Pecker testifies he told Trump he would be campaign’s ‘eyes and ears’
Victoria Bekiempis
Fast forward to August 2015. Did there come a time when you attended a meeting in Trump Tower? Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked. David Pecker responded in the affirmative.
Who was present for that meeting? “Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, and Hope Hicks,” Pecker said, noting that Hicks was in and out. Pecker then ran through how this happened.
I received a call from Michael Cohen telling me The Boss wanted to see me. When I spoke to Michael Cohen, that’s how he would refer to Donald Trump, as the boss.
“Most of the time when I received a call from Michael Cohen, he wanted something,” Pecker reflected, saying he didn’t know what it was before he got there.
At that meeting, Donald, Donald Trump, and Michael, they asked me what can I do – and what my magazines could do – to help the campaign. So, thinking about it, as I did previously, I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents and I said that I would also be the eyes and ears because I know that the Trump organization had a very small staff.
And then I said that anything I hear in the marketplace if I hear anything negative about yourself, or if I hear anything about women selling stories, I would notify Michael Cohen as I did over the last several years, I would notify Michael Cohen and then he would be able to [have them] killed in another magazine or have them not be published or somebody would have to purchase them.
Key events
Victoria Bekiempis
Prosector Joshua Steinglass asked David Pecker about negative stories on Bill and Hillary Clinton. Pecker said:
I was running the Hillary Clinton stories. I was running Hillary as an enabler for Bill Clinton in respect to all the womanizing, and [it] was easy for me to say I was gong to continue running those type of stories for the National Enquirer.
Did he think it would help Trump’s campaign?
I thought it was a mutual benefit – it would help his campaign, it would help me.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked specifically, why David Pecker said he told Trump he would notify Michael Cohen if he heard “anything women selling stories”.
“In a presidential campaign, I was the person that thought that there would be a lot of women would come out to try to sell their stories because Mr Trump was well known as the most eligible bachelor and dated the most beautiful women,” Pecker said.
And it was clear that based on my past experience that when someone is running for a public office like this, it is very common for these women to call up a magazine like the National Enquirer to try to sell their stories. Or, I would hear it in the marketplace, [through] other sources, that stories were being marketed.
Pecker testifies he told Trump he would be campaign’s ‘eyes and ears’
Victoria Bekiempis
Fast forward to August 2015. Did there come a time when you attended a meeting in Trump Tower? Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked. David Pecker responded in the affirmative.
Who was present for that meeting? “Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, and Hope Hicks,” Pecker said, noting that Hicks was in and out. Pecker then ran through how this happened.
I received a call from Michael Cohen telling me The Boss wanted to see me. When I spoke to Michael Cohen, that’s how he would refer to Donald Trump, as the boss.
“Most of the time when I received a call from Michael Cohen, he wanted something,” Pecker reflected, saying he didn’t know what it was before he got there.
At that meeting, Donald, Donald Trump, and Michael, they asked me what can I do – and what my magazines could do – to help the campaign. So, thinking about it, as I did previously, I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents and I said that I would also be the eyes and ears because I know that the Trump organization had a very small staff.
And then I said that anything I hear in the marketplace if I hear anything negative about yourself, or if I hear anything about women selling stories, I would notify Michael Cohen as I did over the last several years, I would notify Michael Cohen and then he would be able to [have them] killed in another magazine or have them not be published or somebody would have to purchase them.
Victoria Bekiempis
David Pecker said Trump was “viewed as the boss” when the Enquirer conducted research on which cover subjects would sell best. He said:
So I discussed with him, and we did a poll in the National Enquirer about Mr Trump running for president, how would the readership feel? Research showed that 80% of the readership of the National Enquirer would want Mr Trump to [run] for president. And I passed that information on to [Donald] Trump and shortly after, he was being interviewed on the Today show.
Victoria Bekiempis
David Pecker said that he and Michael Cohen were in touch over the years, when Pecker noticed something that he thought Trump should know about. It increased when Trump announced his candidacy.
