Hedge fund sponsor Chatham Asset Management, majority owner of the scandal-embroiled National Enquirer tabloid, has hired New York-based McGuireWoods partner and former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission senior counsel Daniel Goldfried as its general counsel.

Goldfried will be Chatham's sole in-house lawyer, according to Bloomberg News, which first reported the move, citing a private company memo. Corporate Counsel independently confirmed Goldfried's hiring with a source close to the situation.

Goldfried joined McGuireWoods in 2017 as a partner in the firm's government and white-collar investigations and broker-dealer practice groups. The role routinely requires his involvement in “internal investigations of whistleblower allegations and other potential rule, policy or statutory violations, on behalf of broker-dealers, banks, and other companies,” according to his LinkedIn profile.

While at the SEC from 2003 to 2007, Goldfried led a team of lawyers and “managed multiple significant investigations involving mutual fund market timing, insider trading by hedge funds, market manipulation by an international investment bank, an offering fraud by a penny stock promoter, and financial fraud by insurance companies,” according to his professional bio for McGuireWoods.

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After leaving the government, Goldfried spent a decade as an in-house lawyer in the financial industry, first with Merrill Lynch and later with Bank of America following their 2008 merger. As senior vice president and assistant general for Bank of America, Goldfried was involved in the bank's financial crisis investigations.

And crisis experience will undoubtedly be an asset that Goldfried brings to his new role at Chatham, which has an 80 percent stake in American Media Inc., publisher of the National Enquirer. Chatham executives Evan Ratner and Barry Schwartz serve on AMI's four-member board of directors, further entwining the two companies. 

In February, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, accused AMI of blackmail and extortion for threatening to release his private text messages and photos unless he issued a statement declaring he had “no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI's coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.”

The Bezos bombshell dropped on AMI as the company was cooperating with an ongoing federal investigation focused, at least in part, on allegations that the National Enquirer paid former Playboy model Karen McDougal to keep her from going public with her story about having an affair with Donald Trump prior to the 2016 presidential election.

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York had granted immunity to AMI and National Enquirer CEO David Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump, in exchange for their cooperation. But Bezos' allegations, if substantiated, could unravel the nonprosecutorial agreement.

Goldfried did not respond to an interview request and a spokesperson for McGuireWoods declined to comment. Attempts to speak with Chatham and AMI representatives were unsuccessful.

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