While testifying under oath on Thursday, former American Media Inc. (AMI) CEO David Pecker made an eyebrow-raising statement that appeared to confirm the basis of the prosecution's case against former President Donald Trump.
According to Politico's live updates of Trump's ongoing criminal trial in Manhattan, Pecker told prosecutors that he believed his function to be specifically related to his longtime friend's presidential ambitions. Pecker also cast doubt on the defense's assertion that Trump was merely seeking to prevent his wife and children from learning embarrassing details about his personal life.
"I thought it was for the campaign," Pecker said on the stand. He added that any concern Trump may have had about his family hearing about the alleged extramarital affairs "was never mentioned" in his conversations with then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen.
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Pecker's admission that he believed he was catching and killing stories unflattering to Trump for the benefit of his campaign is at the heart of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's 34-count felony indictment. Prosecutors are alleging Trump conducted a scheme to cover up hush money payments to various women who claim to have had relations with the reality TV star and business mogul ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
While the charge of falsifying business documents is typically just a misdemeanor charge in New York, Bragg is attempting to convince jurors that the hush money payments were actually illegal campaign contributions since they were done to allegedly conceal information from voters that may have influenced how they cast their ballots. Prosecutors aim to call several witnesses, most notably Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, to lay out the scheme for jurors over the next several weeks.
Cohen already served a three-year federal prison sentence for his role in the scheme and for other crimes, and was Pecker's main point of contact for the "catch-and-kill" operation — in which AMI would buy the rights to various stories in order to bury them. According to Cohen, he was ordered to front the payments to adult film star and producer Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, and was later reimbursed by Trump, who labeled the payments as legal fees. Cohen has stated multiple times that there was never any legal retainer, and that the money was explicitly to buy the silence of both women.
The timing of the payment to Daniels is particularly of note, given that she was threatening to go public with her story after the Access Hollywood tape emerged in October of 2016. That tape featured audio of then-candidate Trump from 2005 boasting about how he could kiss and grope women without their consent because "when you're a star, you can do anything." The prosecution is arguing that the payments were made specifically because a public sex scandal coming out just weeks before Election Day could have derailed Trump's political goals.
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Daniels alleges that she and Trump slept together at a 2006 event (less than a month after his wife, Melania had recently given birth to their son, Barron), and that while the sex was consensual, she felt obligated to sleep with him given that she had just had a conversation with him about potentially being a contestant on his reality show, The Apprentice. Trump continues to deny Daniels' allegations, as well as McDougal's allegations that the two were in a relationship while Trump was married.
While Cohen, Daniels and McDougal are expected to testify in the trial, another major witness who could possibly shed more light on the alleged scheme is former Trump senior advisor Hope Hicks. Pecker said on the stand that both Hicks and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders were a part of conversations about extending the contract that bought the rights to McDougal's story. The trial is expected to last anywhere from four to six weeks.
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Click here to read Politico's report.