I would say at a minimum of every week and if there was an issue, [it] could be daily.
In early 2015, did he and Trump ever talk about him running for President?
As I mentioned a little earlier, when Mr Trump launched the Apprentice, and then launched The Celebrity Apprentice his, I would say, the interest in Mr Trump through my magazines basically, the National Enquirer, skyrocketed.
Pecker said they had done internal polls to determine what readership wanted.
All the time, every time we did this, Mr Trump would be the top celebrity.
Victoria Bekiempis
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asks: “Did you visit Mr Trump at Trump Tower on multiple occasions?” “Over the years?” David Pecker asked. “Over the years,” Steinglass said. “Yes.”
”How would you describe him as a businessman?” Pecker replied:
I would describe Mr. Trump as very knowledgable. I would describe him [as] very detail-oriented. I would describe him almost as a micromanager from what I saw, he looked at all the aspects, whatever the issue was.
“How about his approach to money?”
I thought that his approach to money, he was very cautious and very frugal.
Are you familiar with someone named Michael Cohen?” “Yes, I am.”
“Who’s Michael Cohen? “Michael Cohen was Donald Trump’s personal attorney,” Pecker said, explaining that:
I met Michael Cohen at a barmitzvah in early 2000.
Pecker asked about Trump being in control of business practices and tells court he ‘reviewed the invoice, looked at the check, and he would sign it’
Victoria Bekiempis
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asks David Pecker whether he had ever observed Trump’s business practices.
It appears that Steinglass is trying hard to show that Donald Trump was fully in control of his business practices – including signing off on invoices and checks and well aware of records.
This, of course, undermines any claim Trump might make that he was unaware of the questionable ledger entries. Per Pecker:
While he was reviewing the accounts payable packages, we were talking at the same time, and I noticed that he reviewed the invoice, looked at the check, and he would sign it.
Steinglass pressed: “Could you tell whether the check was stapled to the invoice?” Pecker replied:
As I recollect, the entire package was stapled together.
Pecker tells court of ‘great relationship’ with Donald Trump
Victoria Bekiempis
David Pecker said he has had a “great relationship” with Donald Trump as he answered questions by the prosecution. Pecker said:
I’ve had a great relationship with Mr Trump over the years, starting in ‘89 I had an idea of creating a magazine called Trump Style and I presented it to Mr. Trump and he liked that idea a lot. He just questioned me: who is going to pay for it?
Trump style launched, on a quarterly basis. Over the years, they grew closer. Pecker said that he would eventually refer to Trump as “Donald”.
They spoke more frequently as the 2016 campaign got into swing, he said.
Victoria Bekiempis
“Are you personally familiar with Donald J Trump?” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asks David Pecker.
Pecker responds in the affirmative.
How long have you known him? Since the late 1980s.
Could you point him out in the courtroom. Pecker says:
He’s sitting here [wearing], I think it’s a dark blue suit.
Trump appeared to smile.
Who is David Pecker?
David Pecker was a key Trump ally who served as the CEO of American Media Inc (AMI), the publisher of the National Enquirer.
Pecker helped Trump by purchasing the rights to potentially damaging stories and then never publishing them, a practice known as “catch and kill”. In 2015, AMI paid $30,000 to Dino Sajudin, a former doorman at Trump Tower, who was trying to sell a story that Trump had allegedly fathered a child out of wedlock.
In June of 2016, AMI paid Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, $150,000 to suppress a story about an affair. AMI bought the story with the understanding that Trump would reimburse them, according to the indictment. Michael Cohen would later release a tape of him and Trump discussing repaying Pecker.
In 2016, Dylan Howard, then the editor-in-chief of the National Enquirer, alerted Pecker that Daniels had potentially damaging information about Trump, according to the indictment. Pecker advised Howard to reach out to Cohen, and Cohen subsequently negotiated the deal with Stormy Daniels’ lawyer.
