New York Post
By Keith J. Kelly
April 10, 2019 | 7:30pm | Updated
The National Enquirer, the flagship of David Pecker’s American Media Inc., is on the brink of being sold in the wake of multiple scandals tied to its role in the 2016 presidential election.
“Pecker didn’t want to sell it, but he was forced to cut off his arm to save the rest of the company,” one source close to the situation told The Post.
AMI, which owns US Weekly, Men’s Journal and Star Magazine, said it is shopping The Enquirer and two smaller supermarket tabloids, the Globe and the National Examiner, following a strategic review that began in August.
“We feel the future opportunities with the tabloids can be best exploited by a different ownership,” the company said in a statement.
AMI’s principal investor, Chatham Asset Management, is ”disgusted” with the recent scandals swirling around the Enquirer, according to the Washington Post, which broke the news late Wednesday.
The Enquirer became embroiled in a scandal over campaign finance violations leading up to the 2016 president election when it emerged that Pecker assisted his longtime friend Donald Trump by squashing a story from a porn star who claimed to have slept with the presidential candidate years earlier.
More recently, the Enquirer broke the story that Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, who also owns the Washington Post, was conducting an affair with former Fox news anchor Lauren Sanchez.
The Enquirer’s plan to disclose the information forced the tech CEO and his wife of 25 years, Mackenzie, to announce they were divorcing.
The Enquirer became ensnared in yet another scandal when Bezos claimed in February it was seeking to extort him with compromising photos unless he agreed to publicly state that its reporting of him was not politically motivated.