NEW YORK \u2014 Donald Trump fought mightily before and after he was elected president to keep secret the embarrassing details of his private life, but often failed despite having a fat checkbook and a well-connected tabloid editor in his pocket, according to the first week of evidence at his trial.<\/p>\n
Former presidents typically spend their post-White House years writing memoirs, making well-paid speeches and cementing their place in history. By becoming the first former president to face criminal trial, Trump is instead sitting in court, watching someone else try to define his legacy even as he campaigns for a second term in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n
Over four days of testimony this week, former National Enquirer executive David Pecker told the jury not just how deeply involved Trump\u2019s team was in using the supermarket tabloid to fuel his 2016 presidential campaign, but also how celebrities and politicians generally try to buy, trade or bully their way out of scandalous stories.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors tried to show that Trump was acutely aware of the machinations being made on his behalf by the tabloid executive and Michael Cohen, Trump\u2019s former lawyer and fixer. After Pecker\u2019s testimony concluded Friday, jurors heard from Trump\u2019s longtime assistant and Cohen\u2019s former banker.<\/p>\n
Evidence shows Cohen paid $130,000 in hush money to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election to buy her silence about an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump years earlier. Trump is on trial for allegedly falsifying business records related to his reimbursement to Cohen of that payment; prosecutors allege he categorized the payments as a legal fee, rather than a campaign expense, to keep it from public disclosure forms.<\/p>\n
The transactional tabloid dynamic was spelled out in raw terms in text messages sent by Dylan Howard, one of Pecker\u2019s top deputies and a former Enquirer editor. The most pointed of those messages were presented to the presiding judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, but probably won\u2019t be seen by jurors, because Howard is in Australia and for health reasons can\u2019t appear at the trial to testify.<\/p>\n
\u201cInformation is powerful, and I\u2019m collecting a lot,\u201d said one text from Howard to a close relative in June 2016. At the time, Howard had been assessing the credibility of various people who came forward with scandalous stories about candidate Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cMind you, in the event that he\u2019s elected, it doesn\u2019t hurt, the favors I have done, provided it\u2019s kept secret,\u201d Howard texted. \u201cAt least, if he wins, I\u2019ll be pardoned for electoral fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n
For years, Pecker told the jury, he and his friend Trump \u2014 then a reality TV star \u2014 had a mutually beneficial relationship that involved information-sharing in the celebrity world. When Trump decided to run for president, that relationship kicked into overdrive, as the supermarket gossip sheet published glowing stories about the brash tycoon, and ran many other stories pummeling his political rivals.<\/p>\n
Yet the first week of trial testimony showed the arrangement was far from foolproof.<\/p>\n
Just four days before the 2016 election, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the Enquirer had secretly paid a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, for the rights to her story about an affair with Trump. The Enquirer then refused to publish the story, a practice known as \u201ccatch and kill.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the Journal wrote about the arrangement, Trump called Pecker, furious. \u201cHow could this happen? I thought you had this under control,\u201d Trump said, according to Pecker. \u201cHe was very agitated.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the time, Pecker\u2019s company publicly denied buying McDougal\u2019s story to keep her quiet. After being granted immunity from prosecution, however, he testified that was precisely what he\u2019d done.<\/p>\n
Cohen promised him he would be reimbursed for paying McDougal, Pecker said, but his lawyers warned him later that such compensation was potentially a crime \u2014 and said he may have already broken campaign finance law by paying McDougal.<\/p>\n
And so, Pecker testified, he balked at paying again when a lawyer for Daniels came forward to sell her story of a sexual tryst with Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not purchasing this story. I am not going to be involved with a porn star, and I am not a bank,\u201d Pecker said he told Cohen.<\/p>\n
Trump ultimately instructed Cohen to pay Daniels $130,000 for her silence, according to evidence from this case and a previous federal investigation. The resulting reimbursements are the reason Trump is now on trial for 34 counts of falsifying business records. He has pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n
