‘I’ve been truthful’: Pecker strikes defiant tone during Trump trial
NEW YORK — Under a stern cross-examination by a defense lawyer for Donald Trump, the first witness in the former president’s criminal trial insisted Friday that he was being truthful about a plot to protect Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The witness, David Pecker, the former publisher of the the National Enquirer, had already described his involvement in suppressing the stories of two women who claimed to have had sex with Trump, who is charged with 34 felonies.
On Friday, one of Trump’s lawyers, Emil Bove, drilled into Pecker’s testimony, seeking to find inconsistencies related to what the former tabloid maven had said about his interactions with Trump and his intentions in publishing negative stories about Trump’s political opponents.
Pecker responded defiantly. “I’ve been truthful to the best of my recollection,” he said.
The Enquirer’s parent company paid $150,000 to one of the women who claimed to have had an affair with Trump, Karen McDougal, a Playboy model. Pecker urged Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, to handle paying the other, Stormy Daniels, the porn actor whose 2016 hush-money payoff is at the root of the prosecution’s case.
In addition to those catch-and-kill deals, prosecutors said this week that Pecker used his publication to amplify negative stories about Trump’s GOP rivals, including Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, while suppressing negative ones and promoting positive ones about Trump.
But Bove argued through his questions to Pecker that what he and the Enquirer did for Trump during his 2016 campaign for president was standard procedure for the tabloid. He has suggested that the publication dealt with Trump as it did any other high-profile figure, sometimes helping him with positive coverage and sometimes threatening him with negative headlines.
Trump, 77, is charged with falsifying 34 business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to Daniels, who has said they had a sexual encounter in 2006 and was shopping that story in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election.
Trump, the first American president to face criminal trial, has denied the accusations and the sexual encounter with Daniels.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office has accused Trump of falsifying business records when he reimbursed Cohen for the payment. If convicted, Trump could receive probation, or up to four years in prison.
This may be the only trial Trump faces before Election Day. His three other criminal cases are delayed, including one in Washington, where he is accused of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss. On Thursday, the Supreme Court heard arguments over whether Trump should be immune from prosecution for acts he committed while president. The court’s conservative majority seemed poised to narrow the scope of the case, which could make it hard to conduct the trial before the 2024 election.
Trump has injected an element of menace into his Manhattan case, attacking both witnesses and the jury, which prosecutors say could put them in danger. The prosecution argued Thursday that Trump had violated a gag order in the case four more times, bringing the number of alleged violations to 15. They have asked the judge presiding over the trial, Juan M. Merchan, to hold Trump in contempt, but he has not yet ruled on the matter.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.