According to new court filings, the parent company of the National Enquirer claims its agreement to purchase and bury former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story about her alleged affair with the president is protected by the First Amendment.
On Monday, American Media Inc. (AMI) asked a Los Angeles court to dismiss McDougal’s lawsuit to invalidate a “catch and kill” contract that gave the company exclusive rights to her story in exchange for $150,000. McDougal, who claims she had a 10-month affair with Donald Trump beginning in 2006, says she was pressured into signing the hush agreement just months before Trump was elected. She is now claiming that AMI violated public policy by working secretly with Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, to buy her silence.
AMI, meanwhile, says there is nothing illegal about their contract.
“If AMI had exercised its editorial discretion to publish McDougal’s story, she would have no argument that such publication was an illegal in-kind campaign contribution,” AMI’s counsel, Jean-Paul Jassy, wrote in Monday’s court filing, according to The Daily Beast. “But editors also have a First Amendment right not to publish, and cannot be punished for exercising that right.”
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
