Pecker testifies Cohen said ‘the boss will take care’ of McDougal story payment
Sam Levine
David Pecker says that he advised Trump to buy the Karen McDougal story because:
I believed the story was true. It would have been very embarrassing to himself and also to his campaign.
After he spoke with Trump, Pecker said Michael Cohen followed up and advised him to go ahead with purchasing the story. When Pecker asked who would pay for it,
He said to me, don’t worry, I’m your friend. The boss will take care of it.
Pecker took that to mean he would be reimbursed by Trump or the Trump Organization.
Donald Trump is sitting expressionless as Pecker testifies.
Key events
Who is David Pecker and why is he a key witness?
Martin Pengelly
As the longtime chief executive of American Media Inc, David Pecker developed a symbiotic relationship between Donald Trump and the National Enquirer, an AMI tabloid specialising in salacious scandal.
Pecker is a key witness (with a non-prosecution deal) because when Trump ran for president in 2016, Pecker helped Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney and fixer, orchestrate payoffs to Daniels, Karen McDougal (a former Playboy model who also claimed an affair) and a Trump Tower doorman trying to sell a story about a supposed illegitimate child. On Tuesday, Pecker, 72, told the court:
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?
Despite Trump’s famous enthusiasm for obtaining other people’s money – and equally famous ability to lose his own – Pecker described Trump as “very knowledgable … very detail-oriented … almost a micromanager”.
The prosecution was attempting to show jurors a picture of Trump intimately involved not only with models and adult film stars but in deals to keep them quiet.
Lauren Aratani
David Pecker is emphasizing that he expected to be reimbursed for the $150,000 payment he made to Karen McDougal.
He recalled a call he had with Michael Cohen where he asked him:
Why would I pay? I just paid $30,000 for the doorman story. Now you’re asking me to pay $150,000 for the Karen story and all these additional items that she wants to do. I don’t have a problem doing anything else you request … that’s not an issue. $150,000 – who is going to reimburse me for this?
Pecker said Cohen reiterated:
I’m your friend, the boss will take care of it.
Sam Levine
Once Dylan Howard had negotiated the price with Karen Mcdougal, David Pecker asked Michael Cohen again who was going to pay the $150,000.
Cohen again said, “I’m your friend, don’t worry about it, the boss will take care of it,” Pecker testified.
Prosecutors are establishing that this was done with Trump’s approval, not just Cohen acting alone.
Lauren Aratani
Prosecutors had David Pecker emphasize that Michael Cohen didn’t seem to have the direct authorization to reimburse for any payment to Karen McDougal.
They seem to want to emphasize to jurors that Trump, not Cohen, was ultimately behind the payment. Pecker says:
Every time we went out for lunch, I always paid. I didn’t think (Cohen) had any authorization… without Mr. Trump’s approval.
Pecker testifies Cohen said ‘the boss will take care’ of McDougal story payment
Sam Levine
David Pecker says that he advised Trump to buy the Karen McDougal story because:
I believed the story was true. It would have been very embarrassing to himself and also to his campaign.
After he spoke with Trump, Pecker said Michael Cohen followed up and advised him to go ahead with purchasing the story. When Pecker asked who would pay for it,
He said to me, don’t worry, I’m your friend. The boss will take care of it.
Pecker took that to mean he would be reimbursed by Trump or the Trump Organization.
Donald Trump is sitting expressionless as Pecker testifies.
Lauren Aratani
David Pecker says that he, Michael Cohen and Dylan Howard discussed buying Karen McDougal’s story, discussing other potential offers she said she was getting.
One was from ABC, “they were offering her a slot on Dancing with the Stars”, and the other was from a “Mexican group” that was reportedly offering a large sum (over a million) for the story. Pecker says he didn’t believe that this Mexican group existed.
Pecker had a call with Donald Trump in June 2016 where Trump said he spoke to Cohen about McDougal.
Trump said “Karen is a nice girl” and asked Pecker whether he believed the Mexican group existed, but Pecker told Trump “I think you should buy the story and take it off the market.”
Sam Levine
“He said she was a 12 out of 10,” David Pecker says the former editor in chief of the National Enquirer, Dylan Howard, told him about Karen McDougal after meeting with her.
Pecker says McDougal told Howard she didn’t want her story about Trump to be published. He says:
She said she didn’t want to be the next Monica Lewinsky … She wanted to restart her career.
Pecker resumes testifying about former Playboy model Karen McDougal
David Pecker is back on the stand and has begun testifying.
On Tuesday, Pecker testified that he first heard about Karen McDougal through the former National Enquirer editor in chief Dylan Howard. Pecker said on Tuesday:
Dylan came to me in early June of 2016 and said that he received a call from one of his major sources, in California, that there’s a Playboy model who is trying to sell a story about a relationship that she had with Donald Trump for a year.
“What kind of relationship?” Prosecutors asked. “Uh, romantic relationship,” Pecker replied on Tuesday.
Donald Trump described former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, who is returning to the witness stand today, as having been “very nice, a nice guy.”
As my colleague Sam Levine has just reported, prosecutors have submitted four new instances in which they said the former president violated a court-imposed gag order, including his latest comments about Pecker.
