McDougal filed a lawsuit to invalidate the non-disclosure agreement she had with AMI. A month later, AMI settled with McDougal, allowing her to speak about the alleged affair. In August 2018, it was reported that AMI CEO/Chairman David Pecker and AMI chief content officer Dylan Howard were granted witness immunity in exchange for their testimony regarding hush money payments made by Donald Trump's then-personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, in an attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election. On December 12, 2018, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced its agreement with AMI. "AMI admitted that it made the $150,000 payment in concert with a candidate's presidential campaign," the press release said, so that Karen McDougal wouldn't "publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election. AMI further admitted that its principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman's story so as to prevent it from influencing the election." As a result of this agreement, AMI would not face prosecution and agreed to provide extensive assistance to prosecutors about the involvement of Trump and other politicians with the company. The same press release also revealed that Michael Cohen had been sentenced to three years in prison for various crimes, including the $150,000 campaign finance violation—the facilitation of the payment to McDougal—to which he pled guilty on August 21, 2018. AMI agreed to pay the Federal Election Commission a $187,500 fine in June 2021. Jeff Bezos blackmail In January 2019, the National Enquirer broke a story about the extramarital affair of Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos with Lauren Sánchez. Bezos began investigating how and why the information had been leaked to the National Enquirer. President Trump has long expressed displeasure with Bezos, and Trump's irritation may have increased due to the Washington Post's critical coverage of the murder (and the subsequent cover-up) of one of its reporters, Jamal Khashoggi. This, Bezos suspects, may have been the political motivation for someone to leak his affair to the tabloid. On February 7, 2019, Bezos shared emails that he had received the previous day in which AMI sought a public statement from him and his lawyer "affirming that they have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AM's coverage [of the sexual affair] was politically motivated or influenced by political forces, and an agreement that they will cease referring to such a possibility." AMI chief content officer Dylan Howard and