Tiger Woods was caught in sex romp with mistress Mindy Lawton in his Escalade in 2007, years before his extramarital affairs became public.
However, a solution to stop this getting out came from the most unlikely of sources — National Enquirer honcho David Pecker.
On the stand at Donald Trump’s hush money trial Thursday, Pecker acknowleged for the first time buying up the photos then burying them in return for Tiger’s cooperation.
During cross-examination by Trump’s lawyers, Pecker admitted purchasing pics of the golf icon meeting a woman — now known to be Lawton — in a church parking lot and using them as leverage to convince him to appear on the cover of Men’s Fitness, another title in the American Media Inc. publishing house where he was CEO.
The golf world was mystified by the resulting 12-page cover story in Men’s Fitness. Inside the edition Woods shared his exercise and dieting regimen — and talked in glowing terms about his relationship with then-wife Elin Nordegren.
“It was a total shakedown,” a member of Woods’ inner circle told The Post. “He was totally blackmailed, but what could he do? He had to play ball. He didn’t have any other choice.”
At the time the photos were taken, Nordegren was in the final trimester of pregnancy with their daughter, Sam Alexis. Woods, then 32-years-old, enjoyed a squeaky clean public persona, and feared that an extramarital affair could tarnish his public image — and destroy his marriage.
“Tiger would ordinarily have had nothing to do with Men’s Fitness,” says the insider. “He only spoke to a handful of trusted journalists. But the Enquirer had him over a barrel. He hated it, and I know it stressed him out, but he did what he had to do.”
Not everyone was happy about the deal. Neal Bulton, then the editor-in-chief of Men’s Fitness, quit when he learned about it.
“David Pecker knew about Tiger Woods’ infidelity a long time ago,” Boulton told The Post the following year. “He traded silence for a Men’s Fitness cover.”
“We were going to [do a quid pro quo with] America’s favorite sports star, just to get his name on the cover of a magazine,” Boulton continued. “That was too much for me. That’s when I high-tailed it out of there.”
At the time, Pecker denied the allegations.
“It is absolutely not true,” he told The Post in 2009. “[Boulton] is a disgruntled former employee.”
But Pecker’s sworn testimony in the Trump trial contradicted his previous denials. As the former President looked on, Pecker testified his “catch and kill” operations for A-listers like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mark Wahlberg, and Woods.
Now 72, Pecker admitted AMI spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” buying up negative stories which it then never ran.
A rep for Woods did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Ultimately, the golfer’s reprieve was short lived. Two years later, over Thanksgiving weekend 2009, The Enquirer ran a cover story about Woods.
The banner headline read “Tiger Woods Cheating Scandal” and the story breathlessly detailed woods’ months-long affair with New York City nightclub hostess Rachel Uchitel.
The issue ran photographs of Uchitel checking into the same hotel as Woods during the Australian Masters. She was quoted as telling a friend, “It’s Tiger Woods! I don’t care about his wife! We’re in love!”
The story triggered Woods’ stunning fall from grace — that very weekend Nordegren chased him out of their family home in Florida swinging one of his golf clubs and smashing up his car windows as he tried to flee.
Then the floodgates opened and dozens more women revealed their affairs with the golf great. He and Nordegren went through a very public divorce which reportedly cost him more than $100 million.
It’s not lost on the golfer that the National Enquirer ultimately led to his demise, despite his cooperation on the Men’s Health cover.
“He always said that they were all snakes,” says the Woods insider. “They promised to protect him, but that only went so far. When they had the chance, they ran the story of his cheating anyway. They really f—d him in the end.”
