David Pecker returned to the witness stand for the fourth day as defense attorneys tried to poke holes in his testimony after he described helping bury embarrassing stories that Trump feared could hurt his campaign.
It will cap a consequential week in court for the former president as he vies to reclaim the White House in November.
At the same time, jurors listened to testimony in Manhattan, the Supreme Court on Thursday signaled it was likely to reject Trump’s sweeping claims that he is immune from prosecution in his 2020 election interference case in Washington. But the conservative-majority high court seemed inclined to limit when former presidents could be prosecuted — a ruling that could benefit Trump by delaying that trial, potentially until after the November election.
In New York — the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial — the presumptive Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments meant to stifle negative stories from surfacing in the final days of the 2016 campaign.
Trump denies any wrongdoing. Before entering the courtroom Friday, he told reporters he believes Thursday’s proceedings went “very well” for the defense, adding that “the case should be over.”
Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to illegally influence the 2016 race through a tabloid industry practice that involves containing, or “catching,” a potentially damaging story by buying the rights to it and then supressing, or “killing,” it through agreements that prevent the paid person from telling the story to anyone else.
Over several days on the witness stand, Pecker has described how he and the tabloid parlayed rumor-mongering into splashy stories that smeared Trump’s opponents and, just as crucially, leveraged his connections to keep seamy stories about Trump secret.
The charges center on $130,000 in payments that Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen. He paid that sum on Trump’s behalf to keep porn actor Stormy Daniels from going public with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the encounter ever happened.
During the cross-examination that began Thursday, defense attorney Emil Bove grilled Pecker on his recollection of specific dates and meanings. He appeared to be laying further groundwork for the defense’s argument that any dealings Trump had with Pecker were intended to protect himself, his reputation and his family — not his campaign.
Pecker recalled how an editor told him that Daniels’ representative was trying to sell her story and that the tabloid could acquire it for $120,000. Pecker said he put his foot down, noting that the tabloid was already $180,000 in the hole for Trump-related catch-and-kill transactions. But, Pecker said, he told Cohen to buy the story himself to prevent Daniels from going public with her claim.
“I said to Michael, ‘My suggestion to you is that you should buy the story, and you should take it off the market because if you don’t and it gets out, I believe the boss will be very angry with you.’”
Sisak, Peltz, Offenhartz and Richer write for the Associated Press.