'I Helped Cover-Up Donald Trump's Sexcapades': Remorseful Lawyer Who Silenced Women With Non-Disclosure Agreements Admits He Lost Chance to Expose Trump
A former lawyer has spoken out about his hand in saving Donald Trump.
Aug. 10 2025, Published 5:30 p.m. ET
A former attorney for the company that admitted paying a woman who had an affair with Donald Trump prior to the 2016 presidential campaign has told of his anguish at silencing her, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Cameron Stracher, who served as general counsel for American Media in 2015, the publisher of The National Enquirer, unmasked himself as being involved in drafting agreements to prevent the publication of damaging stories about then-candidate Trump.
David Pecker helped bury damaging stories about Donald Trump.
Stracher detailed how in 2015 a former Trump Organization doorman, Dino Sajudin, approached tabloid rag with a claim that Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock with a woman who had worked for him.
The story was ultimately untrue.
Writing in The New York Times, the media lawyer took the unusual step of speaking out against a client: "David Pecker, the publisher of The National Enquirer at the time, authorized payment of $30,000 for Mr. Sajudin's story — with the intention of not running it."
Stracher knew the impact the 'catch and kill' contracts he personally wrote would have.
The following year, former Playboy model Karen McDougal came forward to the tabloid with her tale about an alleged affair with Trump.
Stracher said Pecker authorized a $150,000 payment to McDougal for the rights to her story, which also was not published.
"I wrote both of those contracts," Stracher said, adding that he has since "agonized over the role I played".
He mused: "What would have happened if The National Enquirer had let Mr. Sajudin and Ms. McDougal take their stories to other news outlets? What would have happened if I had refused to write the contracts?
"At the time I believed I had a higher duty to represent my client zealously and to protect the tabloid's First Amendment rights — which included the right not to publish a story. Now I wonder whether I was kidding myself."
Had he refused to draft the agreements, Stracher believes he could have at least slowed the effort to bury the allegations, and he speculated that he might have "thrown a wrench in the gears of The National Enquirer's pro-Trump propaganda machine."
Trump’s relationship with Pecker proved invaluable in the months leading up to the 2016 election.
While Pecker likely would have fired him, Stracher said, the media man suggested that a refusal could have prompted reconsideration.
He said a "small act of resistance would have made him think twice" about the decisions.
Stracher added: "A lawyer's job is not to rubber-stamp clients' decisions; it is to provide our wisest counsel, even when that wisdom advises against the results they want."
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Donald Trump ended up getting re-elected in 2024.
Stracher was fired in 2018 after he refused to draft additional "catch and kill" contracts for the tabloid.
He pointed to other lawyers who have resigned rather than participate in actions they believed were unethical.
The lawyer said: "There are lawyers in the current Trump administration who have refused to take actions they believed were wrong.
"In February, Danielle Sassoon, the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, quit rather than obey orders to drop the federal corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams. Many other lawyers in the Justice Department have quit or announced plans to quit, including at least 69 of the approximately 110 lawyers in the federal programs branch, which represents the executive branch in civil litigation.
"Actions like theirs should be taught as a model for ethical conduct at every law school in the country."