The Manhattan district attorney charges that Trump wanted such stories suppressed to aid his presidential campaign, particularly after The Washington Post reported in October 2016 that Trump had bragged on tape about grabbing women by their genitalia. Trump\u2019s defense team has argued that most of what the prosecutors are showing the jury is not criminal conduct, saying that if any crime was committed, it was by Cohen, not Trump.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors say Trump\u2019s primary motive in keeping the scandalous stories quiet was to help his campaign, but evidence they elicited from Pecker shows Trump was still trying to keep those secrets after he won the election.<\/p>\n
Trump also worried about boxes of documents about him that the Enquirer had acquired over the years, Pecker testified. The executive tried to reassure his friend and Cohen that the boxes of files were harmless \u2014 just a collection of old news stories.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, at a meeting at Trump Tower in late 2016, Cohen pressed Pecker to let him go through the boxes. Pecker refused, he said.<\/p>\n
At that same meeting, Cohen complained to Pecker that Trump had yet to reimburse him for the money he\u2019d paid to Daniels, and that he also hadn\u2019t received his Christmas bonus from his boss. \u201cHe asked me to speak to Donald Trump,\u201d Pecker said in court.<\/p>\n
So Pecker urged Trump to pay Cohen his bonus, to which the president-elect replied, \u201cDon\u2019t worry about it, I\u2019ll take care of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once Trump was president, it became harder to keep his skeletons in the closet, Pecker testified.<\/p>\n
Pecker\u2019s deal with McDougal was supposed to keep her quiet, but after the election he amended the deal to allow her to talk to the press \u2014 a move that led Trump to call him in a rage.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou paid her?\u201d Trump asked in astonishment, according to Pecker. \u201cHe was very upset. He couldn\u2019t understand why I did it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pecker went even further \u2014 he extended McDougal\u2019s contract to do pieces for his various publications, reasoning that keeping her under contract would ensure \u201cshe would not go out and give any further interviews or talk to the press or say negative comments.\u201d<\/p>\n
The executive testified that he explained his rationale for doing so in a phone call with Trump White House advisers Hope Hicks and Sarah Huckabee Sanders \u2014 now the Republican governor of Arkansas. \u201cBoth of them said they thought that it was a good idea,\u201d Pecker said.<\/p>\n
The efforts of all the president\u2019s subordinates did not assuage Pecker\u2019s growing concern that he had put himself in legal jeopardy by helping Trump in the 2016 election.<\/p>\n
In their cross-examination, Trump\u2019s lawyers tried to show the jury that the National Enquirer\u2019s arrangement with Trump was not unique to that political campaign, but part of a long history of buying and sometimes suppressing stories about celebrities.<\/p>\n
Pecker testified about a deal he struck with film star Arnold Schwarzenegger before he ran for governor of California, agreeing to shelve embarrassing stories about the actor. In exchange, Schwarzenegger lent his name to Pecker\u2019s workout magazines.<\/p>\n
The now-retired CEO said that he used photos of Tiger Woods having an extramarital affair to persuade Woods to give an interview and cover photo for a fitness magazine published by Pecker\u2019s company; and helped suppress negative stories about actor Mark Wahlberg and politician Rahm Emanuel.<\/p>\n
But with Trump, the stakes were suddenly much higher, Pecker realized.<\/p>\n
He said he received an alarming letter from the Federal Election Commission in early 2018, and immediately called Cohen.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are you worried?\u201d Cohen replied, according to Pecker. \u201cJeff Sessions is the attorney general, and Donald Trump has him in his pocket.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pecker said he was not comforted by that claim, and Trump lawyer Emil Bove tried to use that exchange to show that Cohen \u2014 who is expected to testify later in the trial as the prosecution\u2019s star witness \u2014 was simply unreliable.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were concerned,\u201d Bove asked Pecker, \u201cthat Michael Cohen had said something to you that wasn\u2019t true, because President Trump did not have Jeff Sessions in his pocket?\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawyer asked Pecker if Cohen was \u201cprone to exaggeration.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d Pecker replied.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
NEW YORK \u2014 Donald Trump fought mightily before and after he was elected president to keep secret the embarrassing details of his private life, but often failed despite having a fat checkbook and a well-connected tabloid editor in his pocket, according to the first week of evidence at his trial. Former presidents typically spend their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3624,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}