. Was it true? The tabloid didnt know. Nonetheless, when the doorman threatened to take the information elsewhere, the Enquirer, with Peckers blessing, paid off the doorman to keep the rumor a secret.

Trump valued the role that Pecker and Cohen were willing to play in his presidential campaign, fixing problems, mopping up his old messes so he could remain free of their stench. Others had done the same for Trump in the past. Roy Cohn, the disgraced counsel to Senator Joe McCarthy turned lawyer to the powerful, had shepherded the young Trump along in his rise in New York City four decades earlier. Cohn had manipulated the media and the legal system to secure business advantages for Trump and weave his myth as a fabulously successful developer who transformed his fathers collection of middle-class apartment buildings in Brooklyn and Queens into a Manhattan-based empire of glittery luxury condominium towers. When gentler tactics failed, Cohn tried to scare Trumps opponents into submission. He was the fixer by which Trump judged all others.