The first witness called to the stand at the trial of Donald Trump, the former boss of an American tabloid, detailed Tuesday before the New York court how he had put himself at the service of his campaign in 2016 to hunt down scandals, claiming to have discussed this plan in front of him. With a pale pink tie, mustache, receding hairline and slicked-back hair, David Pecker, who owned The National Enquirer, one of those magazines with shocking front pages found on supermarket shelves, took the jurors behind the scenes of the conquest of the White House by his friend “Donald”.
A key testimony for the prosecution, which wants to see the Republican candidate in 2024 convicted for the concealment of the payment of 130,000 dollars to the former porn star, Stormy Daniels, at the end of the 2016 campaign. Money had been used to buy the silence of the actress who claims to have had a sexual relationship in 2006 with the Republican billionaire, which he denies, when he was already married to Melania Trump. However, David Pecker played a role in this type of bargaining, known as “catch and kill”.
Appointment
The two men have known each other since 1989 and like each other, says David Pecker. The 72-year-old press boss bought The National Enquirer in 1999 and his newspaper benefited from the success of the reality TV show “The Apprentice”, then its variation with show-biz stars. In 2015, after the announcement of Donald Trump’s candidacy for the White House, “I saw him more frequently, maybe once a month”, he explained to the jurors, under the eyes of the former president of the United States, present every day in the courtroom, his features drawn and looking tired on Tuesday.
August 2015, David Pecker has a meeting at Trump Tower in New York. Present are Donald Trump, his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, and his advisor Hope Hicks. “Donald Trump and Michael Cohen asked me what I could do, what my magazines could do to help his campaign (…) I said I would publish positive articles about Trump, and negative articles about his opponents,” says David Pecker. “And I also said that I will be eyes and ears”, to monitor the environment on any scandal ready to emerge, he adds.
“It was clear, in my experience, that when someone runs for public office like this, women will call a magazine like the National Enquirer to try to sell their story,” he explains. “All I said was that I would go see Michael Cohen,” he continued. “When I informed him of a negative article, he would try to see if it was true or not. He would then contact the publication concerned to ensure that the article was buried,” assures David Pecker.
Contempt
How Donald Trump reacted to this offer of service, asks the prosecutor. “He was satisfied,” emphasizes David Pecker. The press man gets to work when he learns that a doorman at Trump Tower is “(selling) a story about an illegitimate child” of Donald Trump. “I immediately called Michael Cohen.” Subsequently, $30,000 was paid to the doorman to keep quiet. $150,000 was also paid to a former Playboy magazine model, Karen McDougal, for her silence on a relationship with the White House candidate.
For the prosecution, these episodes are crucial to show that a ploy existed to cover up any scandal. Donald Trump is being prosecuted for 34 counts of falsifying accounting documents from his group of companies, the Trump Organization, to conceal payments to Stormy Daniels. Donald Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, insisted on the legality of the payments. Far from a conspiracy, he saw it as the normal functioning of a “democracy”.
On Tuesday, the court also examined possible sanctions against Donald Trump for contempt, because of his attacks, via the internet and social networks, against witnesses and jurors. Prosecutors believe that the Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election repeatedly violated the magistrate’s ban on attacking them. They requested that maximum fines be imposed ($1,000 per incriminated publication) and a reminder to Donald Trump that incarceration remains “an option if necessary”. The judge has not made his decision.