Trump friend returns to the stand
Pecker’s testimony seen as key in N.Y. grand jury inquiry
NEW YORK — David Pecker, a pivotal figure in the hush money payment investigation of Donald Trump, returned Monday to the building where a grand jury has been meeting for months, a repeat appearance suggesting his testimony could be key as prosecutors push toward potential criminal charges.
Pecker, a longtime Trump friend and the former chief executive of the parent company of The National Enquirer, was back as the grand jury heard testimony in the probe for the first time since last Monday.
The former president is being investigated over payments during his 2016 campaign to two women who alleged affairs or sexual encounters with him.
There was still no word on when the panel might vote on a possible indictment of the former president.
Trump denies being involved with either of the women, porn actor Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal, and claims he’s the victim of “extortion.”
Among the witnesses the grand jury has already heard from is Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer who has said he orchestrated the payoffs. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges arising from the payments and has become a potentially major witness for state prosecutors.
Pecker is seen as relevant to the investigation because his company, American Media Inc., secretly assisted Trump’s campaign by paying $150,000 to McDougal in August 2016 for the rights to her story about an alleged affair with Trump. The company then suppressed McDougal’s story until after the election, a dubious journalism practice known as “catch-and-kill.”
Cohen made recordings of a conversation in which he and Trump spoke about the arrangement to pay McDougal through the tabloid publisher.
At one point in the recording, Cohen told Trump, “I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, David,” a reference to Pecker.
Cohen told Trump that he had already spoken with the Trump Organization’s longtime finance chief, Allen Weisselberg, on “how to set the whole thing up.”
Trump then said: “What do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?”
Cohen also signed an agreement to buy the nondisclosure part of McDougal’s contract with AMI for $125,000 through a company he formed called Resolution Consultants LLC, but a few months later Pecker told Cohen that the deal was off and Cohen never paid the $125,000, according to court documents from Cohen’s criminal case.
In Georgia, a judge on Monday ordered the Fulton County district attorney’s office to respond to a motion by Trump to throw out a report by a special grand jury that investigated attempts to interfere in the state’s 2020 presidential election.
The motion by Trump’s legal team also seeks to toss out all testimony from the inquiry and to bar Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from continuing to investigate or prosecute Trump.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered Willis to respond by May 1 and to let him know whether an in-person hearing is needed to resolve any issues. A spokesperson for Willis said her office would reply through its court filings.
The filing is an effort by Trump to escape one of the multiple legal challenges he faces, including a pair of U.S. Justice Department criminal investigations. One examines his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. The other examines Trump’s possession of hundreds of classified documents at his Florida estate.
Willis began her investigation shortly after the release of a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In that conversation, the then-president suggested that Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, could “find” the exact number of votes needed to overturn Trump’s narrow election loss in the state to Democrat Joe Biden.
The special grand jury heard from about 75 witnesses and considered other evidence before issuing a report that includes recommendations for Willis on criminal charges. McBurney released the report’s introduction and conclusion, as well as a section in which the grand jurors expressed concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath, but the rest of the report has remained under wraps so far.