National Enquirer 'kept safe full of damaging Trump stories', sources say after chief granted immunity by federal prosecutors

Documents about payments made to women alleging affairs with the presidential candidate were removed in the weeks before his inauguration, it is claimed

The National Enquirer kept damaging stories about Donald Trump in a safe in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, according to reports.

Documents relating to "hush-money payments" made to a porn actress and a Playboy model who alleged affairs with the businessman were stored alongside details of embarrassing secrets about other celebrities, it is alleged.

The claims emerged after it was reported that federal prosecutors have granted immunity to National Enquirer chief executive David Pecker in exchange for providing information on the deals.

Mr Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty this week to campaign finance violations alleging that he, Mr Trump and the supermarket tabloid were involved in buying the silence of Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.

The Associated Press said that several people familiar with the Enquirer's parent company American Media Inc (AMI) revealed on condition of anonymity that the safe was used to keep details of "catch-and-kill" deals, in which exclusive rights to stories about celebrities were bought to keep them out of the news.

It was "a great source of power" for Mr Pecker, according to their sources.

But after The Wall Street Journal initially published the first details of Playboy model Karen McDougal's catch-and-kill deal, Mr Pecker and the company's chief content officer, Dylan Howard, removed them from the safe in the weeks before Trump's inauguration, it is claimed.

It was unclear whether the documents were destroyed or simply moved to a location known to fewer people.

The immunity deal for Mr Pecker was first reported by Vanity Fair and The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, on Thursday. Vanity Fair reported that Mr Howard was also granted immunity.

Court papers in the Mr Cohen case say Mr Pecker "offered to help deal with negative stories about (Trump's) relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided."

The Journal reported Pecker shared with prosecutors details about payments that Cohen says Trump directed in the weeks and months before the election. Ms Daniels was paid $130,000 (£100,000) and Ms McDougal was paid $150,000 (£117,000).

While Mr Trump denies the affairs, his account of his knowledge of the payments has shifted. In April, Mr Trump denied he knew anything about the Ms Daniels payment.

In July, Cohen released an audio tape in which he and Mr Trump appeared to discuss plans to buy McDougal's story from the Enquirer. Such a purchase was necessary, they appeared to suggest, to prevent Trump from having to permanently rely on a tight relationship with the tabloid.

"You never know where that company – you never know what he's gonna be – " Cohen says.

"David gets hit by a truck," Trump says.

"Correct," Cohen replies. "So, I'm all over that."

While Mr Pecker is cooperating with federal prosecutors now, AMI has previously declined to participate in Congressional inquiries about the payments.

Last March, AMI General Counsel Cameron Stracher declined to provide any documents, writing that the company was "exempt" from US campaign finance laws because it is a news publisher and had complied with all tax laws. He also rebuffed any suggestion that AMI had leverage over the president because of its catch-and-kill practices.

"AMI states unequivocally that any suggestion that it would seek to 'extort' the President of the United States through the exercise of its editorial discretion is outrageous, offensive, and wholly without merit," Mr Stracher wrote in a letter obtained by the AP.

Former Enquirer employees who spoke to the Associated Press said that the silencing of negative stories about Trump dated back more than a decade to when he starred on NBC's reality show The Apprentice.

In 2010 the National Enquirer began promoting a potential Trump presidential candidacy, referring readers to a pro-Trump website Cohen helped create.

The publication began questioning President Barack Obama's birthplace and American citizenship in print, an effort that Mr Trump promoted for several years, former staffers said.

In 2016 the paper endorsed Mr Trump for president, the first time it had ever officially backed a candidate. Its coverage of Mr Trump was so favourable that The New Yorker magazine said the Enquirer embraced him "with sycophantic fervour."

The tabloid also published negative stories about his opponents, including a front page story about Hillary Clinton in 2015 titled "Hillary: 6 Months to Live".