In November 2010, American Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection due to debts of nearly $1 billion, but has continued to buy and sell magazine brands since then.

[2][3] According to its September 2018 non-prosecution agreement with Southern District of New York federal prosecutors, AMI "shall commit no crimes whatsoever" for three years, otherwise "A.M.I.

[5][6] This came after Chatham owner Anthony Melchiorre, who AMI has also relied on for survival, expressed dismay over the tabloid magazine's recent scandals involving hush money assistance to U.S. president Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and blackmail of Jeff Bezos.

[11] The modern American Media came into being after Generoso Pope Jr., longtime owner of the National Enquirer, died in 1988, and his tabloids came under new ownership.

[19] In November 2010, American Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection due to nearly $1 billion in debt, and assets of less than $50,000.

[24] In 2016, Pecker revealed to the Toronto Star that AMI now relied on support from Chatham Asset Management and its owner Anthony Melchiorre.

[35][36] He also acknowledged that "checkbook journalism" served as part of the editorial philosophy he followed when ran American Media Inc.[36][35] Pecker stated that he believed that “The only thing that is important is the cover of a magazine.”[36] In late 2015, AMI paid $30,000 to Dino Sajudin, a doorman at Trump Tower, to obtain the rights to his story in which he alleged Donald Trump had an affair in the 1980s that resulted in the birth of a child.

[37] AMI reporters were given the names of the woman and the alleged child, while Sajudin passed a lie detector test when testifying that he had heard the story from others.

[47] 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.

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 did not face prosecution and agreed to provide extensive assistance to prosecutors about the involvement of Trump and other politicians with the company.

[2] 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.

[41] 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.

[59] On February 7, 2019, Bezos shared emails that he had received the previous day[59] 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."

[60] Bezos wrote that he would refuse to make this "specific lie" or to otherwise participate in this blackmail bargain that "no real journalists [would] ever propose.

"[59] "Of course I don't want personal photos published," Bezos added, but he said he chooses to "stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out."

That same day, The Washington Post published an article on the matter, quoting a former federal prosecutor who speculated that this news could undermine AMI's recent deal with the government.