Federal investigators have provided ample evidence that President Donald Trump was involved in deals to pay two women to keep them from speaking publicly before the 2016 election about affairs that they said they had with him.

But it turns out that Trump wanted to go even further.

He and his lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, devised a plan to buy up all the dirt on Trump that the National Enquirer and its parent company had collected on him, dating back to the 1980s, according to several of Trump’s associates.

The existence of the plan, which was never finalized, was strongly hinted at in a recording that Cohen’s lawyer released last month of a conversation about payoffs that Cohen had with Trump.

“It’s all the stuff — all the stuff, because you never know,” Cohen said on the recording.

The move by Trump and Cohen indicated just how concerned they were about all the information amassed by the company, American Media, and its chairman, David Pecker, a loyal Trump ally of two decades who has cooperated with investigators.

It is not clear yet whether the proposed plan to purchase all the information from American Media has attracted the interest of federal prosecutors in New York, who last week obtained a guilty plea from Cohen over a $130,000 payment to the adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, and a $150,000 payment to a Playboy model, Karen McDougal.

But the prosecutors have provided at least partial immunity to Pecker, who is a key witness in their inquiry into payments made on behalf of Trump during the 2016 campaign.

Lawyers for Trump and Cohen declined to comment for this article as did American Media.

It is not known how much of the material on Trump is still in American Media’s possession or whether American Media destroyed any of it after the campaign.

People with knowledge of American Media’s operations, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, described the files on Trump as mostly older National Enquirer stories about Trump’s marital woes and lawsuits; related story notes and lists of sensitive sources; some tips about alleged affairs; and minutia, like allegations of unscrupulous golfing.

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