The Trump thread: All things Donald

[psiberzerker]

 We agree, and the needs of Congress are their own to pursue.  Congress has much power under an Impeachment Process.  Congress has its own Investigators, and can do a fine job, am sure.

Yes, we know, because Muller was Congress' own Investigator, dingbat!



#Desist.

[Athos_131]

When General Flynn has been made whole in every way, I will be partially satisfied; and I hope to see many of these cretins, you all know the names well, dragged through the courts, dragged in cuffs with their families in early morning raids, and broken financially, and professionally, prior to finding themselves incarcerated.

Why does a man who pleaded guilty need to be "made whole"?  If he wasn't guilty he would not have pleaded that.

I notice you took the cowards way out in regards to this.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump says DHS Secretary Nielsen leaving

Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of Homeland Security who has become a face of President Donald Trump's hardline immigration push, is leaving the administration, President Donald Trump announced on Twitter Sunday afternoon.

"Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen will be leaving her position, and I would like to thank her for her service," Trump said on Twitter.
"I am pleased to announce that Kevin McAleenan, the current U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, will become Acting Secretary for @DHSgov. I have confidence that Kevin will do a great job!" Trump continued.

McAleenan is a holdover from the Obama administration. He was sworn in on March 20, 2018, as commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection. He is expected to serve as the acting secretary "in the short term," meaning he is not expected to be in the position for the long term, according to a White House official.

Senior administration officials told CNN that Nielsen had a 5 p.m., meeting at the White House with Trump where she was planning to discuss with him the immigration and border issues and a path forward. She had no intention of resigning, according to one of the sources, but rather was going there with an agenda.

Trump had grown increasingly frustrated with the situation at the border, which has seen an influx in migrants, predominantly from Northern Triangle countries.

In California on Friday, a senior administration official tells CNN, Trump told border agents he wanted them to stop letting people cross the border, despite the fact that Central American asylum seekers according to US law can do so.

Nielsen "believed the situation was becoming untenable with the President becoming increasingly unhinged about the border crisis and making unreasonable and even impossible requests," a senior administration official tells CNN.

"I hereby resign from the position of Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), effective April 7th 2018 (sic)," Nielsen wrote in her resignation letter. "Despite our progress in reforming homeland security for a new age, I have determined that it is the right time for me to step aside."

In a series of tweets, Nielsen said, "it has been an honor of a lifetime to serve with the brave men and women" of DHS and repeated what she also said in her resignation letter that she "could not be prouder of and more humbled by their service."
Nielsen has felt "in limbo" for the last week, a person close to her says, as she bore the brunt of the President's anger over the border.

She's been increasingly on thin ice in the eyes of the President. She did not realize how dire it was when she left the US last weekend, but quickly did, as she abruptly returned.
She did interviews -- including on CNN -- to try and improve the President's souring view of her, the source close to Nielsen said, but to little avail.

"Nothing she could do or say could change how the President started viewing her," the source close to Nielsen said.

That said, she was prepared to be fired at any moment, but did not know going into Sunday's meeting it would be imminent.

Democrats immediately reacted to the news.

"Hampered by misstep after misstep, Kirstjen Nielsen's tenure at the Department of Homeland Security was a disaster from the start. It is clearer now than ever that the Trump Administration's border security and immigration policies - that she enacted and helped craft - have been an abysmal failure and have helped create the humanitarian crisis at the border," said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson in a statement.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also released a statement: "When even the most radical voices in the administration aren't radical enough for President Trump, you know he's completely lost touch with the American people."

Tumultuous tenure

The departure comes just days after Trump suddenly withdrew the nomination of Ron Vitiello for Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, blindsiding the Department of Homeland Security and the Hill. Nielsen was unaware what was happening until after the nomination had been pulled, a person familiar with the news said. The announcement Sunday also follows plans to cut aid to some Central American countries, marking a sudden reversal after Nielsen had days earlier visited Honduras to sign a regional compact agreement with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Nielsen has had a tumultuous tenure that saw Trump steadily ramping up pressure on his team to execute his immigration promises, which he believes is the single driving issue for his base of political supporters.

