National Enquirer hit with $187,000 fine from FEC for hiding Trump's mistresses during 2016 campaign

[Brexiter]

When you have the right friends, they’re more than willing to work to buy an election for you—and several Supreme Court seats, and the legislation that goes with all of it. In 2016, Donald Trump had a suspected friend in the National Enquirer, but after an FEC review, the suspected friend moves into the “friend paying a fine” category for illegal acts under election financing laws.

The Complaints in these matters allege that American Media, Inc., which is now A360Media, LLC (“AMI”) violated the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended (the “Act”), in connection with payments AMI made to two individuals in advance of the 2016 presidential election to suppress negative stories about then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump’s relationships with several women. Specifically, the Complaints allege that then-AMI corporate officers David J. Pecker and Dylan Howard worked to negotiate a payment of $150,000 to Karen McDougal in August 2016 for the purpose of influencing Trump’s election bysuppressing her story of an alleged personal relationship with Trump.

The issue is simple: The National Enquirer sought out people who had dirt on Donald J. Trump, paid them for their stories while promising those stories would run, and then spiked the stories, making sure they couldn’t be told to another media outlet without breaking the contract and facing penalties.

The discovery of the concern and the issuance of a fine isn’t surprising, but this paragraph shows exactly the problem that existed within the Trump administration’s department of justice—there was no, you know, actual justice.

The available information indicates that during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, AMI and its executives, Pecker and Howard, paid $150,000 to Karen McDougal to purchase the rights to her claim that she engaged in a relationship with Trump beginning in 2006. AMI enteredinto a Non-Prosecution Agreement with DOJ on September 21, 2018. In that Non-Prosecution Agreement, AMI admitted that it made the payments to McDougal to ensure that she did notpublicize her allegations and “thereby influence [the 2016 presidential] election.”

After receiving all the information needed for this in 2018, the FEC sat on it (and it appears the Department of Justice did as well) until now. While it is certainly possible that the Department of Justice was building a more long-term case and that AIM media has more stories to tell in a broader case, it is more likely that this letter, and the fine, represent the conclusion of the story—after the 2020 election, which denied many American voters the knowledge of exactly how corrupt the 2016 campaign actions were, and the ongoing actions of the Department of Justice doing the slow walk for the Trump campaign.

It’s a new day, however, and AIM media will pay the fine. The $187,000 marks their participation in something illegal. Was that fine, long-delayed, worth it to them to get the electoral results they wanted? My guess is, unfortunately, yes.

It is time for much stiffer penalties and actions to stop this kind of corruption in campaigns.