Ex-National Enquirer publisher testifies about adult-film actress, others at Trump’s hush money trial
Washington Post
Ex-National Enquirer publisher David Pecker’s testimony Thursday in Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York included references to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels and deals to quash potentially embarrassing stories about Trump ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Before Pecker began, prosecutors again asked the court to hold Trump in contempt of a gag order, citing additional statements he has made over the past two days.
The Supreme Court on Thursday morning was also hearing arguments about Trump’s claim that he is immune from criminal prosecution on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election.
On the witness stand Thursday, Pecker said he spoke directly with Trump and his aides about paying to shut down a former Playboy model’s story about a yearlong affair with Trump. He also said he heard about a story involving Daniels.
Pecker told the jury that coverup efforts he assisted in were designed to protect the then-candidate’s 2016 campaign, not his family.
In his second day of testimony, Pecker said that he did not think Trump and lawyer Michael Cohen, his conduit at the time, were aiming to keep the stories of two women – Karen McDougal and Daniels – out of the news to protect wife Melania Trump, daughter Ivanka or any other relatives.
“It was basically what the impact would be to the campaign and the election,” Pecker said.
Pecker said he had a conversation with the president-elect at Trump Tower in January 2017, shortly before Trump’s inauguration. At that session, Pecker said Trump thanked him for paying McDougal for her silence and for assisting in other coverups for Trump.
Neither Trump nor Cohen brought up Trump’s marriage in conversations that happened over months about how to handle McDougal and later Daniels, the witness said.
“His family was never mentioned and the conversation I had directly with Mr. Trump, his family wasn’t mentioned, so I made the assumption the (main) concern was the campaign,” Pecker testified.
The crux of the prosecution’s case against Trump is that he falsified records to conceal the fact that Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in 2016 to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual encounter she said happened a decade before.
Although the National Enquirer had paid McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story about a relationship with Donald Trump, the Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 4, 2016, that the Enquirer had paid to kill the story, four days before the presidential election. The Enquirer responded with its own article that said it didn’t pay for stories it wouldn’t publish.
“Was that the truth?” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked former Enquirer publisher David Pecker.
“No,” Pecker replied.
“Who authorized that story?” Steinglass asked.
“I did. … I wanted to protect my company, I wanted to protect myself, and I wanted to protect Donald Trump,” Pecker responded.
Pecker said he also spoke to Trump on the phone on Nov. 5, 2016, and told him that no one from the Enquirer had leaked the story.
“I don’t believe that Donald Trump believed me over the phone,” Pecker said. “He was very agitated. He couldn’t believe this happened. The call ended very abruptly. He didn’t say goodbye.”
Pecker testified that he first learned of Daniels’s alleged tryst with Trump days after the surfacing of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals.
Pecker said he was having dinner with his wife on a Saturday night in early October 2016 when he got an “urgent call” from Dylan Howard, his company’s former chief content officer.
According to Pecker, Howard said he’d received a call from two of his best sources that Daniels was trying to sell a story alleging a sexual relationship with Trump.
One of the sources, Keith Davidson, the lawyer for the Playboy model who received an earlier hush money payment, told him they could acquire the story from him for $120,000 “if we make the decision right now,” Pecker said.
The prosecution presented a text exchange between Pecker and Howard dated Oct. 9, 2016, two days after the Washington Post published the “Access Hollywood” tape story.
One text read: “Woman wants $120K has offers from Mail and GMA want her to talk and do lie-detector live. I know the denials were made in the past – but this story is true. I can lock it on publication now to shut down the media chatter and we can assess next steps thereafter.”
Based on the conversation, Pecker said, he knew the woman was Stormy Daniels. Pecker said he couldn’t pay the $120,000.
“I said, ‘I don’t want the National Enquirer to be associated with a porn star,’ ” Pecker testified. “Our largest retailer, distributor, Walmart, this would be very damaging for the magazine and American Media.”
He told Howard to call Michael Cohen, Trump’s then-lawyer.
Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass asked Pecker why he didn’t pay for the story. Pecker responded that his company had already paid $30,000 to a former Trump Tower doorman who was shopping a story about a Trump affair – later determined to be untrue – as well as $150,000 to Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model who said she had a sexual relationship with Trump.
Howard offered to call Cohen and “advise him” on how to handle the situation, according to Pecker.
Steinglass asked why Pecker thought it would be a good idea to kick the matter over to Cohen.
“I thought it could be very damaging,” Pecker said. “It should come off the market. If anyone was going to buy it, I thought Michael Cohen and Donald Trump should buy it.”
Jurors have heard Pecker reference the widely seen “Access Hollywood” tape that features Trump telling host Billy Bush in 2005 that he could freely grab a woman’s genitals because of his celebrity. However, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, has already ruled that playing the video would be too prejudicial, so while prosecutors can make reference to it, they cannot show the video itself.
In morning testimony, Pecker said he reached an agreement with Cohen in which a shell company created by Cohen would pay for the rights to Karen McDougal’s story. Pecker created an invoice using a phony company of his own, Investor Advisory Services, which billed Cohen’s shell company, Resolution Consultants, for the cost of McDougal’s life story rights.
But in late September 2016, after discussing the transaction with American Media Inc.’s general counsel, Pecker said he changed his mind and decided against selling the rights to Cohen.
“I called Michael Cohen,” Pecker testified, “and I said to him that the agreement, the assignment deal, was off. I’m not going forward. It’s a bad idea, and I want you to rip up the agreement. He got very angry, very upset, screaming basically at me.” Pecker said Cohen told him, ” ‘the boss is going to be very angry … I can’t believe it, I’m your friend, I don’t understand why you’re so concerned.’ ” Pecker said he was very concerned, without saying why, and squashed the deal.
Prosecutor Steinglass asked: “Did American Media ever get reimbursed for the money it spent to acquire the rights to Karen McDougal’s life story?”
“No we never did,” Pecker replied.
Pecker also told about a previous time he purchased a salacious story and killed it: a story about Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Pecker said that in 2002, he was preparing to buy some bodybuilding-focused magazines that had heavily featured Schwarzenegger over the years. He met with Schwarzenegger, who noted that he’d had to sue publications such as the Enquirer for their previous negative pieces about him. “I plan on running for governor, and I would like for you not to run any negative stories about me now or in the future,” Pecker said Schwarzenegger told him. He said Schwarzenegger also wanted to be an editor at large and a spokesman for the bodybuilding magazines.
“So I agreed,” Pecker said. “And shortly after he announced on the Jay Leno show that he was running for governor, after he made that announcement, a number of women called up the National Enquirer about stories that they have to sell on different relationships or contacts and sexual harassment that they felt that Arnold Schwarzenegger did.
“And the agreement that I had with Arnold is I would call him and advise him of any stories that were out there. And I ended up buying, acquiring them for a period of time. As he became governor, one of the stories that I acquired, I wasn’t going to publish, and the person who took that story, since we didn’t publish it, she brought it to the Los Angeles Times, and the L.A. Times published a story. It was very embarrassing. Most of the press approached Arnold when he was governor about this story, and his comment was, ‘Ask my friend David Pecker.’ It was very embarrassing to me and the company.”
Pecker said the Schwarzenegger experience informed the contract he signed with McDougal in 2016.
Trump sat through the first chunk of testimony Thursday morning without much visible reaction. He gave a big yawn amid a brief pause in David Pecker’s testimony about Stormy Daniels.
Before the trial, Trump greeted construction workers and union members at the construction site for the new JPMorgan Chase headquarters in midtown Manhattan. He also briefly addressed reporters in the hallway outside the trial, saying he would hold a rally at Madison Square Garden to honor police and firefighters or maybe teachers.
The trial is not being televised. The Washington Post has reporters in the courtroom and media overflow room who are posting live updates.
Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records related to his reimbursement of longtime lawyer Michael Cohen for a hush money payment to Daniels, who alleged that she had a sexual encounter with Trump years before he sought the presidency. Trump has pleaded not guilty.