David J. Pecker

David Jay Pecker (born September 24, 1951) is an American publishing executive and businessman who was the CEO of American Media until August 2020. He was the publisher of Men's Fitness, Muscle and Fitness, Flex, Fit Pregnancy, Shape, and Star. He was also the publisher of National Enquirer, Sun, Weekly World News, and Globe.

In 2018, Pecker became embroiled in controversy regarding his involvement in a catch and kill operation under which his company would buy exclusive rights to stories that might embarrass his friend Donald Trump, the idea being to prevent those stories from becoming public during the latter's 2016 presidential campaign.

Early life David Jay Pecker was born on September 24, 1951, in the Bronx, New York City. He is of Jewish descent. His father was a bricklayer who died in 1967 when Pecker was 16. To support his mother, he started bookkeeping for local businesses in New Rochelle, New York and in the Bronx.

Career After college, Pecker began his career as an accountant at Price Waterhouse and in 1979 joined the accounting department at CBS's magazine division, rising to vice president and comptroller. Eight years later, CBS sold its magazine division in a leveraged buyout to its manager, Peter Diamandis; Pecker stayed on in his position. Diamandis later sold the magazines to Hachette Filipacchi Médias. After Diamandis's departure three years later, Pecker was appointed CEO at Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. Pecker was publisher of the magazines Men's Fitness, Muscle and Fitness, Flex, Fit Pregnancy, Shape and Star, as well as the supermarket tabloids National Enquirer, Star, Sun, Weekly World News, Globe. Sun and Weekly World News have ceased publication. In 2019, Pecker announced that he had agreed to drop more of AMI's tabloids and sell the National Enquirer, Globe and National Examiner to Hudson News.

Pecker is on the board of directors of iPayment Holdings, Inc., Sunbeam Products, Inc. and Next Generation Network, Inc.

In 2016, Pecker revealed to the Toronto Star that American Media Inc. now relied on support from Chatham Asset Management and its owner Anthony Melchiorre due to financial troubles. Melchiorre, who expressed dismay towards the National Enquirer's scandals involving assistance to Trump's 2016 Presidential campaign and blackmail of Jeff Bezos,

Involvement with Donald Trump

Beginning in March 1998, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., of which Pecker was then CEO, began producing Trump Style, which was distributed to guests at Donald Trump's properties. Pecker has described himself as a close friend of Trump. Pecker supported Trump's initial run for president as part of the Reform Party in 2000.

In an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower, Pecker offered to Trump that he would use the National Enquirer to catch and kill any allegations of sexual affairs against him. AMI would even personally facilitate payment to Karen McDougal.

Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen requested that Pecker's AMI buy the rights to Stormy Daniels's story, though Pecker refused to do so. However, it was later alleged that Pecker did in fact alert the Trump camp about Daniels going public with her sex affair allegation, which in turn would lead to a $130,000 hush money payoff.

By 2018, Pecker and AMI found themselves under investigation for using catch and kill payments, in which AMI purchased the exclusive rights to stories that might have been damaging to Trump's 2016 campaign for President and then refused to publish them. Such a tactic may have represented illegal and/or undeclared "in-kind" campaign donations under Federal Election Commission rules. In April 2018 the lawsuit was settled and McDougal was released from the agreement. AMI also agreed to feature her on the cover of another AMI magazine, Men's Journal, in September 2018.

In April 2018, FBI agents searched the office and residences of Michael Cohen, in part to search for evidence of Trump's involvement in the payment to McDougal.

In late 2015, AMI paid $30,000 to Dino Sajudin, a doorman at Trump Tower, to obtain the rights to his story in which he alleged Trump had an affair in the 1980s that resulted in the birth of a child. Sajudin in April 2018 identified the woman as Trump's former housekeeper. AMI reporters were given the names of the woman and the alleged child, while Sajudin passed a lie detector test when testifying that he had heard the story from others. Shortly after the payment was made, Pecker ordered the reporters to drop the story. In April 2018, AMI chief content officer Dylan Howard denied the story was "spiked" in a catch and kill operation, insisting that AMI did not run the story because Sajudin's story lacked credibility. CNN obtained a copy of the contract between AMI and Sajudin in August 2018, after AMI had released Sajudin from the contract. CNN published excerpts of the contract, which instructed Sajudin to provide "information regarding Donald Trump's illegitimate child", but did not contain further specifics of Sajudin's story.

Federal investigators subpoenaed Pecker and AMI in April 2018, with Pecker providing prosecutors details about the hush payments Cohen had arranged. In August 2018, Pecker was also granted witness immunity in exchange for his testimony of Trump's knowledge of the payments.

On February 27, 2019, Cohen testified under oath to the House Oversight Committee that he and Pecker conspired to "catch-and-kill" stories which had the potential to damage Trump.

On April 22, 2024, Pecker was the first witness to testify in Trump's New York criminal trial after being subpoenaed by prosecution, with the case being centered around the Stormy Daniels allegations. Pecker would also detail how he offered to deploy the "catch and kill" scheme, stating that he offered in 2015 to suppress negative stories about Trump and also flag any efforts which were made by women attempting to sell stories about Trump as well. Pecker specifically named the first "catch-and-kill" scheme targeted Dino Sajudin, a former Trump Tower doorman who alleged Trump fathered an illegitimate girl with a maid at Trump Tower. The National Enquirer would pay $30,000 for Sajudin's story, which was more than usual $10,000.

On April 25, he testified that he had spoken to Trump directly in 2016 about paying $150,000 to Karen McDougal to shut down her story. He said that Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen had asked Pecker to pay McDougal with the promise that Trump would reimburse him. Pecker sent an invoice from his shell company, Investor Advisory Services, to Cohen's shell company, Resolution Consultants. However, Trump never reimbursed American Media. Pecker also testified that he was aware at the time that it was illegal to coordinate with a political campaign to make this kind of payment to influence an election. As cover for the intention behind the payment, McDougal received a nondisclosure agreement about how she would write and model for Pecker's magazines.

Accusations of extortion by Jeff Bezos and Ronan Farrow In January 2019, Pecker's National Enquirer published what it called "sleazy text messages and gushing love notes" between Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, a sexual partner at the time, now his wife. Bezos began investigating how his personal communications reached the paper. The next month, Bezos accused the National Enquirer of extortion and blackmail by threatening to release Bezos's intimate pictures, criminal accusations Pecker denied through an attorney. Bezos wrote that AMI proposed in writing that Bezos state publicly that he and his security consultant "have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI's coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces". In return, AMI would withhold publication of the pictures.

Both AMI and the Manhattan prosecutor launched reviews of the accusations. Any violation of law by AMI would constitute a breach of the immunity agreement the company reached with prosecutors in 2018 after the paper agreed to "catch and kill" a story on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump. Ronan Farrow, a journalist, said he and another journalist received similar demands from AMI.

Personal life In 1987, Pecker married Karen Balan.

In April 2024, Pecker acknowledged that checkbook journalism was a part of his editorial philosophy, and that he also believed that “The only thing that is important is the cover of a magazine.”