Trump has vented privately that Nielsen hasn't adequately secured the border or enacted stricter immigration rules, even as she became the face of policies that administration critics called heartless and illegal.

In recent weeks, administration officials have been sounding the alarm over the increase in migrants at the southern border, underscoring the change in demographics as one of the reasons for the host of challenges they're facing. McAleenan said late last month that the US was on pace to encounter more than 100,000 migrants in March alone, making it "the highest month since 2008."

"Right now, we have an emergency on our hands. We need to treat it as such," Nielsen told Chris Cuomo on CNN's "Cuomo Prime Time" Thursday. Nielsen, who served in President George W. Bush's administration, never overcame internal skepticism about her allegiance to Trump. She joined the administration as chief of staff to John Kelly, who was Trump's first Homeland Security secretary.

When Kelly moved to the West Wing as chief of staff, Nielsen followed, becoming a deputy chief of staff tasked with helping Kelly bring rigor to a freewheeling staff.
The role didn't gain her popularity, but it helped her gain enough of Trump's trust to elevate her to the Cabinet post.

But at the agency that oversees border protection and immigration matters -- Trump's signature issue -- it was inevitable Nielsen would find herself in the President's crosshairs.
After a previous Cabinet meeting during which Trump berated her for not acting strongly enough on preventing illegal immigration, Nielsen considered resigning, people familiar with the matter said at the time.

She didn't then, and went on to become one of the public faces of a controversial policy that separated families at the southern border.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Kirstjen Nielsen Resigns as Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary

The president said in a tweet that Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, would take over as the acting replacement for Ms. Nielsen, who became the sixth secretary to lead the agency in late 2017. But by law, the under secretary for management, Claire Grady, who is currently serving as acting deputy secretary, is next in line to be acting secretary. The White House will have to fire her to make Mr. McAleenan acting secretary, people familiar with the transition said. Ms. Grady has told colleagues that she has no intention of resigning to make way for Mr. McAleenan.

Donnie just can't stop fucking up.

#Resist

[_priapism]

[_priapism]

Trump is removing US Secret Service director

"There is a near-systematic purge happening at the nation's second-largest national security agency," one senior administration official says.

Another manifestation of delusional paranoia. 

[_priapism]

[_priapism]

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said of Ms. Nielsen’s departure, “It is deeply alarming that the Trump administration official who put children in cages is reportedly resigning because she is not extreme enough for the White House’s liking.”


 

[psiberzerker]

The "You're fired" administration.

[Lois]

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said of Ms. Nielsen’s departure, “It is deeply alarming that the Trump administration official who put children in cages is reportedly resigning because she is not extreme enough for the White House’s liking.”


 

It is disturbing.

[Athos_131]

Kirstjen Nielsen’s ignominious end

You could argue that losing your reputation is an occupational hazard of working in the Trump administration: When the president thinks you’ve lost your value, he unceremoniously tosses you aside.

That seems to be what happened to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. She was forced to step down after a meeting with President Trump this weekend, The Washington Post and others report.

Even by Trump administration standards, where being fired by tweet is the norm, Nielsen’s forced resignation this weekend was particularly egregious. And it underscores just how anxious the president is about whether he has done enough to deliver on his hard-line immigration policies ahead of 2020.

Nielsen is the person in Trump’s Cabinet charged with carrying out his hard-line immigration policies. Even though behind the scenes Nielsen had reportedly fought Trump’s most controversial ideas, like separating migrant families at the border, she also went out of her way to publicly defend even the most extreme, often resorting to factually dishonest arguments that earned her public ridicule.

