Former President Donald Trump arrives at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday, April 26, 2024. (Jeenah Moon/Pool Photo via AP)
A drama-filled first week in Donald Trump’s New York City hush-money trial plodded to an end on Friday with the former president’s defense finally getting the chance to conduct an extensive cross-examination of the first — and so far only — witness called in the case.
And, in contrast to most of the week’s proceedings, the 45th president’s defense appeared to score some points against the state.
David Pecker, 72, the onetime CEO of the National Enquirer‘s parent company, American Media Inc., took the stand for the fourth time under a lengthy series of questioning by Emil Bove, an alum of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
And, while a great deal of that aforementioned drama did not inure to the defendant’s benefit earlier this week, the Trump team’s Friday questioning of Pecker slowly but surely turned the witness’ account into a semiporous storyline of ultimately questionable import.
Over four days and several hours on the stand, Pecker’s recollections sometimes looked like they would help the state’s innovative case about election interference; other times like they would help the defense in their quest to prove the case was much ado about nothing.
To hear the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office tell it, Pecker and then-fledgling candidate Trump entered into an agreement that mostly benefited the GOP candidate’s campaign: directly by running positive stories about the game show host turned nativist cable news phenom; indirectly by running negative stories about his political rivals; and one-sidedly by way of the so-called “catch and kill” process wherein AMI would pay for exclusive intellectual property rights to particularly damaging stories about Trump and then sit on them.
The state has pinned the genesis of this alleged agreement to an August 2015 Trump tower meeting between the former publisher, the 77-year-old defendant, and his former fixer, Michael Cohen, 57.
Pecker, however, who said he still considers Trump “a friend,” has described his efforts to help Trump as an informal “agreement among friends” that was “mutually beneficial” because it helped the campaign climb in the polls against its rivals while helping the National Enquirer rack up more sales at supermarket checkout lanes.
More Law&Crime coverage: ‘Abuse of prosecutorial power’: Law professor and Jeffrey Toobin clash on CNN over legitimacy of Manhattan DA’s ‘novel’ Trump hush-money case
On Thursday, the limits of the catch-and-kill operation were explored when Pecker testified about repeatedly rebuking Cohen’s demands to buy and bottle up the story being hawked by Stormy Daniels, 45.
On Friday, the defense sought to establish that the catch-and-kill idea was not brought up during the infamous Trump Tower meeting.
“At that meeting the concept of ‘catch-and-kill’ was not discussed?” Bove asked Pecker, according to a report by Law360 reporter Frank G. Runyeon.
To which Pecker replied: “That’s correct.”
Later, on redirect, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass attempted to salvage the witness’ testimony by acknowledging that while the term “catch-and-kill” was not used during the meeting in question, Pecker agreed to be the “eyes and ears” of the campaign, particularly regarding “women selling stories,” according to a report by Just Security fellow Adam Klasfeld.
During the redirect exchange, Pecker explained that his publications never attacked Trump because of their long friendship. But, the witness admitted, his publications never acted as Trump’s private intelligence firm or attacked his political rivals until after the meeting.
Still, with his friend being a political candidate for the first time, Pecker agreed with the defense that he would have run negative stories about those rivals even absent a meeting with Trump himself.
Trump’s defense also worked to muddy the waters about the overall nature of the catch-and-kill dynamic in general and specifically.
Throughout Pecker’s cross-examination, Bove used the term “standard operating procedure” to describe the concept of tabloids paying for stories — oftentimes to make sure they never saw the light of day. The witness eventually agreed that “checkbook journalism” was his business model. During one perhaps telling exchange, Pecker noted that AMI had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars catching-and-killing stories about Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Later on, the state attempted to draw a distinction between Trump and Schwarzenegger — prodding the witness to try and say that buying up stories that benefited the Total Recall star and former California governor was more in accord with AMI’s bottom line.
Bove also elicited testimony from Pecker that attempts to quash a Trump affair story being peddled by former Playboy model Karen McDougal — with a hefty $150,000 payout — were also legitimate business expenses for AMI. That’s because the publishing giant received commitments from her to both pose and write for several different publications as a fitness personality. And, over the course of roughly two years, 65 articles appeared under McDougal’s name.
The defense also pointed out, and the witness agreed, none of that money ever came from Trump or his campaign.
But efforts to altogether diminish the money factor were muddled.
The defense reportedly pushed Pecker to say he never understood money was part of the Trump Tower agreement meeting. The witness reportedly pushed back — reciting his newspaper’s role as the campaign’s secret investigatory arm. And, Pecker mused, once that information made its way to Cohen, there would likely be payoffs.
Steinglass was able to eventually get a concise rephrasing of that agreement from Pecker. The state also spun that general description into a more exacting instance as the courtroom broke for lunch.
“Is that true, Mr. Pecker, was that your purpose in locking up the Karen McDougal story, to influence the election?” the prosecutor asked.
The witness replied: “Yes.”
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