David Pecker says he was told ‘the boss will take care’ of paying for Karen McDougal story – live

From 42m ago

Pecker testifies Cohen said ‘the boss will take care’ of McDougal story payment

Sam Levine

David Pecker says that he advised Trump to buy the Karen McDougal story because:

I believed the story was true. It would have been very embarrassing to himself and also to his campaign.

After he spoke with Trump, Pecker said Michael Cohen followed up and advised him to go ahead with purchasing the story. When Pecker asked who would pay for it,

He said to me, don’t worry, I’m your friend. The boss will take care of it.

Pecker took that to mean he would be reimbursed by Trump or the Trump Organization.

Donald Trump is sitting expressionless as Pecker testifies.

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David Pecker testifies that Karen McDougal’s contract with American Media Inc included provisions that she would write fitness columns, among other things, to justify the $150,000 it was paying her.

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But the true purpose of the agreement, he testified, was to purchase her story about having an affair for Donald Trump. Pecker wanted to disguise the true purpose of the agreement for campaign finance purposes.

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It’s important to note that Pecker has not said Trump or Michael Cohen directed him to do this, but rather it’s something he did on his own.

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Pecker says he believes Cohen and Trump were aware of AMI’s agreement with McDougal.

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We’re looking at the agreement American Media gave to Karen McDougal over the payment.

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The agreement included language about a monthly column on ageing and fitness McDougal would write for the magazine, along with other work that McDougal would do for American Media.

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David Pecker said that the main purpose of the agreement was to buy “life rights” to McDougal’s story on “any romantic, personal and/or physical relationship McDougal has ever had with any then-married man” – as the agreement reads – but the agreement included details about work McDougal would do for American Media to “substantiate the $150,000 payment”.

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Prosecutors are emphasizing that Pecker and American Media appeared nervous about facilitating the hush-money payment and wanted to validate the payment by saying that the company was paying McDougal for work, not just for her story.

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As the longtime chief executive of American Media Inc, David Pecker developed a symbiotic relationship between Donald Trump and the National Enquirer, an AMI tabloid specialising in salacious scandal.

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Pecker is a key witness (with a non-prosecution deal) because when Trump ran for president in 2016, Pecker helped Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney and fixer, orchestrate payoffs to Daniels, Karen McDougal (a former Playboy model who also claimed an affair) and a Trump Tower doorman trying to sell a story about a supposed illegitimate child. On Tuesday, Pecker, 72, told the court:

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\n

I’ve had a great relationship with Mr Trump over the years, starting in 89 – I had an idea of creating a magazine called Trump Style and I presented it to Mr Trump and he liked that idea a lot. He just questioned me: who is going to pay for it?

\n

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Pecker in New York on 31 January 2014.","caption":"David Pecker in New York on 31 January 2014.","credit":"Photograph: Marion Curtis/AP"}},{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":"

Despite Trump’s famous enthusiasm for obtaining other people’s money – and equally famous ability to lose his own – Pecker described Trump as “very knowledgable … very detail-oriented … almost a micromanager”.

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The prosecution was attempting to show jurors a picture of Trump intimately involved not only with models and adult film stars but in deals to keep them quiet.

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David Pecker says that he advised Trump to buy the Karen McDougal story because:

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I believed the story was true. It would have been very embarrassing to himself and also to his campaign.

\n

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After he spoke with Trump, Pecker said Michael Cohen followed up and advised him to go ahead with purchasing the story. When Pecker asked who would pay for it,

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He said to me, don’t worry, I’m your friend. The boss will take care of it.

\n

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Pecker took that to mean he would be reimbursed by Trump or the Trump Organization.

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Donald Trump is sitting expressionless as Pecker testifies.

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David Pecker is back on the stand and has begun testifying.

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On Tuesday, Pecker testified that he first heard about Karen McDougal through the former National Enquirer editor in chief Dylan Howard. Pecker said on Tuesday:

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Dylan came to me in early June of 2016 and said that he received a call from one of his major sources, in California, that there’s a Playboy model who is trying to sell a story about a relationship that she had with Donald Trump for a year.

\n

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“What kind of relationship?” Prosecutors asked. “Uh, romantic relationship,” Pecker replied on Tuesday.

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Prosecutors began the hearing submitting four new instances in which they say Donald Trump violated the gag order in effect in the case.

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Two of them involved comments about Michael Cohen he made earlier this week.