As The Fix’s Aaron Blake has chronicled, Nielsen has blatantly contradicted or ignored findings by the State Department, the U.S. intelligence community and her own agency to toe the president’s line on a number of issues:

— Her agency’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the border. She once argued “we do not have a policy of separating families at the border, period,” even though it was her agency’s interpretation of existing law that separated the families. Trump implicitly acknowledged as much when he abruptly ended it, shortly after Nielsen tweeted that.

— Whether border crossings rise to a national emergency. When Trump went around Congress and declared a national emergency at the border to build his wall earlier this year, Nielsen had to go before lawmakers and defend that legally questionable move. But she was undercut by her boss when Trump said he didn’t have to declare this emergency.

— Trump’s worldview on race. She refused to confirm whether Trump called Haiti, El Salvador and African nations “shithole countries,” even though she was present at the meeting where it happened. Then, when asked by members of Congress why Trump said he wanted more immigrants from Norway instead of these majority-minority countries, she feigned ignorance that Norway is a mostly white country so as to avoid having to talk about the undeniable racial component of Trump’s comments.

— Whether terrorists are crossing the border. During the government shutdown fight over the border this year, Nielsen more than any other Trump official insisted on repeating a falsehood that terrorists have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. The State Department has said there’s “no credible evidence” that terrorists are in Mexico trying to cross the border, let alone have made it across.

— Basic facts about Russian election interference. She has said she didn’t know if Russia interfered in the 2016 president election to help Trump win, despite a thorough intelligence report declaring as much. “That the specific intent was to help President Trump win? I’m not aware of that,” she said as recently as summer of 2018, more than two years after the report was released to the public.

As we said, embarrassment and public ridicule are part of the job of being a Trump administration official. Trump bashed his former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, publicly on Twitter, so much so that Republicans in Congress urged him to stop.

But the thanklessness of Nielsen’s job was particularly notable, and the extent to which Nielsen stuck her neck out for Trump was eyebrow-raising in Washington. She’s a former Bush administration official who had little-to-no immigration extremism in her background before this job. Post reporting suggests that Trump and senior adviser Stephen Miller wanted her and an official nominated to lead the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency out because they weren’t tough enough.

What gets tougher than separating children from their parents at the border, or firing tear gas at a crowd attempting to break through a border fence? Good question.

That there’s no obvious answer underscores how concerned the president may be about his immigration record right now. The president has been frustrated at the surge of migrants crossing the border despite his promise to supporters to close the entire border. Not to mention that nearly three years into his presidency, there is no wall, and there may never be. He lost the standoff with Congress over funding it, and he’s in danger of losing a similar battle in the courts. He is in the politically tricky territory of having to campaign in 2020 to fix problems that he campaigned in 2016 to fix, note The Post’s Ashley Parker and Toluse Olorunnipa.

Nielsen’s abrupt, embarrassing and ignominious end as Trump’s top immigration enforcer appears to be a byproduct of the president’s anxiety. But in stretching the facts repeatedly to keep her job, she did little to help her reputation.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump pushed to close El Paso border, told admin officials to resume family separations and agents not to admit migrants

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump has been pushing to reinstate broader family separation policies and sought to close the US-Mexico border at El Paso, Texas, as his conflict with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen reached a boiling point.

Two Thursdays ago, in a meeting at the Oval Office with top officials -- including Nielsen, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, top aides Jared Kushner, Mercedes Schlapp and Dan Scavino, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and more -- the President, according to one attendee, was "ranting and raving, saying border security was his issue."

Senior administration officials say that Trump then ordered Nielsen and Pompeo to shut down the port of El Paso the next day, Friday, March 22, at noon. The plan was that in subsequent days the Trump administration would shut down other ports.

Nielsen told Trump that would be a bad and even dangerous idea, and that the governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, has been very supportive of the President.

She proposed an alternative plan that would slow down entries at legal ports. She argued that if you close all the ports of entry all you would be doing is ending legal trade and travel, but migrants will just go between ports.

According to two people in the room, the President said: "I don't care."