Pecker has been granted immunity in exchange for his testimony and AMI signed a non-prosecution agreement with prosecutors.
Court resumes with David Pecker taking witness stand
David Pecker, Donald Trump’s longtime ally and former publisher of the National Enquirer, is returning to the witness stand.
The judge reminds him that he’s still under oath.
Pecker first took the stand on Monday and provided brief testimony of his work as a tabloid honcho.
Donald Trump took the opportunity of a brief court break to go after judge Juan Merchan and the gag order he is under.
The former president wrote in a Truth Social post published at 11am ET:
HIGHLY CONFLICTED, TO PUT IT MILDLY, JUDGE JUAN MERCHAN, HAS TAKEN AWAY MY CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH. EVERYBODY IS ALLOWED TO TALK AND LIE ABOUT ME, BUT I AM NOT ALLOWED TO DEFEND MYSELF. THIS IS A KANGAROO COURT, AND THE JUDGE SHOULD RECUSE HIMSELF!
Hugo Lowell
Trump’s lead lawyer Todd Blanche had a rough streak with Judge Merchan earlier when he was desperately trying to defend Trump’s alleged gag order violations.
Prosecutors had pulled 10 instances of Trump railing against witnesses and Merchan shot down Blanche’s explanations for essentially every one.
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Merchan asked for caselaw to support Blanche’s point that reposts were not the same as Trump making his own content. Blanche did not have one.
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Merchan asked why Trump, in one post, waited until after the appeals court denied Trump’s appeal of the gag order. Blanche struggled to respond.
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Merchan then asked what Trump was responding to in some other instances, because the gag order permitted Trump to respond to political attacks. But Blanche did not have examples of what Trump was responding to, other than one post that referenced the possibility of a presidential pardon.
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And Merchan clarified to Blanche that Trump’s “reposting” of remarks from Fox News host Jesse Watters was not quite that: Trump used some of Watters’ remark, made his own additions and misleadingly put it all in quote marks, Merchan said. Blanche conceded it was not a repost.
Victoria Bekiempis
Per the hallway pool, Donald Trump was not chatty as he returned to court following a break, ignoring questions such as “Are you going to keep Truthing?”, “How are your lawyers doing?” and “Does your lawyer have any credibility?”
Joe Biden is heading to Florida today to deliver remarks railing against the state leadership’s continued march to the right on topics such as abortion rights and educational freedom.
On Capitol Hill, the Senate is debating the foreign aid legislation that belatedly passed the House at the weekend, with voting starting later today.
You can follow coverage as it happens in our blog from Washington, US Politics live with Chris Stein, here, while this blog focuses on the criminal trial of Donald Trump, Biden’s challenger for the White House in the 2024 election.
The court is taking a short break, after judge Juan Merchan said he would not immediately rule on whether Donald Trump had violated the gag order.
Trump left the courtroom without speaking to reporters, per pool.
Judge tells Trump lawyer he’s ‘losing all credibility with the court’
Victoria Bekiempis
Things are not going well for Donald Trump as his lawyer, Todd Blanche, continues to make the claim that re-posting doesn’t violate the gag order.
Judge Merchan said:
Mr Blanche you’re losing all credibility, I have to tell you right now … You’re losing all credibility with the court. Is there any other argument you want to make?
Merchan is reserving decision on the prosecution’s contempt request. This means he is not making a decision right now
Victoria Bekiempis
Judge Merchan is clearly not buying that this is passive, he asks, “How does it get there, how does it get on to [your] client’s Truth Social account?”
Trump lawyer Todd Blanche replies:
There’s a group of folks that work with President Trump that when they see articles they believe President Trump’s audience should read.
Blanche added that “there’s a mechanism” through which they get posted.
Merchan asked of re-posting:
What is the mechanism?
Blanche said:
I believe you click on it.
Merchan said shortly thereafter:
Someone had to do something.
