Tabloid publisher defiant as Trump lawyer tries to shake his confidence

NEW YORK — Lawyers for Donald Trump on Friday grilled the former publisher of The National Enquirer, casting doubt on his explanation for why he suppressed salacious stories about the Republican presidential candidate before the 2016 election.

The witness, David Pecker, who has known Trump for decades, faced a stern cross-examination from one of the former president’s defense lawyers, Emil Bove, who pressed Pecker about two deals he had reached in 2015 and 2016 with people who were seeking to sell stories about Trump.

Bove sought to convince the jury of two fundamental points about the stories, which Pecker bought and then buried: Such arrangements, characterized by prosecutors as “catch and kill,” were standard for the publisher, and that Pecker had previously misled jurors about the details of the transactions.

In one particularly tense moment, Bove pushed Pecker to explain a seeming discrepancy between his testimony this week and notes from a 2018 interview with the FBI. Pecker testified that Trump had thanked him after the election for helping to conceal one such story, but the interview notes did not record Trump’s expression of gratitude.

Pecker, who ultimately acknowledged the inconsistency, resisted Bove’s implication that there was a contradiction and said he had been honest in his testimony.

“I know what the truth is,” Pecker said, suggesting FBI agents might have erred in their notes. “I can’t state why this is written this way. I know exactly what was said to me.”

Pecker’s testimony was crucial for the Manhattan district attorney’s office as prosecutors seek to show that Trump was part of a three-man conspiracy to bury negative stories as he worked to win the presidency. Prosecutors argue that Trump eventually falsified records to hide a third hush-money deal in order to conceal the payment that his former fixer, Michael Cohen, had made to porn actor Stormy Daniels.

The former president faces 34 felony charges and could spend four years in prison if convicted. He denies all charges.

The prosecution witnesses who followed Pecker on Friday provided a less dramatic conclusion to the trial’s first week of testimony.

Rhona Graff, Trump’s former executive assistant and gatekeeper at Trump Tower, testified about entries from the Trump Organization computer system that contained contact information for Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, and a “Stormy.”

The day’s last witness was Gary Farro, who was Cohen’s banker when the former fixer executed financial transactions with First Republic Bank to enable the hush money payment to Daniels.

Farro will return to the witness stand Tuesday, when court resumes. He is expected to take less time testifying than Pecker, who began his four days on the stand Monday and said that he had come to an agreement with Trump and Cohen in a meeting at Trump Tower in August 2015.

There, Pecker said, he agreed to run what amounted to a covert propaganda operation for Trump, trumpeting his candidacy while publishing negative stories about his Republican opponents. Most importantly, Pecker said, he had agreed to be the campaign’s “eyes and ears,” watching out for potentially damaging stories.

On Friday, Bove called this testimony into question, arguing that Pecker’s promotion of Trump and denigration of other candidates was simply “standard operating procedure” for a tabloid, recycling titillating stories to sell magazines in supermarket checkout aisles.

Pecker agreed, without embarrassment, that such stories appeared in his publications. But he fought back several times as Bove sought to cast doubt on his credibility.

Bove focused on an August 2016 agreement that Pecker’s company, AMI, made with McDougal.

The publisher paid McDougal $150,000 to keep quiet about her story of an affair with Trump. But Bove, seeking to suggest that the deal had been more than a mere cover for the payment, pointed out that McDougal had received other benefits from the publisher, including guest columns and magazine covers.

Bove concluded the cross-examination by asking Pecker what obligations he was under as part of his agreement to take the witness stand, suggesting to jurors that his testimony was the result of cooperation with prosecutors. The publisher bristled.

“To be truthful,” Pecker said of his primary obligation, adding, “I’ve been truthful to the best of my recollection.”

After cross-examination, Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor, questioned Pecker further, asking him why the articles and cover stories had been specified in the $150,000 deal.

“It was included in the contract basically as a disguise,” Pecker said, adding that the actual purpose was so that McDougal’s story would not be published anywhere else.

Pecker did not run McDougal’s story of an affair with Trump. Nor did he publish a doorman’s story of a child born out of wedlock that his reporters determined was false. That was the scuttled story, Pecker said, for which Trump had thanked him.

Pecker said such a story would have helped The Enquirer sell 10 million copies, making it even bigger than the tabloid’s coverage of the death of Elvis Presley, which featured a picture of the singer’s body in his coffin.

In his testimony, Pecker offered a behind-the-headlines look at the tabloid’s sometimes seedy ways. They included offering protection from unflattering coverage to politicians, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, the “Terminator” star who went on to be California’s governor, as well as using damaging information about celebrities to pressure them into interviews.

But on Friday, Steinglass sought to set Pecker’s actions on behalf of the former president as a thing apart, asking questions that demonstrated that the publisher’s suppression of negative stories had been unique with regard to Trump.

Despite the defense lawyers’ aggressive questioning, Pecker was even-keeled, a small, gray-haired man answering in a quiet monotone. During direct examination by prosecutors, he had calmly set the foundation of the prosecution’s case, painting a vivid, tawdry portrait of Trump as a presidential candidate desperately trying to quash rumors about his personal life, often through his fixer, Cohen.

Pecker described Trump as becoming “very angry” and “very aggravated” about simmering scandals, and deeply concerned about McDougal, going so far as to inquire about her at meetings at the White House and at Trump Tower, even after he was elected.

“How’s our girl?” Pecker recalled Trump asking.

Trump, 77, the first former U.S. president to face a criminal trial, has denied the sexual encounters with McDougal as well as those described by Daniels, who says she had a one-night stand with him in 2006.

A decade later, as the 2016 presidential race hurtled toward its conclusion, Daniels was paid $130,000 by Cohen to guarantee her silence and, prosecutors say, to help Trump win.

Cohen was later reimbursed by Trump, and efforts to disguise those payments are the basis for the counts of falsifying business records that the former president faces. Each count reflects a different false check, ledger and invoice that, according to prosecutors, Trump used to hide the reimbursement’s purpose.

Trump has cast the prosecution as a “witch hunt,” an argument he has amplified in statements to reporters in a hallway outside the courtroom of Judge Juan M. Merchan.

Fifteen of Trump’s comments — mostly posts on his Truth Social account and campaign websites — have been cited by prosecutors as violations of a gag order that Merchan issued in March that prohibited the former president from attacking jurors, witnesses, court staff members and others.

Merchan has already held one hearing to determine whether Trump should be held in contempt and fined; another is scheduled for next week. It is unclear whether the results of the first will emerge before the second is held.

The former president’s criminal trial has riveted the political world, with a crush of media attention and occasional courtroom contretemps.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee this year, faces three other indictments, including two federal cases concerning mishandled classified documents and efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. He also faces a state prosecution in Georgia, involving election interference.

Attention on the criminal case in Manhattan will most likely intensify after arguments Thursday at the Supreme Court over whether Trump should have some immunity from prosecution for acts taken while he was in office. That could delay the federal cases past Election Day.

Despite appearing in New York court most weekdays, Trump has tried to remain active as a campaigner, appearing at a construction site in Manhattan on Thursday, and arranging for rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan next Wednesday, an off day for the trial.

On Friday, Trump, who was married when Daniels and McDougal say they had sexual encounters with him, wished his wife, Melania, a happy birthday and said he planned to go to Florida to spend the evening with her.

“It would be nice to be with her,” he said, standing in the courthouse hallway. “But I’m in a courthouse. For a rigged trial.”