Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified in the hush money trial of former President Donald Trump on Tuesday, detailing his efforts to help Trump stifle unflattering stories during the 2016 campaign.
Prosecutors allege that Trump worked with Pecker and his lawyer, Michael Cohen, on a strategy called “catch and kill” to buy up and then spike negative stories. Pecker testified that he met with Trump and Cohen at Trump Tower in August 2015 and agreed to help Trump’s campaign identify and suppress negative stories about him.
Pecker described the tabloid’s use of “checkbook journalism,” a practice that entails paying a source for a story. He said he gave a number to the editors that they could not spend more than $10,000” on a story without getting his approval.
Prosecutors also allege that Trump sought 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 alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied that.
The defense has attacked the credibility of Cohen, who has pleaded guilty to federal charges related to his role in the hush money scheme. The defense lawyer said Trump had done nothing illegal when his company recorded the checks to Cohen as legal expenses and said it was not against the law for a candidate to try to influence an election.
The trial is the first criminal trial of a former American president and the first of four prosecutions of Trump to reach a jury. Befitting that history, prosecutors sought from the outset to elevate the gravity of the case, which they said was chiefly about election interference as reflected by the hush money payments to a porn actor who said she had a sexual encounter with Trump.
