Hush Money

Report: Trump Doorman Paid to Keep Quiet About Love-Child Rumor

Employee sold rights to the National Enquirer.

Another day, another salacious rumor involving the president’s love life. Four reports say that a former doorman at a Trump property in New York was paid by the National Enquirer in late 2015 for the rights to a story he had heard that the now-president fathered a child with an employee in the 1980s. The reports echo the case of former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal, who was paid $150,000 by the National Enquirer for the rights to her story—which was never published—about an affair with Trump. The claims about doorman Dino Sajudin first appeared on gossip website and National Enquirer partner Radar on Wednesday, but the Associated Press and the The New Yorker then published more detailed accounts. The Washington Post confirmed the reports with a source familiar with the payment. "You know I took a polygraph test," Sajudin told the newspaper, adding that the story "had to come out." In a statement to CNN on Thursday, Sajudin claimed that he “was instructed not to criticize President Trump's former housekeeper due to a prior relationship she had with President Trump which produced a child.” While the story of Trump's love child was only a rumor, the payment counts as further evidence that the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., had a pattern of buying and then burying stories that could be damaging to Trump during his presidential campaign. Sajudin got $30,000 in exchange for the rights “in perpetuity” to the rumor he’d heard about Trump’s sex life. The Trump Organization denied Sajudin's claims as being "completely false."