Two new reports claim that a former Trump building doorman was paid hush money after threatening to leak a story that President Donald Trump allegedly fathered a child out of wedlock with an employee in the late '80s

Two new reports claim that a former Trump building doorman was paid $30,000 for a story relaying rumors that President Donald Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock with an employee in the late ’80s.

On Thursday, both The New Yorker and the Associated Press published reports claiming that National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc. (AMI) paid Dino Sajudin, the former Trump doorman, $30,000 to own the exclusive rights to Sajudin’s story, with a $1 million penalty if he told anyone else about it or the contract. The reports go on to say that AMI killed the story after deciding the rumors were not true.

Get push notifications with news, features and more.

This was in November 2015, five months after Trump launched his presidential campaign, The New Yorker reported.

The New Yorker and the AP have not been able to verify Sajudin’s claims. The unidentified women Sajudin named to The New Yorker as Trump’s alleged mistress told the AP last August that she never had an affair with the president. The New Yorker recently spoke with her husband, who called Sajudin’s allegations “completely false and ridiculous.”

Sajudin confirmed in a tweet this afternoon that “while working at Trump World Tower I was instructed not to criticize President Trump’s former housekeeper due to a prior relationship she had with President Trump which produced a child.”

The White House did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment, but denied to The New Yorker both the love child allegations and Sajudin’s claim that Trump’s head of security, Matthew Calamari, told Sajudin the rumors. The magazine quoted a source close to the White House as saying that Trump “did not have an affair. This is a totally false accusation.” Several AMI sources also told The New Yorker that they doubted the truth of the rumor.

PEOPLE was not able to reach Sajudin.

Sajudin’s story was potentially a big one. He told AMI he’d heard a rumor from Calamari that Trump had secretly fathered a child with an employee at Trump World Tower in New York City, the Associated Press reported.

Sajudin also gave AMI the names of the alleged mistress and child and passed a lie-detector test during which he stated that Calamari had told him the rumor, The New Yorker reported.

Image zoom SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty

But AMI — headed by its C.E.O. and chairman David Pecker, who describes the president as “a personal friend” — did not run the story, allegedly because it could not confirm it to be true. An AMI publication, Radar Online, today quoted an AMI spokesperson as saying that after declining to run Saudin’s story, AMI released him from his exclusivity clause and freed him “to tell his story to whomever he wanted.”

According to a previous report from The Wall Street Journal published days before the November 2016 election, AMI allegedly used an elaborate coverup system to help Trump hide his alleged extramarital affair with former Playboy Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal. AMI told The New Yorker they never ran McDougal’s story because they “did not find it credible.”

Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael D. Cohen — who previously admitted to making a $130,000 payment out of his own pocket to adult film star Stormy Daniels, which she said was used to silence her own claims of an affair with Trump — was also in personal contact “with AMI executives while the company’s reporters were looking into Sajudin’s story,” according to two former AMI employees who spoke with The New Yorker. The White House has denied the McDougal and Daniels affairs ever happened.

Image zoom Ron Sachs - Pool/Getty

Like they previously said of McDougal, who was allegedly paid $150,000 for the rights to her story, AMI claims they never ran Sajudin’s story because they did not have sufficient evidence.

In a piece published on AMI’s site Radar Online hours before The New Yorker and AP published their stories, a former AMI employee said the media company spent four weeks looking into Sajudin’s claims and decided they weren’t true. Citing legal documents, Radar reported that Sajudin was released from his contract after the 2016 election.

RELATED VIDEO: PEOPLE Writer Natasha Stoynoff Breaks Silence, Accuses Donald Trump of Sexual Attack

