Ex-tabloid publisher testifies he scooped up possibly damaging stories to shield Trump
NEW YORK» As Donald Trump was running for president in 2016, his old friend at the National Enquirer was scooping up potentially damaging stories about the candidate and paying tens of thousands of dollars to keep them from the public eye.
But when it came to the seamy claims by porn performer Stormy Daniels, David Pecker said he put his foot down.
“I am not paying for this story,” he told jurors Thursday, recounting his version of a conversation with Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen about the catch-and-kill scheme that prosecutors alleged amounted to interference in the race. Pecker was $180,000 in the hole on other Trump-related stories by the time Daniels came along, at which point: “I didn’t want to be involved in this.”
Pecker’s testimony was a critical building block for the prosecution’s theory that their partnership was a way to influence the 2016 presidential election illegally. The Manhattan district attorney is seeking to elevate the gravity of the history-making first trial of a former American president and the first of four criminal cases against Trump to reach a jury.
Trump’s lawyers also began their cross-examination of Pecker, using the time to question his memory of years-old events and to suggest his account had evolved over time.
But the hush-money trial was just one of the consequential legal matters facing the Republican presidential candidate on Thursday.
The U.S. Supreme Court also heard arguments over whether Trump should be immune from prosecution in a federal case over his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
Trump had asked to skip his New York criminal proceedings so he could sit in on the Supreme Court’s special session, but that request was denied by Judge Juan M. Merchan, who is overseeing Trump’s trial on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hushmoney payments, which involved buying the rights to someone’s story but never publishing it.“i think the Supreme Court has a very important argument before it today,” Trump said outside the courtroom. “I should be there.”
Instead, he sat at the defense table in a Manhattan courtroom with his lawyers, listening intently to Pecker testify about how he and his publication parlayed rumormongering into splashy stories that smeared Trump’s opponents and, just as crucially, leveraged his connections to suppress unflattering coverage.
Pecker recalled that the publication bought a sordid tale from a New York City doorman and purchased accusations of an extramarital affair with former Playboy model Karen Mcdougal to prevent the claims from getting out. There was some talk of reimbursement from Trump’s orbit, but Pecker ultimately was never paid.
The breaking point came with Daniels, who eventually was paid by Cohen to keep quiet over her claim of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump. The ex-president denies it happened.
Pecker recalled to the jury that he was dining with his wife the night after the public learned of the infamous 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump discussed grabbing women sexually without permission, when then-editor Dylan Howard called with an urgent matter.
Howard said he heard from Daniels’ representatives that she was trying to sell her story and that the tabloid could acquire it for $120,000, Pecker told jurors. Pecker was tapped out; he told Cohen as much.
At the same time, Pecker advised that someone — just not him — should do something to prevent the story from going public.
“I said to Michael, ‘My suggestion to you is that you should buy the story, and you should take it off the market because if you don’t and it gets out, I believe the boss will be very angry with you.’”
Cohen followed his advice.