Remember the time Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin claimed Donald Trump had an affair with his former housekeeper that resulted in a secret love child? No?
Don’t worry — your memory is not broken. This salacious Trump gossip never gained much traction, partly because it’s probably untrue and partly because American Media, Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer, allegedly helped Trump suppress it during his 2016 campaign.
Eight years later, this lesser-known Trump rumor is getting attention again thanks to the Trump hush-money trial. It’s one example of a “catch and kill” deal that Manhattan prosecutors say AMI had with Trump to buy and suppress stories that could damage his presidential campaign. The alleged scheme was hatched during an August 2015 meeting in Trump Tower involving the candidate; his fixer turned nemesis, Michael Cohen; and David Pecker, the former publisher of the Enquirer.
Lead prosecutor Matthew Colangelo cited the doorman story in his opening arguments on Monday. “It was the first time that David Pecker had ever paid anyone for information about Donald Trump,” he told the jury. Kate Christobek of the New York Times observed, “Trump is visibly displeased at the mention of the alleged out-of-wedlock child and strongly shakes his head.” Then, after Trump’s defense attorney, Todd Blanche, spoke, Pecker was called as the first witness.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office cited it last April when it indicted Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records for allegedly paying off Stormy Daniels and disguising the hush money. In an accompanying statement of facts, prosecutors described the doorman’s story (along with Playboy model Karen McDougal’s claim that she had an affair with Trump) to establish a pattern of behavior by the Enquirer. The statement reads:
B. Suppressing the Doorman’s Story
10. A few months later, in or about October or November 2015, the AMI CEO learned that a former Trump Tower doorman (the “Doorman”) was trying to sell information regarding a child that the Defendant had allegedly fathered out of wedlock. At the AMI CEO’s 4 direction, AMI negotiated and signed an agreement to pay the Doorman $30,000 to acquire exclusive rights to the story. AMI falsely characterized this payment in AMI’s books and records, including in its general ledger. AMI purchased the information from the Doorman without fully investigating his claims, but the AMI CEO directed that the deal take place because of his agreement with the Defendant and Lawyer A.
11. When AMI later concluded that the story was not true, the AMI CEO wanted to release the Doorman from the agreement. However, Lawyer A [Michael Cohen] instructed the AMI CEO not to release the Doorman until after the presidential election, and the AMI CEO complied with that instruction because of his agreement with the Defendant and Lawyer A.
So … did Trump actually have a child with his former housekeeper? Do Ivanka, Don Jr., Eric, Tiffany, and Barron have another sibling — or maybe siblings? Did AMI do some kind of Men in Black memory wipe on us as a society?
The answer is “no” on all counts — or at least we have no evidence to support Sajudin’s claim that Trump fathered a child with another ex-employee back in the ’80s.
The Associated Press and The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow investigated the story separately, and both published reports on their findings in April 2018. Sajudin never claimed he had firsthand knowledge of the affair; it was just a rumor he’d been told. The AP talked with the woman Trump allegedly had a relationship with — who has never been publicly named — and she said the story was untrue:
The woman at the center of the rumor about Trump denied emphatically to the AP last August that she’d ever had an affair with Trump, saying she had no idea the Enquirer had paid Sajudin and pursued his tip. The AP has not been able to determine if the rumor is true and is not naming the woman. “This is all fake,” she said. “I think they lost their money.”
The second paragraph of Farrow’s story said the alleged daughter and the father of the family also denied the tale:
The New Yorker has uncovered no evidence that Trump fathered the child. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization denied the allegations, including the assertion that Calamari told Sajudin the story. When I reached out to the alleged daughter, she declined through a representative of her employer to answer questions. Her mother did not respond to repeated requests for comment. I spoke with the father of the family, who said that Sajudin’s claim was “completely false and ridiculous” and added that the Enquirer had put the family in a difficult situation. “I don’t understand what they had to pay this guy for,” he said. The New Yorker is not disclosing the family members’ names, out of respect for their privacy.
Trump and AMI might have wanted to keep the story out of the media, but that doesn’t mean there was anything to it. Farrow reported that Sajudin had refused to talk when he realized he wouldn’t be paid:
When I reached out to Sajudin, he responded, in an e-mail, “My time is valuable. What’s your offer??” After being told that The New Yorker does not pay sources, Sajudin declined further requests for an interview.
After the AP and New Yorker stories were published, Sajudin released this statement to CNN:
Today I awoke to learn that a confidential agreement that I had with AMI (The National Enquirer) with regard to a story about President Trump was leaked to the press. I can confirm that while working at Trump World Tower I was instructed not to criticize President Trump’s former housekeeper due to a prior relationship she had with President Trump, which produced a child.
A few months later, Sajudin was released from his contract with AMI, leaving him free to discuss his Trump dirt and the subsequent cover-up. Sajudin declined to speak to any media outlets. In December 2019, he self-published a book called Trump Doorman. The blurb reads:
I was the Trump doorman. Back then I wasn’t able to fully give my side of the story and was poorly portrayed in the news. I felt that writing a book would give the public a chance to hear my side of what happened and hear it directly from me.
In the book, Sajudin claims that he complained about Trump Tower’s concierge, who was rude to residents, took long lunches, and bought pricey handbags and shoes from Bergdorf Goodman. He says he was eventually told that she received special treatment because she had a child with Trump as a result of an affair that started when she was working as his housekeeper. Per the New York Post:
At one point, he claims, a man he described only as “Mr. C” — who ran the Trump Organization’s day-to-day operations — told him that the woman was the mother of a daughter Trump had fathered out of wedlock.
“Little Tiffany and Ivanka are not the only girls out there carrying the big guy’s DNA,” Sajudin alleges in the book. “As time went on I continued to complain to my union boss about the head concierge.
“One day, Mr. C looked at me dead in the face and said, ‘Dino when you have Trump’s kid, you can do whatever the hell you want to,’” writes Sajudin.
Cohen has said he is not “Mr. C.,” and journalists have not corroborated these claims. Sajudin’s book received little attention when it was published, but it was included on a list of discovery items released by the Manhattan DA’s office. Perhaps the trial will lead to new evidence that gives credence to rumors about the long-lost sixth Trump child, but it seems highly unlikely.
This story was updated after the doorman’s story was cited at the Trump hush-money trial.
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