Ultimately, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney seemed to have been able to talk the President out of closing the port of El Paso. Trump, however, was insistent that his administration begin taking another action -- denying asylum seekers entry. Nielsen tried to explain to the President that the asylum laws allow migrants from Central America to come to the US and gain entry. She talked to the White House counsel to see if there were any exceptions, but he told her that her reading of the law was correct.

Neither the White House nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to official requests for comment.

Told agents not to let migrants in

Last Friday, the President visited Calexico, California, where he said, "We're full, our system's full, our country's full -- can't come in! Our country is full, what can you do? We can't handle any more, our country is full. Can't come in, I'm sorry. It's very simple."
Behind the scenes, two sources told CNN, the President told border agents to not let migrants in. Tell them we don't have the capacity, he said. If judges give you trouble, say, "Sorry, judge, I can't do it. We don't have the room."

After the President left the room, agents sought further advice from their leaders, who told them they were not giving them that direction and if they did what the President said they would take on personal liability. You have to follow the law, they were told.

More widespread family separations policy

Senior administration officials also told CNN that in the last four months or so, the President has been pushing Nielsen to enforce a stricter and more widespread "zero tolerance" immigration policy -- not just the original policy started by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and undone by the President once it was criticized -- that called for the prosecution of individuals crossing the border illegally between ports of entry, resulting in the separation of parents from children.

According to multiple sources, the President wanted families separated even if they came in at a legal port of entry and were legal asylum seekers. The President wanted families separated even if they were apprehended within the US. He thinks the separations work to deter migrants from coming.

Sources told CNN that Nielsen tried to explain they could not bring the policy back because of court challenges, and White House staffers tried to explain it would be an unmitigated PR disaster.

"He just wants to separate families," said a senior administration official.

Last night, on the second floor of the East Wing of the White House residence -- in a room called the yellow oval -- Nielsen, Mulvaney and the President met. Nielsen tried to present a path forward that was legal and in compliance with US laws but the President said to her, "This isn't working." And Nielsen did not disagree.

"At the end of the day," a senior administration official said, "the President refuses to understand that the Department of Homeland Security is constrained by the laws."

Trump is now ordering people to break the law.

#Resist

[Lois]

Trump bragged that he would be the first president ever to turn a personal profit from the position.  And now he is under inestigation for the inagural, where it seems he used his inaguration to funnel millions from foreign powers into his pockets.

Trump, who never found corruption he didn't embrace.

[psiberzerker]

Maybe if we called the Migrants "Pilgrims?"  Then, the White Supremacists might be able to sympathise with the Native American's when a bunch of European refugees showed up look for a handout.  Isn't that what the Thanksgiving story is all about, being welcomed to Plymouth Rock, and Jamestown.

"Here, have a turkey, and my 12 year old daughter..."

Yeah, maybe not.

[Athos_131]

USB Drive Found on Jailed Mar-a-Lago Party-Crasher Contained Self-Executing Code

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Mnuchin reveals White House lawyers consulted Treasury on Trump tax returns, despite law meant to limit political involvement

(U)sing a federal law that says the treasury secretary “shall follow” the request of House or Senate chairmen in releasing tax return information. The process is designed to be walled off from White House interference, in part because of corruption that took place during the Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Joe Scarborough: Trump Yelled at Me Once For Criticizing ‘Poor Young Kid’ Stephen Miller

Joe Scarborough told a story on Tuesday about how President Donald Trump supposedly yelled at him once for criticizing Stephen Miller‘s flirtations with authoritarian-sounding rhetoric.

After Morning Joe aired a disturbing clip of Miller saying the president’s powers “will not be questioned,” Scarborough remarked on how Trump and Miller had a “mind-meld” with each other during the 2016 election. This led to Scarborough recalling a conversation he had with Trump where the two ended up screaming at each other because the MSNBC host objected to Miller’s “illiberal, undemocratic and frightening” remarks.

“It’s the only time I’ve heard Donald Trump call and yell in defense of somebody else,” Scarborough said. “He actually said ‘you’re hurting this poor young kid, you’re killing him every day.’ It was the first time I’d ever heard him talk about any staff member that way.”

