Tabloid publisher defiant when questioned by Trump's lawyer
Lawyers for Donald Trump on Friday grilled the former publisher of The National Enquirer, casting doubt on his explanation for why he suppressed salacious stories about the Republican presidential candidate before the 2016 election.
The witness, David Pecker, who has known Trump for decades, faced a stern cross-examination from one of the former president's defense lawyers, Emil Bove, who pressed Pecker about two deals he had reached in 2015 and 2016 with people who were seeking to sell stories about Trump.
Bove sought to convince the jury of two fundamental points about the stories, which Pecker bought and then buried: Such arrangements, characterized by prosecutors as “catch and kill,” were standard for the publisher and that Pecker had previously misled jurors about the details of the transactions.
In one particularly tense moment, Bove pushed Pecker to explain a seeming discrepancy between his testimony this week and notes from a 2018 interview with the FBI. Pecker testified that Trump had thanked him after the election for helping to conceal one such story, but the interview notes did not record Trump's expression of gratitude.
Pecker, who ultimately acknowledged the inconsistency, resisted Bove's implication that there was a contradiction and said he had been honest in his testimony.
“I know what the truth is,” Pecker said, suggesting FBI agents might have erred in their notes. “I can't state why this is written this way. I know exactly what was said to me.”
The prosecution witnesses who followed Pecker on Friday provided a less dramatic conclusion to the trial's first week of testimony.
Rhona Graff, Trump's former executive assistant and gatekeeper at Trump Tower, testified about entries from the Trump Organization computer system that contained contact information for Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, and a “Stormy.”
The day's last witness was Gary Farro, who was Cohen's banker when the former fixer executed financial transactions with First Republic Bank to enable the hush money payment to Daniels.
Farro will return to the witness stand Tuesday, when court resumes. He is expected to take less time testifying than Pecker.