It sounds like something out of Old Hollywood: A supermarket tabloid gets its hands on a juicy piece of celebrity gossip and buries it so that the celebrity owes them a favor.
But catch and kill, at least at the National Enquirer, was going on as recently as five years ago.
The scheme made headlines days before the 2016 presidential election when the Wall Street Journal revealed the National Enquirer’s parent company, AMI, paid former Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal $150,000 to keep her alleged former affair with Donald Trump quiet during his campaign.
A payoff of $30,000 was also made to a Trump Tower doorman who claimed the real-estate mogul allegedly fathered a child out of wedlock, prosecutors claim.
Trump pleaded not guilty Tuesday to 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection to such schemes (including his lawyer Michael Cohen’s 2018 payment of $130,000 for porn star Stormy Daniels’ silence).
Manhattan prosecutors allege Trump orchestrated the “catch and kill” strategies with Cohen and David Pecker, former CEO of A360 Media, previously known as American Media Inc. (AMI).
But the practice of buying and burying a story as a favor has long been a tabloid technique, former National Enquirer employees told The Post.
“It was constant practice to get to a celebrity and tell them you had details of his infidelity or some other down point of his life and career — and say you would hold the story back if he would give an interview,” former National Enquirer roving editor Tony Brenna said.
Brenna likened the story-suppression method to “bartering and trading.”
“It didn’t always work,” he said. “Sometimes what you had [on stars] was better than what they could return. It was also common practice to get one celebrity to rat out another.”
The Enquirer’s former publisher, Gene Pope Jr., who died in 1988, had regularly used the tactic with comedian Bob Hope — a “terrible womanizer” who cooperated for legitimate profiles in exchange for the tabloid not exposing his alleged dalliances, Brenna said.
Pecker, Trump’s longtime friend who took over the Enquirer in 1999, was determined to make himself into a power broker, Brenna said and took catch and kill to another level.
Another former National Enquirer staffer echoed Brenna’s description of the tabloid industry’s underbelly, confirming that “catch and kills” were heavily sought under Peck’s leadership.
“They loved doing them,” the ex-Enquirer reporter told The Post. “But sometimes celebrities won’t play ball.”
By ensnaring a celebrity in a potentially embarrassing spot, the Enquirer, ironically, hoped to gain more “credence” and legitimacy, the former reporter said.
Trump, meanwhile, is far from the only A-lister who brokered deals with AMI to conceal stories that could derail their careers. Here’s an inside look at some of AMI’s biggest “catch and kills”:
Harvey Weinstein
The disgraced Hollywood producer was convicted of rape in February 2020 after prosecutors alleged he preyed on women who sought to advance their careers. Weinstein’s spectacular downfall sparked the #MeToo movement and he was later sentenced to 23 years in prison. A Los Angeles judge also handed him another 16 years for the 2013 rape of an Italian model.
“Weinstein was somebody that they did a lot of catch and kill for,” Brenna told The Post of The Enquirer. “They had a lot on Weinstein’s sexual harassment and rape of celebrities. When they went to Weinstein, he immediately saw them as a place to use and he gave them negative information about other people.”
Weinstein kept a “red-flag” list of his accusers, including actresses Rose McGowan and Annabella Sciorra, whom he wanted to be investigated, Page Six previously reported.
He emailed AMI’s then-chief content officer, Dylan Howard, in an effort to disprove McGowan’s allegation of rape.
“Let’s discuss next steps on each,” Howard reportedly replied.
A rep for Weinstein declined to comment Thursday.
“I won’t be able to speak with him today,” Weinstein’s publicist, Juda Englemeyer, told The Post. “But the policies of [publications] have changed completely. Since the coverage of him, it’s become a different world.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger
In 2001, the National Enquirer published exclusive reports alleging the former bodybuilder and movie star had had a seven-year affair with former child actress Gigi Goyette, who previously appeared on “Little House on the Prairie.”
Goyette claimed the “Terminator” star had sex with her in a hotel where he also had stayed with then-wife Maria Shriver, who later filed for divorce in 2011, the Enquirer reported.
Apparently, it could have been worse.
In August 2003 — just two days after Schwarzenegger declared his ultimately successful candidacy for governor of California — the media company promised to pay Goyette $20,000 to sign a confidentiality agreement about the alleged affair, as revealed by the Los Angeles Times.