Scarborough said his retort at the time was that Trump needs to tell the “poor, young kid” to read the Constitution.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Warner Bros: Yes, We're Aware Trump Ripped Off the Dark Knight Rises OST, No, He's Not Allowed to Do That

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump’s ‘truly bizarre’ visit to Mt. Vernon

President Donald Trump had some advice for George Washington.

During a guided tour of Mount Vernon last April with French president Emmanuel Macron, Trump learned that Washington was one of the major real-estate speculators of his era. So, he couldn’t understand why America’s first president didn’t name his historic Virginia compound or any of the other property he acquired after himself.

“If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it,” Trump said, according to three sources briefed on the exchange. “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.”

The VIPs’ tour guide for the evening, Mount Vernon president and CEO Doug Bradburn, told the president that Washington did, after all, succeed in getting the nation’s capital named after him. Good point, Trump said with a laugh.

America’s 45th president is open about the fact that he doesn’t read much history. Trump said in July 2016 that he had never read a presidential biography — and had no plans to do so. Though he is an avid fan of George Patton, the flashy, tough-talking World War II general, he has shown less interest in learning about his presidential predecessors or about the office he now occupies. Former White House aides say Trump initially did not know the history of the Resolute Desk, which has been used by presidents since Rutherford B. Hayes, though he now enjoys showing it off to visitors to the Oval Office.

Trump’s lack of interest in presidential history, said the historian Jon Meacham, means that he has “basically thrown out the one data set available to him. We don’t have anything else to study. It’s all you got.” It also stands in contrast to the fascination of other presidents with their predecessors. Even former President George W. Bush — not known as a tweedy intellectual — consumed several presidential biographies while in office.

A spokeswoman for Mount Vernon pointed to a statement posted on the estate’s website at the time of the president’s visit. “We are always happy to extend the famous Washington hospitality to the President of the United States and visiting dignitaries from around the world,” said Mount Vernon Regent Sarah Miller Coulson. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The president’s disinterest in Washington made it tough for tour guide Bradburn to sustain Trump’s interest during a deluxe 45-minute tour of the property which he later described to associates as "truly bizarre." The Macrons, Bradburn has told several people, were far more knowledgeable about the history of the property than the president.

A former history professor with a PhD, Bradburn “was desperately trying to get [Trump] interested in" Washington's house, said a source familiar with the visit, so he spoke in terms Trump understands best — telling the president that Washington was an 18th century real-estate titan who had acquired property throughout Virginia and what would come to be known as Washington, D.C.

Trump asked whether Washington was "really rich," according to a second person familiar with the visit. In fact, Washington was either the wealthiest or among the wealthiest Americans of his time, thanks largely to his mini real estate empire.

“That is what Trump was really the most excited about,” this person said.

If Trump was impressed with Washington’s real estate instincts, he was less taken by Mount Vernon itself, which the first president personally expanded from a modest one-and-a-half story home into an 11,000 square foot mansion. The rooms, Trump said, were too small, the staircases too narrow, and he even spotted some unevenness in the floorboards, according to four sources briefed on his comments. He could have built the place better, he said, and for less money.

“Mount Vernon has a policy of not providing details about high profile visits outside of the official statements provided by the organization,” a spokesperson for Mount Vernon told POLITICO.

Many Americans don't fare much better than the president when it comes to a knowledge of the basic facts of American history — and one person close to the White House said the president’s supporters aren’t bothered by the fact that he isn’t a history buff.

“His supporters don't care, and if anything they enjoy the fact that the liberal snobs are upset” that he doesn’t know much history, this person said.

A recent survey conducted by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation found that just four in 10 Americans today can pass the country's citizenship exam, which is comprised of several questions about the Constitution and American history, such as "Who did the United States fight during World War II?" and "What is one right granted under the First Amendment to the Constitution?"

