Court told of Trump’s fury at ally trying to quit hush money deal
Tabloid publisher David Pecker said the presidential candidate wanted him to hide that he was paying off Karen McDougal to silence her affair claims.
Donald Trump became furious after a longtime friend and publisher of a tabloid magazine tried to pull out of a “hush money” deal to silence his female accusers, a New York court was told.
Mr Trump is accused of falsifying internal Trump Organisation records as part of a scheme to bury damaging allegations that he feared could hurt his 2016 presidential campaign.
The trial is based on a payment to the porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet over an alleged sexual encounter with Mr Trump years earlier. It has also featured claims of another payoff, for the same reason, to Playboy model Karen McDougal.
David Pecker, who until 2020 was chairman of the National Enquirer publisher American Media, was testifying at the trial for a third day on Thursday, having said on Tuesday he had acted as Mr Trump’s “eyes and ears”.
Mr Pecker, 72, said he signed an agreement with Michael Cohen, Mr Trump’s longtime fixer and lawyer, to assign the rights to Ms McDougal’s story to a shell company that would hide the fact that Mr Trump was paying for it. He said he called off the agreement after speaking with a company lawyer.
“Michael Cohen said, ‘The boss is going to be very angry with you’. And I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not going forward, the deal is off’,” Mr Pecker testified, saying of Mr Cohen: “He was very angry, very upset, screaming, basically, at me.”
A deal was subsequently made, however Mr Pecker recalls a furious Mr Trump calling him personally to chastise him over the conditions. He detailed a conversation he had with Mr Trump when he first heard of Ms McDougal’s allegations, in which Mr Trump allegedly asked what he should do. Mr Pecker testified that he told him: “I think you should buy the story” and thereby keep it quiet.
“I believed the story was true,” Mr Pecker explained. “I thought it would be very embarrassing to himself and to his campaign.”
He said he understood that Mr Trump knew Ms McDougal, as he referred to her as a “nice girl” during the conversation. Mr Pecker was asked to pay $US150,000 to Ms McDougal for the rights to her story in the summer of 2016 with the intention of making sure it was never published, a scheme known in the industry as “catch and kill”.
At some point, the Federal Election Commission contacted Mr Pecker about his activities, after which he told Mr Cohen he was “worried”. Mr Cohen allegedly responded: “Why? Jeff Sessions is the attorney-general and Donald Trump has him in his back pocket.”
The prosecution also asked Mr Pecker about Ms Daniels. Mr Pecker said he did not want to pay $US120,000 for her story, claiming it was too dirty for the National Enquirer. Mr Pecker also said he was annoyed by the number and cost of payments he had already made on behalf of Mr Trump.
“I said I don’t want the National Enquirer to be associated with a porn star,” Mr Pecker said. He apparently did not want a cover image of Ms Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, showing up on newsstands. “Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels out of his own funds, which was the first time I heard of that. I wasn’t involved in the transaction.”
In cross-examination, Mr Trump’s lawyers asked how unique the “catch-and-kill” practice was to Mr Trump. Mr Pecker listed a number of other high-profile figures the magazine suppressed stories for, including actor Mark Wahlberg and golfer Tiger Woods.
Mr Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the 2024 election, listened intently, staring over in the direction of his former friend on the stand. Mr Pecker has largely been respectful of Mr Trump during his testimony, referring to him as “Mr Trump”.
During a campaign stop at a construction site in Manhattan earlier in the morning Mr Trump said Mr Pecker had “been very nice”, which the prosecutor Christopher Conroy characterised to the court as “a message to Pecker: be nice”.
Mr Conroy, who is urging judge Juan Merchan to fine Mr Trump over violations of a gag order designed to prevent him intimidating witnesses or court officials, argued that it also served as a message to other potential witnesses that Mr Trump had a platform and would use it to attack them if they were not kind to him. Judge Merchan is yet to rule on Mr Conroy’s request to hold Mr Trump in contempt.
Mr Pecker later testified he was aware expenditures by corporations to influence an election were illegal, but they needed to buy Ms McDougal’s story before anyone else. “We didn’t want the story to embarrass Mr Trump or embarrass or hurt the campaign,” he said.
Asked whether Mr Trump’s concern about the stories getting out was primarily about his family or the campaign, Mr Pecker responded: “I thought it was for the campaign.”
Mr Trump’s defence has argued the hush money payments were made to protect his family, and not done with the intention of “corrupting” the election.
Mr Pecker confessed that he had tried to structure Ms McDougal’s agreement purposefully to avoid triggering campaign finance law and even sought election law advice.
The Times
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