Report: Enquirer Had 20 Years of Buried Trump Stories

Last week, the AP reported that the National Enquirer kept unpublished stories about Donald Trump locked away in safe. Now the New York Times adds a coda: Trump tried to buy everything in that safe, stories going back about 20 years. The newspaper reports that Trump discussed the strategy with former attorney Michael Cohen. "It's all the stuff—all the stuff, because you never know," Cohen tells Trump on one of the conversations he secretly recorded. The story explains that David Pecker, a Trump friend who runs the tabloid's parent company, made sure that no negative Trump stories saw the light under his watch, especially in the run-up to the election.

Trump, however, worried what would happen if something happened to Pecker. “Maybe he gets hit by a truck,” he says in the recording. The solution? Buy up everything in the safe, per the Times. "We'll have to pay him something," Cohen says of Pecker. However, the deal never came to pass for reasons that remain unclear. Also unclear: Does the big stash of information still exist, or did Pecker have it destroyed? Both Cohen and Pecker have struck deals with federal prosecutors investigating hush-money payments made to two women alleged to have had affairs with Trump. Read the full story. (More National Enquirer stories.)