‘Could have thrown a wrench in the gears’: Lawyer admits lost chance to expose Trump

David Pecker, a longtime friend of Donald Trump and former publisher of The National Enquirer, helped bury damaging stories about the future president ahead of the 2016 election – and now a New York attorney who aided the effort is speaking out in regret.

“If I had refused to draft the contracts, I could have at least delayed the decisions to quash the stories,” wrote Cameron Stracher, an attorney who previously provided legal services for Pecker, in an op-ed published in The New York Times Friday.

“I could have thrown a wrench in the gears of The National Enquirer’s pro-Trump propaganda machine. Mr. Pecker would probably have fired me, but my small act of resistance might have made him think twice about the wisdom of his actions.”

Trump’s relationship with Pecker proved invaluable in the months leading up to the 2016 election, with Pecker frequently employing a tactic commonly referred to as "catch and kill,' where the rights to a story are purchased with the intention of burying it and prohibiting it from appearing in other news outlets.

One such story was from Karen McDougal, who approached The National Enquirer in 2016 with details of her alleged year-long affair with a married Trump from 2006 to 2007. She was given $150,000 for rights to her story in an agreement authorized by Pecker, and written by Stracher, and it was subsequently buried, though details of the arrangement would later leak to The Wall Street Journal.

Stracher knew at the time, he wrote, the impact the "catch and kill" contracts he personally wrote would have, writing that he “knew they would have the effect of silencing people with stories to tell.”

“I ignored the practical effect of my work, which is something lawyers are trained to do; we do it routinely when we draft settlement agreements that silence commentary, negotiate merger deals that lead to layoffs and litigate for positions that devastate our clients’ opponents,” he wrote.

“At the time I believed I had a higher duty to represent my client zealously and to protect the tabloid’s First Amendment rights – which included the right not to publish a story. Now I wonder whether I was kidding myself.”

While Stracher went on to question whether the stories being buried by The National Enquirer would have changed anything, noting that “the American electorate seems impervious to stories about Mr. Trump’s moral failing,” he ultimately was fired by Pecker in 2018 for refusing to participate in another "catch and kill" arrangement.

“In 2018, issues similar to those in the (McDougal case) arose over a different high-profile story that was brought to The National Enquirer,” he wrote.

“This time I stood my ground, and I was forced to leave. As I walked to my office to pack up my belongings, the taste in my mouth was bittersweet. I loved my job, but I was proud of my decision. My heart and my head were in alignment, and I had no doubt about the wisdom of my advice.”