Trump’s hush-money trial resumes with National
Enquirer publisher testimony
Prosecutors say former president’s ally David Pecker
was integral to catch-and-kill efforts at heart of New York criminal case
Victoria
Bekiempis in New York
Tue 23 Apr
2024 03.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/23/trump-hush-money-trial-new-york
Donald
Trump’s criminal hush-money trial in Manhattan resumes on Tuesday morning with
additional testimony from David Pecker, the ex-president’s longtime ally and
former publisher of the National Enquirer – whom prosecutors contend was
integral in illicit catch-and-kill efforts. Before Pecker is expected to return
to the stand, judge Juan Merchan will hold a hearing on prosecutors’ push to
hold Trump in contempt for apparent repeated violations of a gag order barring
him from publicly slamming witnesses in the trial.
Pecker
first took the stand on Monday and provided brief testimony of his work as a
tabloid honcho. “We used checkbook journalism and we paid for stories. I gave a
number to the editors that they could not spend more than $10,000 to
investigate or produce or publish a story, anything over $10,000 they would
spend on a story, they would have to be vetted and brought up to me, for
approval.”
Pecker said
he had final say over the content of the National Enquirer and other AMI
publications. “Being in the publishing industry for 40 years, I realized early
in my career that the only thing that was important is the cover of a magazine,
so when the editors produced the story or prepared a cover, we would have a
meeting and they would present to me what the story would be, what the concept
was, what the cost was going to be.”
Prosecutors
contend that Pecker was at the center of a plot to boost Trump’s chances in the
2016 election. Shortly after Trump in the summer of 2015 announced a
presidential run, he met with his then lawyer Michael Cohen and Pecker at Trump
Tower where, the prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said in his opening statement on
Monday, they hatched a plan.
If Pecker
caught wind of damaging information, he would apprise Trump and Cohen, so they
could figure out a way to keep it quiet. That collusion came to include AMI’s
$150,000 payoff to the Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claimed to have had an
extra-marital affair with Trump, prosecutors have said.
The alleged
plot to cover up a claimed sexual encounter between the adult film star Stormy
Daniels and Trump is the basis of prosecutors’ case.
In October
2016, the Washington Post published a video featuring Trump’s hot mic comments
during an Access Hollywood taping, in which he boasted about sexually
assaulting women. The comments, which Colangelo read to jurors, included “Just
kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do
anything … Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
After they
surfaced, the campaign went into panic mode, Colangelo said. They worked to
characterize these comments as “locker room talk”, but, when Daniels’s claim
came across Trump and his allies’ radar, they feared the backlash: people would
see these ill-behaved ways were not mere talk.
“Another
story about infidelity, with a porn star, on the heels of the Access Hollywood
tape, would have been devastating to his campaign,” Colangelo also said in his
address to jurors. “Cohen carried out a $130,000 payoff to Daniels which Trump
allegedly repaid him in checks that he listed as legal services in official
company records.
“Look, no
politician wants bad press, but the evidence at trial will show that this
wasn’t spin or communication strategy,” Colangelo continued. “This was a
planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election,
to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures – to silence
people with something bad to say about his behavior.
“It was
election fraud, pure and simple.”
Pecker’s
testimony will provide insight into the alleged plot, as discussions of
concerns about damaging information – and the steps his cronies purportedly
took to bury it – would speak to motive.
Trump’s
camp has insisted that Trump did not do anything wrong and that the basis of
prosecutors’ claims lacks legal merit. “There’s nothing wrong with trying to
influence an election,” the defense lawyer Todd Blanche said in his opening. “It’s called democracy.”
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