Speaking to reporters earlier this morning, Trump was also dismissive when asked about the gag order earlier this morning.
“Oh, I have no idea,” he replied when asked if he would pay the $1,000 fine for each of 10 posts, adding: “They’ve taken my constitutional right away with a gag order.”
Prosecutors accuse Trump of four more gag order violations
Sam Levine
Prosecutors began the hearing submitting four new instances in which they say Donald Trump violated the gag order in effect in the case.
Two of them involved comments about Michael Cohen he made earlier this week.
The third involved comments he made about his perception about the partisan lean of the jury.
The fourth involved comments this morning he made about David Pecker.
Trump said this morning Pecker’s been “very nice” which prosecutors said was a veiled threat to other witnesses that Trump could use his megaphone to say nice things about them or to insult them.
Justice Juan Merchan is on the bench. Court is now in session.
Sam Levine
Donald Trump, dressed in a red tie, has taken his seat at the defense table and the seventh day of his criminal trial in Manhattan is set to begin shortly.
Trump is chatting with Emil Bove and Todd Blanche, two of his lawyers, while we wait for judge Juan Merchan to take the bench.
Trump in court as David Pecker to resume hush-money testimony
Donald Trump has now taken his seat at the defense table.
The former president spoke to the media outside the Manhattan courthouse, where he mostly focused on the latest economic figures which show US gross domestic product rose at a 1.6% annualized rate last quarter.
“The numbers are very bad,” the former president said. “This is Bidenomics … It’s destroying our country.”
Trump spoke about his “fantastic” meeting with construction workers at the new JP Morgan Chase headquarters in midtown Manhattan this morning, before turning to the hush money case. Trump said:
My constitutional rights have been taken away from me. There is no case here. This is just a political glitch.
He added that he would have “loved to have been” at the supreme court hearing on his immunity claims but that judge Juan Merchan would not allow it and “put himself above the supreme court.”
Chris Michael
So who is David Pecker again?
Trump’s longtime ally and former publisher of the National Enquirer, Pecker was allegedly the key figure at the heart of the “catch and kill” schemes, whereby he paid people for their negative stories about Trump in order to keep them from being published anywhere.
On Tuesday, when he took the stand on Tuesday, he the court about being invited to a meeting with Trump and his then lawyer, Michael Cohen, in New York in 2015 after Trump had just declared his candidacy for president and was seeking a friendly and powerful media insider:
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,” Pecker told jurors.
Pecker said he had a “great relationship” with Trump over the years and considered him a “friend”, describing the former president as “very detail-oriented … almost micromanaging”.
Pecker discussed the first of three “catch-and-kill” schemes, involving negative stories for Donald Trump that prosecutors allege he suppressed to help Trump’s campaign. The first involved a former Trump Tower doorman, Dino Sajudin, who alleged that Trump fathered an illegitimate child. Pecker testified that he negotiated to pay $30,000 for the story, and that Cohen told him that “the boss”, referring to Trump, was “very pleased”.
Chris Michael
One thing that could be resolved today – though no guarantees in this courtroom – is the matter of the gag order.
Judge Merchan held off on deciding whether Trump should be fined $10,000 for attacking expected trial witnesses, mostly on social media, in direct violation of a gag order designed to protect trial participants from being the target of Trump’s abuse.
Merchan subjected Trump to a gag order before the trial began, covering prosecutors (but not the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg), witnesses, court employees, jurors and their families. Before the trial, Merchan then extended the gag order to cover his own family and Bragg’s family, after Trump posted about Merchan’s daughter, who worked for a company that helped Democratic candidates with digital campaigns.
Trump remains free to criticize Merchan himself, though doing so would be unlikely to win him any favors with the judge, who, let’s remember, would be the one deciding Trump’s sentence if he’s found guilty.
The judge reserved ruling from the bench on Tuesday, but he appeared deeply unconvinced by arguments from Trump’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, that a series of social media posts were just responses to political attacks on Trump and therefore permitted.
“Mr Blanche, you’re losing all credibility,” Merchan said.
David Pecker returns to witness stand in hush-money trial
Chris Michael
Good morning.
David Pecker returns to the witness stand today in the case of the People of the State of New York versus Donald Trump – the first ever criminal trial of a former US president.
Trump is accused by the prosecution of “orchestrat[ing] a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election” in his efforts to cover up an alleged affair with the adult film star Stormy Daniels.
They call it “election fraud – pure and simple”.
Trump’s defense says there was no crime committed because paying hush money is not illegal and neither is trying to influence the outcome of an election – “It’s called democracy.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the alleged affair Daniels just weeks before the election.
As a reminder (no shame – this stuff is confusing), it’s the first of four (4) criminal cases against the presumptive Republican nominee to reach trial. It hinges on a $130,000 payment that Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, made to Daniels to keep her story under wraps. Bragg contends that Trump masked the true nature of the payment in business records, by describing repayments to Cohen as lawful legal expenses. Because Trump paid the money to influence the election, Bragg says it’s a campaign expense, so by lying about it he violated federal campaign law – causing the fraud to rise from a misdemeanour to a felony.
Court is scheduled to resume today after a day off yesterday. We’re at the courthouse, as usual. Stay with us.
Trump’s criminal hush-money trial: what to know
