Report: Trump, Cohen wanted to buy decades of killed stories from National Enquirer

Christal Hayes | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Prosecutors grant immunity to National Enquirer boss, Trump friend Prosecutors have reportedly granted David Pecker Immunity. He owns the company that published National Enquirer. Veuer's Sam Berman has the full story.

President Donald Trump and his then-attorney Michael Cohen devised a plan to purchase decades worth of unflattering stories from the National Enquirer's publisher, according to The New York Times.

The deal, which reportedly never went through, would have allowed Trump's team to own stories that American Media Inc., which owns the Enquirer, purchased rights to but chose not to publish under a practice called "catch and kill."

The Times reports the stories spanned decades – dating back to at least the 1980s – and include a spattering of tips from decades ago, including marriage problems, suspected affairs and Trump's lawsuits. The stories were reportedly kept in a safe with story notes, sources and other information.

It's unclear whether the information still exists or was destroyed. The Associated Press reported the information was moved from the safe to a different location around the time of Trump's inauguration.

The notion of purchasing stories from AMI was revealed last month when Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, released a secret recording of Trump and Cohen talking about it.

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In the tape, Cohen is heard talking to Trump about opening a company to pay AMI head David Pecker for all the stories the company has on him. They wanted to do this in case Pecker left the company and someone else came into ownership of the unflattering stories.

Among the stories: The Enquirer paid former Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 for her story about an alleged 10-month affair between herself and Trump that began in 2006.

Pecker is a longtime friend of Trump and the story was never published.

For this story, Cohen did pay the company $125,000 for the rights to her story. The Times reports a deal never came to fruition for the other stories kept by the company.

Pecker has cooperated with prosecutors and took an immunity deal to talk about Cohen's role and Trump's knowledge of the payoffs, according to the Wall Street Journal.