NEW YORK — After prosecutors’ star witness painted a tasteless portrait of “catch and kill” gossip fraud, defense lawyers in Donald Trump’s hush money trial are set Friday to delve into an account from the former publisher of the National Enquirer and its efforts to protect Trump from negative consequences. stories during the 2016 elections.
David Pecker will return to the witness stand for a fourth day as lawyers try to poke holes in the testimony of the former National Enquirer publisher, who has described helping bury embarrassing stories that Trump feared could damage his campaign .
The criminal cases facing the former president as he battles to reclaim the White House in November will continue for a week.
As jurors in Manhattan listened to testimony, the Supreme Court signaled Thursday that it would likely reject Trump’s sweeping claims that he is immune from prosecution in his 2020 election interference case in Washington. But the conservative-majority Supreme Court appeared inclined to limit when former presidents could be prosecuted — a ruling that could benefit Trump by delaying that trial, possibly 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 company records in connection with hush money payments intended to prevent negative stories from appearing in the final days of the 2016 campaign to surface. .
Prosecutors allege Trump tried to illegally influence the 2016 race through a practice known in the tabloid industry as “catch-and-kill” — capturing a potentially damaging story by buying the rights to it and then killing it through agreements that prevent the paid person from telling the story to anyone else.
Over several days on the witness stand, Pecker described how he and the tabloids turned the rumor mill into splashy stories that smeared Trump’s opponents and, just as crucially, used his connections to suppress seamy stories about Trump.
The indictment concerns $130,000 in payments Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen. He paid that amount on behalf of Trump to prevent porn actor Stormy Daniels from making public her claims about a sexual encounter with Trump ten years earlier. Trump has denied the meeting ever took place.
During cross-examination that began Thursday, defense attorney Emil Bove questioned Pecker about his memory of specific dates and meanings. He appeared to lay further foundation for the defense’s argument that any dealings Trump engaged in with Pecker were to protect himself, his reputation and his family — and not his campaign.
Pecker recalled how an editor told him that Daniels’ representative was trying to sell her story and that the tabloids could acquire it for $120,000. Pecker said he stood his ground, noting that the tabloids had already put $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 comes out, I think the boss will be very angry with you .’ ”
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Richer reported from Washington.