Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Sun-Times file
While testifying in former President Donald Trump’s New York hush money trial Thursday, the former publisher of the National Enquirer reportedly said he buried a story about an alleged affair by Rahm Emanuel before the former two-term Chicago mayor’s first City Hall campaign.
David Pecker said under oath that he paid $20,000 for the story and then suppressed it, as he did for other celebrities managed by Emanuel’s brother, Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel, Politico reported.
Ari Emanuel approached Pecker about killing the story soon after Rahm Emanuel stepped down as chief of staff to former President Barack Obama, Pecker testified on cross-examination by a Trump attorney.
That style of “catch-and-kill” tabloid practice is at the heart of Trump’s trial in New York, where he’s charged with falsifying business records to hide a payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump has pleaded not guilty.
Neither Rahm nor Ari Emanuel could be reached for comment by the Sun-Times.
Rahm Emanuel now serves as President Joe Biden’s ambassador to Japan.
Pecker and the publishing company he formerly headed, American Media Inc., contributed more than $33,000 to Emanuel’s campaign fund between 2010 and 2018, the Sun-Times previously reported. Pecker and his wife also gave $12,000 to Emanuel’s congressional races, Illinois State Board of Elections records show.
The former mayor also previously worked on a business agreement with Pecker when Emanuel was working for the investment firm Wasserstein Perella & Co., the Sun-Times found. The deal “did not ultimately come to fruition,” an Emanuel spokesman said at the time.
A source told the Sun-Times Emanuel was an adviser to Pecker while he headed a different magazine publisher in the 1990s.
In 2010, Trump gave Rahm Emanuel’s campaign $50,000 at the request of Ari Emanuel, who previously served as Trump’s agent.