But most Americans do not become president of the United States. After their tour of Washington's mansion, the Trumps and the Macrons dined in the house's New Room, an experience rarely afforded even to the most exclusive visitors to the property, according to sources familiar with the site’s operations. The previous year, the Macrons hosted the Trumps for dinner in the Eiffel Tower, and the evening at Mount Vernon was meant to be a corresponding gesture.

Mount Vernon, which includes extensive gardens, a farm, a distillery and gristmill, and the tombs of Washington and his wife, Martha, attracts an average of a million tourists a year, including dozens of VIPs, according to its website. Bush visited the site with his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, in 2007, and foreign dignitaries from Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall have all dropped in while visiting the United States.

Bush also delivered remarks at Mount Vernon in February 2007, at a celebration commemorating the 275th anniversary of Washington’s birth. Bush praised the founding father, whom he said “many would have gladly made King of America,” for ceding power voluntarily.

“Honoring George Washington's life requires us to remember the many challenges that he overcame, and the fact that American history would have turned out very differently without his steady leadership,” Bush said.

While quickly bored by Washington’s home, Trump has been eager to show off his own residence to guests, and has learned some White House history in the process. He loves taking guests on tours of the White House residence, according to current and former aides. He particularly enjoys pulling them into the Lincoln Bedroom and has learned about the copy of the Gettysburg address on display there so that he can talk about it when he plays tour guide.

And despite his criticisms, Trump found something to like at Mount Vernon, too. Among the artifacts preserved there is the bed where Washington passed away from a throat infection in 1799. Trump, who is infamously picky about where he sleeps and resists spending nights away from home, felt out the bedpost and told the Macrons and Bradburn that he approved, according to three people briefed on the event.

"A good bed to die in,” Trump said.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

National Enquirer expected to be sold imminently as parent company faces pressure

American Media Inc. is actively seeking to sell off the National Enquirer, according to three people familiar with the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The decision to sell came after the hedge fund manager whose firm controls American Media became “disgusted” with the Enquirer’s reporting tactics, according to one of these people.

American Media has been under intense pressure because of the Enquirer’s efforts to tilt the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump, who is a longtime friend of American Media’s president and CEO, David Pecker. Pecker and his supermarket tabloid have also been embroiled in recent months in an unusually public feud with Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post.

In August, just as AMI and two of its top officers were finalizing a non-prosecution agreement with federal investigators, the company’s board of directors started looking for ways to unload the tabloid business “because they didn’t want to deal with hassles like this anymore,” another person said.

The company was also facing financial difficulty as it sought to refinance more than $400 million in debt earlier this year and as the Enquirer’s circulation continued to decline, along with broader newsstand trends. The paper sold an average of 516,000 copies per issue in 2014, but that number fell to 218,000 in December, according to data compiled by the Alliance for Audited Media.

American Media was “very, very leveraged” and repeatedly found itself “on the brink,” Pecker told the Toronto Star in 2016. Pecker managed the company’s financial straits by broadening American Media’s portfolio in recent years, buying magazines such as Us Weekly and In Touch. He has also relied on the support of Anthony Melchiorre, who controls the $4 billion hedge fund Chatham Asset Management, which holds an 80 percent stake in the Enquirer’s parent company.

The decision to sell the tabloid resulted in part from pressure applied by Melchiorre, according to two of the people familiar with the discussions. He was motivated partly by the financial difficulties of the tabloid business, but also by his distaste for the Enquirer’s tactics. A representative from Chatham declined to comment, and Melchiorre did not respond to a call seeking comment.

The tabloid has long been known for its questionable methods; in 1977, it published a photo of Elvis Presley’s corpse on its cover and sold close to 7 million copies. In 2007, in possibly its highest journalistic achievement, it broke the news of then-presidential candidate John Edwards’s extramarital affair with Rielle Hunter, partly by having its reporters hide in the bushes to gather evidence.

