Hush Money Trial: Trump Lawyers to Question Tabloid Editor David Pecker

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s defense team in his hush money case sought Friday to undermine the testimony of the prosecution’s star witness and his account that a tabloid’s practice of helping bury embarrassing stories about Trump was part of a plan to help the Republican president. 2016 campaign.

David Pecker, former editor of the National Enquirer, returned to the witness stand for a fourth day as defense attorneys tried to find holes in his testimony about his tabloid’s efforts to shield his old friend from potentially damaging stories using a catch-and-run method. kill. scheme.

Pecker’s testimony is crucial to prosecutors, who allege the effort was a way to illegally influence the 2016 election. Under cross-examination, Trump’s lawyers are trying to show that any dealings Trump had with Pecker were intended to goal to protect Trump, his reputation and his family, not his campaign.

Pecker has testified that he hatched a plan with Trump and Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen in August 2015 for the National Enquirer to help Trump’s presidential campaign.

But under questioning by Trump lawyer Emil Bove, Pecker acknowledged that the term “catch and kill,” which describes the practice of tabloids buying the rights to stories so they never see the news, was not mentioned in that meeting. day light. No “financial dimensions,” such as the National Enquirer paying people on Trump’s behalf for the rights to their stories, were also discussed in the meeting, Pecker said.

Bove also confronted Pecker with statements he made to federal prosecutors in 2018 that the defense attorney said were “inconsistent” with the former editor’s testimony earlier this week. Pecker previously testified that Trump thanked him during a visit to the White House in 2017 for his help burying two floors.

But according to notes cited by Bove in court, Pecker had previously told federal authorities that Trump did not express any thanks to him during the meeting.

Pecker stuck to the story he told in court. “The FBI notes that someone writing here could be wrong,” she said, adding, “I know what the truth is.”

Pecker’s cross-examination caps a momentous week in the criminal cases facing the former president as he competes to retake the White House in November.

As jurors heard testimony in Manhattan, the Supreme Court on Thursday indicated that he was likely to reject Trump’s broad claims that he is immune from prosecution in his 2020 election interference case in Washington. But the conservative-majority high court seemed inclined to limit when former presidents could be prosecuted, a move that ruling that could benefit Trump delaying that trial, potentially until after the November elections.

In New York, the first of the Four criminal cases to go to trial – the presumptive Republican presidential candidate faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records regarding hush money payments intended to prevent negative stories from emerging in the final days of the 2016 campaign.

Trump denies wrongdoing. Before entering the courtroom Friday, he told reporters that he believes Thursday’s proceedings went “very well” for the defense and added that “the case should be over.”

For several days on the witness stand, Pecker has described how he and the tabloid leveraged rumors into splashy stories that smeared Trump’s opponents and, just as crucially, leveraged their connections to suppress sordid stories about Trump.

The charges center on $130,000 in payments Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen. He paid that sum on behalf of Trump to maintain porn actor Stormy Daniels of going public with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied that the meeting ever occurred.

For several days on the witness stand, Pecker has described how he and the tabloid leveraged rumors into splashy stories that smeared Trump’s opponents and, just as crucially, leveraged their connections to suppress sordid stories about Trump.

Pecker recalled how an editor told him that Daniels’ representative was trying to sell his story and that the tabloid could acquire it for $120,000. Pecker said she put her foot down and pointed out that the tabloid already had $180,000 in a hole for Trump-related catch-and-kill type transactions. But, Pecker said, he told Cohen to buy the story himself to prevent Daniels from going public with his claim.

“I told Michael, ‘My suggestion to you is that you buy the story and take it off the market, because if you don’t and it gets out, I think the boss is going to be very angry with you.’ “

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Richer reported from Washington.