Ron Burkle, Billionaire Investor, Is Said to Be in Talks to Buy National Enquirer

The owners of The National Enquirer are in talks to sell the tabloid to Ronald W. Burkle, a supermarket magnate with ties to President Bill Clinton, according to two people with direct knowledge of the negotiations.

While representatives of The Enquirer, which is owned by American Media Inc., are deep in their negotiations with Mr. Burkle, the deal could still fall apart, said the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private negotiations. Representatives for Mr. Burkle did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Burkle, who specializes in buying distressed companies, made his initial fortune buying and selling supermarkets in California. In 1999, he helped buy the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey franchise out of bankruptcy; the team has won three Stanley Cup championships since then.

An acquisition of The Enquirer by Mr. Burkle, a longtime Democratic donor, could raise eyebrows in Washington given President Trump’s fondness for the tabloid, which he has praised on Twitter.

The Enquirer drew the attention of federal prosecutors for its role in aiding Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. David J. Pecker, American Media’s chief executive, is said to have helped Mr. Trump’s candidacy through a deal to buy a story from a Playboy model who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.

American Media acquired the story for $150,000 and never published it, following a tabloid industry practice known as catch-and-kill. Federal prosecutors in New York gave Mr. Pecker an immunity deal in its investigation of the arrangement.

American Media’s principal owner, the hedge fund Chatham Asset Management, pressed Mr. Pecker to sell the tabloid after it wound up in investigators’ cross hairs, the people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Given the legal scrutiny, the hedge fund’s managing partner, Anthony Melchiorre, decided there was no longer a benefit in being associated with The Enquirer. Financial losses at the publication provided further motivation for a sale.

Mr. Pecker and Mr. Burkle, who runs Yucaipa Companies, an investment firm named for a California town where he once lived, are said to be friends and have also invested in media deals together. Both backed Radar magazine, a short-lived title focused on celebrity and lifestyle that closed down in 2008.

Mr. Burkle is not unfamiliar with the rough-and-tumble of tabloid culture. In 2006, he accused a New York Post gossip columnist of demanding a hush payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars to prevent the publication of items about his personal life.

Years earlier, he told federal investigators that the Hollywood private detective Anthony Pellicano had demanded that Mr. Burkle pay as much as $250,000 in exchange for Mr. Pellicano’s agreeing not to investigate him. Mr. Burkle told the F.B.I. that he ultimately became friendly with Mr. Pellicano, providing him with favors.

When Mr. Clinton left office in 2001, he agreed to be an adviser to Mr. Burkle’s investment firm, an arrangement with the potential to yield tens of millions of dollars for the former president. Mr. Clinton’s role at the time was to help find investment opportunities for Yucaipa and to offer the firm a sheen of credibility.

Mr. Trump also calls Mr. Burkle a friend. In October 2017, at a White House event celebrating the Penguins’ Stanley Cup victory, Mr. Burkle was praised by Mr. Trump as “a great, great negotiator,” and jokingly asked him to help renegotiate some trade deals for the United States. “I really mean that,” Mr. Trump said. “If you want to get involved in negotiating Nafta, I like it.”

Mr. Burkle, who also has ties to the liberal billionaire George Soros, has been a staunch supporter of labor unions and is a fixture in Los Angeles fund-raising circles. He is a trustee of the National Urban League and a nonprofit focused on human rights started by President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn.

Mr. Burkle has flirted with buying media companies in the past. He explored making bids for The Wall Street Journal and the Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers before backing out. His most recent acquisitions have included buying a controlling interest in The Soho House Group, which runs a line of luxury clubs.

As part of American Media’s non-prosecution deal with federal prosecutors, the company affirmed that it had made the payment to the Playboy model, Karen McDougal, to “influence the election.”

The agreement, signed in September, also stipulated that American Media “shall commit no crimes whatsoever” for three years and that if it did, the company “shall thereafter be subject to prosecution for any federal criminal violation of which this office has knowledge.”

The deal has put American Media in a difficult position now that federal prosecutors have started investigating claims by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, that he was threatened by the company, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation.

Mr. Bezos, who accused American Media of “extortion and blackmail” in a lengthy blog post, is to meet with federal prosecutors in New York as early as this week, one of the people said.

The feud between Mr. Bezos and American Media goes back to January, when The Enquirer ran an 11-page story headlined “Bezos’ Divorce! The Cheating Photos That Ended His Marriage.” The article included furtively snapped photographs of Mr. Bezos in the company of his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez.

Despite his interest in media properties, Mr. Burkle has granted interviews infrequently and tries to avoid the media glare.

“It doesn’t do me any good for people to know about me or know what I’m doing,” he said in a rare interview with Talk magazine over a decade ago. “If you’re low key, I think you can get a lot more done.”