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The third involved comments he made about his perception about the partisan lean of the jury.

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The fourth involved comments this morning he made about David Pecker.

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Trump said this morning Pecker’s been “very nice” which prosecutors said was a veiled threat to other witnesses that Trump could use his megaphone to say nice things about them or to insult them.

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Donald Trump has now taken his seat at the defense table.

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The former president spoke to the media outside the Manhattan courthouse, where he mostly focused on the latest economic figures which show US gross domestic product rose at a 1.6% annualized rate last quarter.

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“The numbers are very bad,” the former president said. “This is Bidenomics … It’s destroying our country.”

","elementId":"3a59c2c1-b6ed-4825-99f1-56f794109cdf"},{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":"

Trump spoke about his “fantastic” meeting with construction workers at the new JP Morgan Chase headquarters in midtown Manhattan this morning, before turning to the hush money case. Trump said:

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My constitutional rights have been taken away from me. There is no case here. This is just a political glitch.

\n

","elementId":"19210bc8-a87c-4f99-8b81-2e3aeeba3ac0"},{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":"

He added that he would have “loved to have been” at the supreme court hearing on his immunity claims but that judge Juan Merchan would not allow it and “put himself above the supreme court.”

","elementId":"05b8a554-b7de-4715-8e8a-0d12043badbf"}],"attributes":{"pinned":false,"keyEvent":true,"summary":false},"blockCreatedOn":1714051524000,"blockCreatedOnDisplay":"14.25 BST","blockLastUpdated":1714052098000,"blockLastUpdatedDisplay":"14.34 BST","blockFirstPublished":1714052052000,"blockFirstPublishedDisplay":"14.34 BST","blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone":"14.34","title":"Trump in court as David Pecker to resume hush-money testimony","contributors":[],"primaryDateLine":"Thu 25 Apr 2024 15.48 BST","secondaryDateLine":"First published on Thu 25 Apr 2024 12.52 BST"},{"id":"662a3b898f08b620b57105aa","elements":[{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":"

Good morning.

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David Pecker returns to the witness stand today in the case of the People of the State of New York versus Donald Trump – the first ever criminal trial of a former US president.

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Trump is accused by the prosecution of “orchestrat[ing] a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election” in his efforts to cover up an alleged affair with the adult film star Stormy Daniels.

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They call it “election fraud – pure and simple”.

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Trump’s defense says there was no crime committed because paying hush money is not illegal and neither is trying to influence the outcome of an election – “It’s called democracy.”

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Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the alleged affair Daniels just weeks before the election.

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As a reminder (no shame – this stuff is confusing), it’s the first of four (4) criminal cases against the presumptive Republican nominee to reach trial. It hinges on a $130,000 payment that Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, made to Daniels to keep her story under wraps. Bragg contends that Trump masked the true nature of the payment in business records, by describing repayments to Cohen as lawful legal expenses. Because Trump paid the money to influence the election, Bragg says it’s a campaign expense, so by lying about it he violated federal campaign law – causing the fraud to rise from a misdemeanour to a felony.

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Court is scheduled to resume today after a day off yesterday. We’re at the courthouse, as usual. Stay with us.

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Trump’s criminal hush-money trial: what to know

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A guide to Trump’s hush-money trial – so far

The key takeaways from the opening statements on Monday.

The jurors: who is on the Trump trial jury?

The key arguments prosecutors will use against Trump

How will Trump’s trial work?

From Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels: the key players

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Key events

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Sam Levine

Asked whether his principal intention in buying Karen McDougal’s story was to suppress it and prevent it from interfering in the election, David Pecker says:

Yes it was.

Lauren Aratani

Now we’re looking at documented evidence of American Media’s payment to Karen McDougal.

Prosecutors showed the invoice McDougal’s attorney sent to American Media and a record of the wire transfer for the $150,000 payment for her story.

Pecker testifies he believed Trump was aware of Karen McDougal contract

Sam Levine

It’s important to note that Pecker has not said Trump or Michael Cohen directed him to do this, but rather it’s something he did on his own.

Pecker says he believes Cohen and Trump were aware of AMI’s agreement with McDougal.

Pecker testifies he negotiated $150,000 payment for Karen McDougal’s ‘life rights’

Lauren Aratani

We’re looking at the agreement American Media gave to Karen McDougal over the payment.

The agreement included language about a monthly column on ageing and fitness McDougal would write for the magazine, along with other work that McDougal would do for American Media.

