Former doorman says he got hush money over Trump love-child story
A former Trump World Tower doorman says Donald Trump fathered a child with a former maid and that the parent company of the National Enquirer paid him $30,000 to keep silent about it.
Dino Sajudin, the former doorman, met with a reporter from the publisher of the National Enquirer in 2015, according to the New Yorker, and agreed to detail his claim that the then presidential candidate may have fathered a child with a former housekeeper in the late 1980s.
Sajudin reportedly signed a contract with American Media, Inc., that carried a $1 million penalty for disclosing details of the explosive story without the publisher’s permission. AMI has been known to purchase the rights to stories in order to keep them from appearing, to avoid embarrassing public figures. In 2016, the publisher paid former Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story of an extramarital affair with Trump, then never published it.
In a statement released Wednesday, Sajudin responded directly to the story published by the New Yorker:
Today I awoke to learn that a confidential agreement I had with AMI (the National Enquirer) with regard to a story about President Trump was leaked to the press. I can confirm that while I was working at Trump World Tower I was instructed not to criticize President Trump’s former housekeeper due to a prior relationship she had with President Trump which produced a child.
The reported payment to Sajudin is the latest twist in a pattern of hush money being paid to Trump accusers, and federal investigators have been interested to shine light on the communications between AMI and Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen.
An FBI raid on Cohen’s office and hotel room this week is said to be focused on a $130,000 hush money payment made by Cohen to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
While National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard said last summer that Sajudin’s story “lacked any credibility,” other staffers at the tabloid told the Associated Press that the paper didn’t seek to substantiate the claim.
Sajudin also passed a polygraph test administered by the National Enquirer, but that doesn’t seem to impress his ex-wife, who granted an interview to the New York Daily News.
“He’s infamous for making up stories,” Nikki Benfatto told the Daily News. “He’s seen the chupacabra. He’s seen bigfoot. One of our friends who passed away, he saw him too, walking down the street.”
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