Days before Donald Trump became president in early 2017, a handful of advisers, officials and allies descended on his office at Trump Tower: the FBI director, a future secretary of state, his soon-to-be chief of staff – and the publisher of The National Enquirer.

The publisher, David Pecker, may have seemed out of place, but he had just performed an indispensable and confidential service to the Trump campaign: he had paid off a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who said she had an affair with Trump, and a doorman who had heard that Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock. The future president, triumphant, thanked Pecker for his service.