Longtime owner Generoso Pope Jr.’s family sold the paper to Pecker in 1999. The tabloid represents a corner of the media landscape virtually ignored by coastal elites, and it has long provided fervently positive coverage of Donald Trump, along with other celebrities known inside the Enquirer newsroom as “friends of Pecker.”

And Trump returned the praise. He once tweeted that Pecker should run Time magazine; he also said that the Enquirer deserved to win the Pulitzer Prize.

But the Enquirer’s political coverage of Trump during the 2016 election put the tabloid on much higher-profile footing and also landed it in legal jeopardy.

The imminent sale removes the Enquirer from Pecker’s control and puts some separation between the tabloid and recent scandals stemming, in part, from Pecker’s close relationship with Trump.

Last year, American Media acknowledged paying $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who alleged an affair with Trump, to prevent her allegation “from influencing the election.” The admission came as federal prosecutors announced that they would not prosecute the company for its role in the scheme to favor Trump in the presidential race.

In the agreement, AMI said it would cooperate with prosecutors. The agreement, which was struck in September, covered Pecker and the company’s chief content officer, Dylan Howard, according to people familiar with it.

Just as the non-prosecution agreements were being finalized in August, AMI’s board agreed to explore a sale.

Then, in January, Pecker and the Enquirer devoted the cover and 12 pages of its Jan. 28 edition to an exposé of Bezos’s affair with Lauren Sanchez, former host of Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance.”

Bezos later wrote a blog post accusing AMI of trying to blackmail him by threatening to publish explicit photos of the billionaire if he didn’t publicly state that he had no basis for suggesting that the Enquirer’s exposé was politically motivated. The Bezos story helped seal the Enquirer’s fate, said one person briefed on his thinking.

“The Trump thing was an issue, and [Melchiorre] was really disgusted by the Bezos reporting,” the person said.

The Bezos reporting also threatened to renew legal scrutiny on the company. Federal prosecutors reviewed accusations made by Bezos to determine if American Media may have violated the terms of a non-prosecution agreement, according to people familiar with the matter.

In a draft release of AMI’s announcement of the sale reviewed by The Washington Post, Pecker wrote: “Our board has been keenly focused on leveraging the popularity of our celebrity glossy, teen and active lifestyle brands while developing new and robust platforms . . . that now deliver significant revenue streams. Because of this focus, we feel the future opportunities with the tabloids can be best exploited by a different ownership.”

American Media is also exploring the sale of two other tabloids, the Globe and National Examiner. But it is the Enquirer that has been the focus of the board and is the main title that has landed both American Media and Pecker in legal trouble.

Bezos’s security consultant, Gavin de Becker, alleged in an opinion piece on the Daily Beast last month that AMI was “in league with a foreign nation that’s been actively trying to harm American citizens and companies, including the owner of the Washington Post.” De Becker said his “investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone, and gained private information.”

The security consultant said that the Saudi government “has been intent on harming Jeff Bezos since last October, when The Post began its relentless coverage of” the killing of its editorial contributor Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. De Becker accused the Enquirer of “trying to strongarm an American citizen whom that country’s leadership wanted harmed, compromised, and silenced.”

AMI has denied that any “third party” was involved in its reporting on Bezos. The company said its sole source for information about the extramarital affair was Michael Sanchez, Lauren’s brother.

A Saudi official said the government did not tap into Bezos’s phone and played no role in the Enquirer’s reporting on the Amazon founder.

The tangled web of allegations surrounding the Bezos story reaches into the Trump administration as well. De Becker alleged that the Enquirer “became an enforcement arm of the Trump presidential campaign and presidency” by, for example, paying McDougal and then not publishing her story.

One of the people familiar with the negotiations to sell the Enquirer said that AMI’s largest investors had become intensely uncomfortable with their investment in a tabloid that was involved in efforts to support the president’s administration and reelection bid.

“The president is buddies with Pecker and tries to help him, and Pecker does what he can to help the president,” the person said. “It can be embarrassing.”

#Resist