On April 26, 2024, former US President Trump sat in the courtroom of the Manhattan Criminal Court in New York.
Gina Moon | via Reuters
This is a developing story and will be updated throughout the day.
Former President Donald Trump’s defense attorneys on Friday continued their cross-examination of former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, who provided prosecutors with three days of scathing testimony in Trump’s New York criminal hush-money trial. .
Trump lawyer Emile Bove asked on Friday whether it was standard practice for the National Enquirer, the tabloid magazine Pecker once ran, to develop relationships with outside sources such as Trump and his then-lawyer Michael Cohen. Peck agrees.
He also appeared to confirm that the Enquirer often simply repeated old critical news stories over the years, including articles targeting former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Clinton, who had an affair with Trump in 2016 Run for president.
Peck was later forced to talk about his relationship with Cohen, trying to show that the two were closer than previously known.
Bove said Cohen in 2016 wanted Peck to find him a job at a company called iPayments and was also seeking help getting a position working with businessman Mark Cuban.
Pecker confirmed that Cohn asked him to send paparazzi to a meeting between Trump lawyers and Cuban. He did not say whether paparazzi were actually dispatched.
The hush-money agreement between Peck’s publishing company American Media and former Playboy model Karen McDougal also came into focus during Friday’s testimony. Boff sought to portray the financial agreement as primarily focused on promoting McDougal’s media career rather than trying to suppress stories about her alleged affair with Trump.
Peck acknowledged that US media outlets had published dozens of reports in McDougal’s name and that he told her the services portion of her agreement was worth “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Entering the courtroom on Friday morning, Trump said he thought Thursday’s trial was going “very well.”
He also complained that the courtroom was cold and he claimed the judge had a conflict of interest. He called the proceedings “a rigged trial”. Trump has repeatedly made the same accusation on social media.
Once cross-examination is concluded, prosecutors are expected to shift direction.
Peck’s testimony
Pecker testified earlier this week about the “catch and kill” scheme he devised with Trump and Cohen to buy the rights to negative tabloid stories about Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign without publishing them. reports, which actually kills them.
Pecker described how his publishing company paid a former Trump Tower janitor $30,000 for a story he believed was untrue, and paid McDougal $150,000 to obtain her account of the incident. Peck said he did believe the report was true.
Peck also explained that after buying the first two stories without reimbursement from Trump, he was unwilling to pay an additional $130,000 to buy the silence of adult film actor Stormy Daniels, who claims she had sex with Trump Ten years of sexual encounters occurred.
Pecker sat just a few feet away from Trump as Trump spoke, and the two occasionally glanced at each other. Trump was indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to cover up the repayments, which Trump eventually gave Cohen after Cohen’s lawyers and personal handlers paid $130,000 to buy Daniels’ silence. Repayments were paid.
Peck also testified that he suspected the company’s payments for Janitor’s Silence and McDougal’s story may have constituted campaign finance violations because they were essentially undeclared contributions to assist Trump’s presidential campaign.
He consulted a campaign finance lawyer about the matter, but the Enquirer’s parent company, AMI Publishing, later received inquiries from the Federal Election Commission about the payment.
The company eventually admitted campaign finance violations and paid more than 100,000 in 2021 $180,000 A mediation agreement was reached with the FEC to resolve the matter.
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