Sam Levine

David Pecker just recounted how he agreed to buy negative stories about Arnold Schwarzenegger in the early 2000s when Schwarzenegger was running for California governor.

The experience made him sensitive of campaign finance issues around buying stories for a candidate for office.

So when they negotiated the Karen McDougal contract, Pecker said, they wanted to make sure they met all of the obligations from a campaign finance perspective.

Martin Pengelly

David Pecker also described earlier this week a meeting at Trump Tower in August 2015 at which he, Donald Trump and Michael Cohen discussed how the National Enquirer could publish negative stories about opponents while quashing stories about Trump himself.

Again, prosecutors wanted to show Trump had been dealing with Pecker specifically to influence an election.

The relationship continued with Trump in power. In 2017, the New Yorker magazine described how Pecker rejected suggestions that the Enquirer cover a notable slap of Trump’s hand by his wife, Melania, on an overseas visit. Things unravelled when Stormy Daniels went public the following year.

It all means one Enquirer story from 2016, used by prosecutors this week, has acquired an irony all of its own. “Ted Cruz Shamed by Porn Star,” the headline read, above a picture of a woman wearing a bikini.

The actual story was about the Texas senator having to pull an ad when an actor had turned out to work in adult films. The headline and picture led readers to other conclusions.

Such is the world of the gutter press, from which Pecker came, to help Trump pull America into a gutter all of his own.

Who is David Pecker and why is he a key witness?

Martin Pengelly

I’ve had a great relationship with Mr Trump over the years, starting in 89 – I had an idea of creating a magazine called Trump Style and I presented it to Mr Trump and he liked that idea a lot. He just questioned me: who is going to pay for it?

David Pecker in New York on 31 January 2014. Photograph: Marion Curtis/AP

The prosecution was attempting to show jurors a picture of Trump intimately involved not only with models and adult film stars but in deals to keep them quiet.

Lauren Aratani

David Pecker is emphasizing that he expected to be reimbursed for the $150,000 payment he made to Karen McDougal.

He recalled a call he had with Michael Cohen where he asked him:

Why would I pay? I just paid $30,000 for the doorman story. Now you’re asking me to pay $150,000 for the Karen story and all these additional items that she wants to do. I don’t have a problem doing anything else you request … that’s not an issue. $150,000 – who is going to reimburse me for this?

Pecker said Cohen reiterated:

I’m your friend, the boss will take care of it.

Sam Levine

Once Dylan Howard had negotiated the price with Karen Mcdougal, David Pecker asked Michael Cohen again who was going to pay the $150,000.

Cohen again said, “I’m your friend, don’t worry about it, the boss will take care of it,” Pecker testified.

Prosecutors are establishing that this was done with Trump’s approval, not just Cohen acting alone.

Lauren Aratani

Prosecutors had David Pecker emphasize that Michael Cohen didn’t seem to have the direct authorization to reimburse for any payment to Karen McDougal.

They seem to want to emphasize to jurors that Trump, not Cohen, was ultimately behind the payment. Pecker says:

Every time we went out for lunch, I always paid. I didn’t think (Cohen) had any authorization… without Mr. Trump’s approval.

Pecker testifies Cohen said ‘the boss will take care’ of McDougal story payment

Sam Levine

David Pecker says that he advised Trump to buy the Karen McDougal story because:

I believed the story was true. It would have been very embarrassing to himself and also to his campaign.

After he spoke with Trump, Pecker said Michael Cohen followed up and advised him to go ahead with purchasing the story. When Pecker asked who would pay for it,

He said to me, don’t worry, I’m your friend. The boss will take care of it.

Pecker took that to mean he would be reimbursed by Trump or the Trump Organization.

Donald Trump is sitting expressionless as Pecker testifies.

Lauren Aratani

David Pecker says that he, Michael Cohen and Dylan Howard discussed buying Karen McDougal’s story, discussing other potential offers she said she was getting.

One was from ABC, “they were offering her a slot on Dancing with the Stars”, and the other was from a “Mexican group” that was reportedly offering a large sum (over a million) for the story. Pecker says he didn’t believe that this Mexican group existed.

Pecker had a call with Donald Trump in June 2016 where Trump said he spoke to Cohen about McDougal.

Trump said “Karen is a nice girl” and asked Pecker whether he believed the Mexican group existed, but Pecker told Trump “I think you should buy the story and take it off the market.”

The Guardian

USA News Hub