Tabloid publisher defiant under Trump lawyer’s questioning
The first week of testimony in the criminal trial of Donald Trump wound down Friday with intense questioning of the prosecution’s inaugural witness about his efforts before the 2016 presidential election to hide salacious stories about the Republican candidate.
The witness, David Pecker, who has known the former president for decades, faced a stern cross-examination from Trump’s defense lawyer, Emil Bove. Bove pressed Pecker on two deals he struck in 2015 and 2016 with two people who had been seeking to sell tales about Trump. Those stories were then buried, a scheme described by prosecutors as “catch and kill.”
In a tense moment midmorning, Bove worked to undermine previous testimony from Pecker that Trump had thanked him after the election for helping to derail one such account.
Bove, a former federal prosecutor, pushed Pecker to explain a seeming discrepancy between a 2018 interview with the FBI – which did not note the supposed thanks from Trump – and his testimony this week.
Pecker, a former tabloid titan who was once the publisher of The National Enquirer, resisted the implication that there was a contradiction, but eventually acknowledged the inconsistency. Still, he remained defiant, saying that he had been honest on the stand.
“I know what the truth is,” Pecker said, suggesting that 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.”
Pecker’s testimony is crucial for the Manhattan district attorney’s office as it seeks to show that Trump was part of a threeman conspiracy to suppress negative stories as he worked to win the White House. Prosecutors argue that Trump eventually falsified records to hide a third hush-money deal in order to conceal the payment that his former fixer, Michael Cohen, had made to porn actor Stormy Daniels.
The former president faces 34 felony charges and could spend four years in prison if convicted. He denies all charges.
Earlier in the week, Pecker testified about having come to an agreement with Trump and Cohen in a meeting at Trump Tower in August 2015. There, Pecker said, he agreed to run what amounted to a covert propaganda operation for Trump, trumpeting his candidacy while publishing negative stories about his Republican opponents. Most importantly, Pecker said, he had agreed to be “the eyes and ears” of the campaign, watching out for damaging stories and suppressing them.
On Friday, Bove called this testimony into question, arguing that Pecker’s promotion of Trump and denigration of opponents was simply “standard operating procedure” for a tabloid, recycling titillating stories that sell magazines in checkout aisles. Pecker agreed, without embarrassment, that those types of stories appeared in his publications.
But he fought back several times as Bove cast doubt on his credibility.
Bove bore into an August 2016 agreement that Pecker’s company, AMI, made with Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model. McDougal had been shopping a story about an affair with Trump, and the deal included a payment of $150,000, a sum prosecutors have suggested – and Pecker agreed – was to ensure her silence.
But Bove pointed out that McDougal had received other benefits in the form of dozens of stories published under her name in publications owned by AMI, as well as cover appearances.