McDougall, who is listed as “female first” in the indictment, did not respond to a request for comment this week. When she spoke to me in 2018 about a A New Yorker story and again in 2020 on the podcast she expressed regret. “Now that I know what’s going on behind the scenes,” McDougall told me, “I feel like I’m part of a big cover-up in history.”
Prosecutors have charged Trump with thirty-four felony counts of falsifying business records, apparently related to payments reimbursed to Cohen after he paid Clifford. Prosecutors will seek to establish that crimes that would normally be classified as felonies were committed in order to commission another crime that allows them to be charged as felonies. The person familiar with the Bragg investigation noted that prosecutors are not required by law to specify this second crime. “Flexibility and options are key,” this person told me. Prosecutors intend to “reserve that decision” for when they “feel it is most prudent.” At a news conference this week, Bragg mentioned multiple potential second offenses, including state and federal election law violations.
At his own press conference this week, Trump said the allegations were a politically motivated attempt by Bragg, a Democrat, to prevent him from winning re-election. “Everyone who has looked at this case, including RINOand even hardcore Democrats say there was no crime and it should never have been brought up,” he said. Cohen and Packer, who are expected to testify for the prosecution, did not respond to requests for comment.
Sajudin, now in his fifties, sports a goatee and slicked back hair. He grew up in Brooklyn in a large Italian American family. Sajudin told me he spent his youth in construction and asbestos abatement, witnessing mob associates pay off building inspectors. In 2008, he started working as a doorman at Trump Tower. “Whenever Trump came into the building, he’d pretty much give everybody a hundred dollar bill,” he recalled in the 2019 interview. On the other hand, he said, “It’s like a corporate crowd, so to speak.” He added: “They will try to be nice to you at first to try and get what they want. And then if that doesn’t work, they try to toughen you up.”
At Trump Tower, Sajudin ran into a woman who worked as a doorman at the building and who had previously been Trump’s housekeeper. Sajudin recalls making lavish purchases that seemed out of line with her income, and says she enjoyed impunity from the building’s management. “Every time she had an argument with somebody, the first words out of her mouth were, ‘I’m going to call Mr. Trump.’ I’m going to call Mr. Trump,” Sajudin told me. He said he raised the matter with higher-ups, including Matthew Calamari, a longtime Trump bodyguard who rose through the ranks of the Trump Organization to become its chief operating officer. Calamari, he said, “got very loud and rude and told me he was saying, ‘You know, you’ve got to let him go.’ He said, ‘If you had Trump’s kid, you could do whatever you wanted.'” The next time Trump arrived at the building, Sajudin said, he received an unusually large tip from Calamari. “Several hundred dollars,” Sajudin recalled. “I assumed he was being so nice to me because he wanted me to keep quiet.”
When Sajudin, agitated by his arguments with the porter, continued to press the subject, he said Calamari invited him to a second meeting, in a dimly lit office with the blinds down. Sajudin recalls Kalamari telling him, “We think of you as family. We work together. But you need to get rid of this situation. Kalamari then squeezed his hand and asked, “Is that clear?” “He wouldn’t let go of my hand,” Sajudin added. “It was like a movie. You know, it was like watching Goodfellas. ” (Calamari declined repeated requests for comment.)
After his meeting with Calamari, Sajudin felt that his position in the Trump Organization was deteriorating. “I definitely feel like I’m blacklisted,” Sayudin told me. “They probably don’t want a person with that information working in a building in Manhattan.” Sajudin eventually left the organization, he said, by mutual consent. While looking for another job, it occurred to him that he could cash in on the rumors. He connected Globeand then and Enquirer. Reporter from Enquirer responded quickly, offering him a six-figure number, which was later significantly reduced when Sayuddin said he did not want his name attached.
In the fall of 2015, Sajudin found himself in a hotel room in rural Pennsylvania, taking a polygraph test for Enquirer, which he passed. He signed an initial agreement with the tabloid to give him exclusive rights to the story. Soon after, during a meeting with Ann Enquirer reporter at a nearby fast-food restaurant, he also signed a revised contract that included a stricter non-disclosure clause. “If I talk about the story, I could be fined a million dollars,” he said.
AMI officials were divided on the veracity of the underlying rumor. Some have questioned Sajudin’s credibility. In 2014, a website registered through a service that obscures the author’s identity claimed that Sajudin had made similar allegations against a Trump Tower resident. Sajudin told me he continues to believe the rumors about Trump’s paternity and defends his credibility. “When I tell you it’s the truth, it’s the truth,” he said. “No one would risk all that to make up stories.”
Eight months after the payment with Sajudin, AMI finalized its deal with McDougal. A few months after that, Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels. Soon after, Trump was elected president.
In April 2018, FBI agents raided Cohen’s hotel and office, in part to gather information about the AMI scheme, and The New Yorker posted my initial account of Sajudin’s payment. “Oh shit,” Keith Davidson, the attorney who represented McDougal and Clifford, told me in 2019, describing his reaction to the attack. “Oh shit, shit, shit.” Cohen was eventually convicted and sentenced to three years in prison for campaign finance violations, tax evasion and lying to Congress. AMI admitted to the scheme and entered into a non-prosecution agreement with federal authorities. Trump was not indicted at the time. (Cohen and Davidson did not respond to requests for comment this week.)
During our interviews, McDougall told me that he believes that “catch and kill should be illegal in many situations and positions.” She added, referring to elected officials, “If you’re working for your country, you should be on top of these things.” Sajudin told me he was surprised by the escalating importance of his story. As the former president’s trial progresses, interest in AMI’s Trump-related transactions is likely to intensify. “I thought it was just a tabloid,” Sajudin told me. “Now I see it is much more than that.” ♦