As part of the deal, Goyette reportedly cannot disclose her “interactions” with Schwarzenegger to anyone outside AMI.
AMI was protecting Schwarzenegger’s political interests, an unnamed employee told the Los Angeles Times. The company was simultaneously finalizing a deal to make him executive editor of Flex and Muscle & Fitness magazines, according to the report.
Schwarzenegger’s then-communications director reportedly denied any link between AMI’s deal and its agreement with Goyette.
The film and TV actress signed the agreement believing it was the first step to a lucrative book deal with AMI, which never transpired.
“I didn’t get paid off to be quiet,” she said. “They bought the rights to my book deal and then never published it.”
Goyette, now 63, first met Schwarzenegger at a Gold’s Gym in Venice, California, when she was 17. She declined to provide additional details on their alleged affair, citing the confidentiality agreement that runs “in perpetuity,” she told The Post.
She claims that phrase was added to the two-page document after she signed it.
“I would have never signed anything that’s in perpetuity,” Goyette said.
As for AMI signing up Schwarzenegger as an editor, that never happened either. An $8 million dollar deal was signed in November 2003, just two days before he took office, but was scrapped after it was publicized by news outlets.
Matt LeBlanc
The “Friends” star confided to the Enquirer in 2005 about his drunken exploits with a stripper in British Columbia, Canada — but solely to keep more tawdry details from hitting newsstands.
After getting reports of LeBlanc doing drugs and hooking up with a woman other than his wife, the Enquirer negotiated terms with LeBlanc’s team for the actor to give a first-person account while not explicitly admitting to being unfaithful, a former employee told The Post.
The story on LeBlanc’s “wild night with a stripper” notes how close the actor came to betraying Melissa McKnight, then his wife of two years. (They divorced a year later.)
“The stripper was all over me,” LeBlanc told the publication. “I acted like a fool in allowing myself to be led astray and placed in such a horrible situation and I feel ashamed.”
But the Enquirer’s story downplayed how hot and heavy he got with the unidentified exotic dancer, the former Enquirer reporter told The Post.
“It wasn’t a proper kill,” according to the reporter, who confirmed the story was watered down. “[The stripper, who claimed to have had sex with LeBlanc] took a lie detector test … and she passed.”
A publicist for LeBlanc, 55, could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Bill Cosby
In 2018, model Beth Ferrier told the Daily Beast the National Enquirer buried a story about her sexual assault accusations against Bill Cosby in exchange for an exclusive interview with the comedian in March 2005.
Authorities at the time had decided not to charge Cosby, now 85, for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting another woman, Andrea Constand, a year earlier. (He was later found guilty in 2018 and received three to 10 years in prison, but those convictions were ultimately vacated in 2021.)
AMI, meanwhile, had reportedly promised Ferrier $7,500 for her own account, although she never saw a dime. She also reportedly passed a lie detector test, but the Enquirer never ran the story
“I wasn’t surprised,” Ferrier, then 58, told the Daily Beast upon learning of Cosby’s deposition, which revealed the pact. “It was like, ‘Oh. Ah-hah. Got it.’”
Tiger Woods
AMI arranged a deal with one of the world’s most famous athletes to appear on the cover of its Men’s Fitness magazine in August 2007.
“David Pecker knew about Tiger Woods’ infidelity a long time ago,” former Men’s Fitness editor-in-chief Neal Boulton told The Post in 2009. “[Pecker] traded silence for a Men’s Fitness cover.”
In exchange for Woods’ money-making visage, the National Enquirer quashed a story and photos allegedly showing him with a woman who wasn’t his then-wife, Elin Nordegren. (The couple later divorced in 2009 following news of Woods’ cheating scandal.)
The August 2007 issue — headlined “Tiger!” — sold more than 30% over the average Men’s Fitness edition that year.
AMI spokeswoman Samantha Trenk told the Wall Street Journal the partnership was actually proposed by Woods, who was interviewed for the cover story by Roy S. Johnson, a former Sports Illustrated editor working as a freelancer.
“Tiger’s camp approached us,” Trenk said.
AMI denied any deal to suppress photos of Woods, whose agent, Mark Steinberg, declined to comment on accusations of infidelity. Pecker, who was then AMI’s chief executive, also refused to respond, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2009.
