Trump Lovechild Rumor

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Part of a series on Donald Trump. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Trump Lovechild Rumor refers to a story that Donald Trump had allegedly had a child out of wedlock with an employee in the 1980s. The source for the story is former Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin, who, according to former anonymous American Media Inc. employees, confirmed the name of the mistress and child and had been told the story by high-level Trump associates, including Trump's head of security. Sajudin had been contacted by American Media Inc. (A.M.I.), which owns the National Enquirer, and agreed to be paid $30,000 to be the source for the story in the fall of 2015, during Trump's presidential campaign. However, as in the Karen McDougal Trump Affair Allegations, the National Enquirer never ran the story and threatened a huge monetary penalty on Sajudin if he took the story elsewhere.

Background

On April 12th, Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker^[1] published a story about the rumor and A.M.I.'s work to silence Sajudin. He wrote that The New Yorker was unable to confirm the rumor as they could not receive contact from the alleged mistress and child. Sajudin declined to be interviewed without monetary compensation. Farrow interviewed six former A.M.I. employees on the condition of anonymity who expressed skepticism about the validity of the rumor. However, all six agreed that David Pecker, the C.E.O. of A.M.I. and a self-professed friend of Trump, had the story killed shortly after they had paid Sajudin in order to protect Trump during his campaign. This mirrors the same tactics they used to silence the story of former Playboy model Karen McDougal's Trump-affair allegations. Farrow also reported that A.M.I. lobbied against other publications posting the story later, saying that The Associated Press was investigating the story of A.M.I.'s suppression in the summer of 2017 when a lobbying team worked to kill it. AP News^[5] also published the story.

Developments

After The New Yorker story broke, several other publications ran pieces recapping the news, including Jezebel,^[2] Vox,^[3] and The New York Post.^[4] After the story broke, Sajudin released a statement saying he had been instructed to not say anything damaging about the "housekeeper" with which Trump had allegedly had the affair and the child the affair produced. Politico^[6] ran a story about the behind-the-scenes development of the decision to post the story.