‘Catch-and-kill’ to be described to jurors as testimony resumes in hush money trial of Donald Trump
NEW YORK — A longtime tabloid publisher was expected to tell jurors Tuesday about his efforts to help Donald Trump suppress unflattering stories during the 2016 campaign, as testimony resumes in the historic hush-money trial of the former president.
David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, who prosecutors say worked with Trump and Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, on a so-called catch-and-kill strategy to buy negative stories during the campaign and then to inflame, testified succinctly and will be back on the stand on Tuesday during the trial in Manhattan.
Also Tuesday, prosecutors are expected to tell a judge that Trump should be held in contempt over a series of posts on his Truth Social platform that they say violate an earlier gag order banning him from attacking witnesses in the case. Trump’s lawyers deny he violated the order.
Pecker’s testimony followed opening statements in which prosecutors alleged that Trump tried to illegally influence the 2016 race by preventing damaging stories about his personal life from becoming public, including by approving hush money payments to a porn actor who claimed to be a having had an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump. decade earlier. Trump has denied that.
“This was a planned, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal spending to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior,” said prosecutor Matthew Colangelo. “It was election fraud. pure and simple.”
A lawyer responded by attacking the integrity of the former Trump confidante, who is now the government’s star witness.
“President Trump is innocent. President Trump has committed no crime. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office should not have brought this case,” said attorney Todd Blanche.
The opening remarks offered the 12-member jury – and the voting public – radically different roadmaps for a case that will unfold against the backdrop of a closely contested White House race in which Trump is not only the presumptive Republican nominee, but also a criminal defendant with whom he is confronted. the prospect of a felony conviction and prison time.
The case is the first criminal trial of a former US president and the first of four prosecutions against Trump to go to a jury. In keeping with that history, prosecutors tried to elevate the seriousness of the case from the start. According to them, it was mainly about election interference, as evidenced by the hush money payments to a porn actor who said she had a sexual encounter with Trump.
“The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election. He then covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying again and again in his New York business filings,” Colangelo said.
Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying company records — a charge that carries a maximum penalty of four years in prison — though it is not clear whether the judge will try to put him behind bars. A conviction would not prevent Trump from running for president again, but because it is a matter of state, he would not be able to pardon himself if found guilty. He has repeatedly denied all allegations.
The case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg revisits a year-old chapter in Trump’s biography as his celebrity past collided with his political ambitions and, prosecutors say, he rushed to suppress stories he feared that they could torpedo his campaign.
The opening statements served as an introduction to the colorful cast of characters who figure prominently in that tawdry saga, including Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who says she received the hush money; Cohen, the attorney who prosecutors say paid her; and Pecker, who prosecutors say agreed to serve as the campaign’s “eyes and ears.”
In his opening statement, Colangelo outlined a comprehensive effort by Trump and his allies to prevent three separate stories — two from women alleging past sexual encounters — from surfacing during the 2016 presidential campaign. That endeavor was especially urgent after the rise late in the race from a 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording in which Trump bragged about sexually grabbing women without their consent.
“The impact of that tape on the campaign was immediate and explosive,” Colangelo said.
Within days of the “Access Hollywood” tape becoming public, Colangelo told jurors that The National Enquirer warned Cohen that Daniels was pushing to make public her claims about a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump.
“At Trump’s direction, Cohen negotiated a deal to purchase Ms. Daniels’ story to prevent American voters from hearing that story before Election Day,” Colangelo told jurors.
But, the prosecutor noted, “Neither Trump nor the Trump Organization could simply write a check to Cohen with a memo line that said ‘reimbursement for porn star payouts.’” It appears the payment was actually income, a payment for services rendered.”
These alleged falsified data form the backbone of the 34 charges against Trump. Trump has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels.
Blanche, the defense attorney, tried to preemptively undermine the credibility of Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to his role in the hush-money scheme, as someone with an “obsession” with Trump who cannot be trusted. He said Trump had done nothing illegal when his company recorded the checks to Cohen as legal fees and said it was not against the law for a candidate to try to influence an election.
Blanche disputed the idea that Trump agreed to Daniels’ payoff to secure his campaign, characterizing the transaction instead as an attempt to quell a “sinister” effort to embarrass Trump and his loved ones.
“President Trump fought back, as he always does and as he has a right to, to protect his family, his reputation and his brand, and that is not a crime,” Blanche told jurors.
The efforts to suppress the stories are known in the tabloid world as catch-and-kill: catching a potentially damaging story by buying the rights to it and then killing it through agreements that prevent the paid person tells the story to anyone. otherwise.
In addition to the payment to Daniels, Colangelo also described arrangements to pay a former Playboy model $150,000 to suppress claims of a nearly year-long affair with the married Trump. Colangelo said Trump “desperately did not want this information about Karen McDougal to become public because he was concerned about its effect on the election.”
He said jurors would hear a recording Cohen made in September 2016 of him informing Trump of the plan to buy McDougal’s story. The recording was made public in July 2018. Colangelo told jurors they would hear Trump say in his own voice, “What do we have to pay for this? Fifty one?”
Pecker is relevant to the case because prosecutors say he met with Trump and Cohen at Trump Tower in August 2015 and agreed to help Trump’s campaign identify negative stories about him.
He described the tabloid’s use of “checkbook journalism,” a practice that involves paying a source for a story.
“I gave the editors a figure that they couldn’t spend more than $10,000 on a story without getting his approval,” he said.
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Tucker reported from Washington.
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