National Enquirer Boss Took Ally of Saudi Arabia to Meet Trump in the Oval Office

Donald Trump received an important business contact of David Pecker in the Oval Office last July, according to a report in The New York Times. The chairman of American Media Inc., the company that owns The National Enquirer—which bought the rights to, but did not publish, the story of Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who claimed to have had an affair with Trump—took Kacy Grine, a French businessman who has close connections to Saudi Arabia’s elite, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the curiously detained Prince Alwaleed bin Tawal, to dinner with Trump. A photograph of Grine taken with the president before the dinner was published in an adulatory magazine about Saudi Arabia subsequently published by AMI. The Daily Beast’s Spencer Ackerman reported earlier this week that 200,000 copies of the bizarre, ad-free glossy popped up to spread pro-Saudi propaganda at U.S. newsstands and supermarket checkout aisles. In a statement, AMI told The New York Times, “The entire conversation was social, with the exception of a couple very brief mentions of current events.”