Tabloid publisher says he pledged to be Trump campaign's 'eyes and ears' during 2016 race

(23 Apr 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
New York - 23 April 2024
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Michael Sisak, The Associated Press:
"Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker returned to the witness stand and Donald Trump's hush money criminal case on Tuesday, and he talked about a meeting at Trump Tower in August of 2015 where he met with Donald Trump, Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen, and campaign communications director Hope Hicks. There, he says they hatched a plan for the National Enquirer to help the campaign to, in his words, act as the eyes and ears of the Trump campaign. Under the plan, the National Enquirer was not only going to publish positive stories about Trump, but also negative stories about his opponents and David Pecker said on the witness stand, they were going to look for negative stories about Donald Trump, possibly women coming forward with allegations of extramarital affairs. David Pecker said he did this because he wanted to help his long time friend, Donald Trump get elected."
++BLACK FRAMES ++
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Michael Sisak, The Associated Press:
"Pecker talked about meeting Donald Trump in the 1980s and having a long term friendship that only grew with Donald Trump's success on television with The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice. He described it as a mutually beneficial friendship, where the National Enquirer and other publications that pecker was involved with would publish stories about The Celebrity Apprentice, and they would see their sales climb. It was that relationship that fostered the early thoughts of Trump running for president. Pecker said he ran a reader poll in the National Enquirer and asked people if Trump should run for president. The results were overwhelming, and Trump started citing that poll as he considered running for president."
++BLACK FRAMES ++
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Michael Sisak, The Associated Press:
"Pecker talked about two of the stories that the National Enquirer was involved in suppressing. One involved a Trump Tower doorman who had a story that has since been refuted that Donald Trump fathered a child with a maid at his Trump Tower penthouse. The other story involved Playboy model Karen McDougal, who months before the election in 2016, was going to come forward with allegations that she and Trump had a long term extramarital affair. The National Enquirer caught wind of this and David Pecker, the publisher at the time, contacted Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer. He says that he talked to Cohen about an arrangement where they would pay Karen McDougal $150,000 to silence her to buy the rights to her story. According to Pecker, Cohen said that the boss will be very happy with these arrangements, talking about the doorman and also the, arrangement with Karen McDougal."
++BLACK FRAMES ++
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Michael Sisak, The Associated Press:
++ENDS ON SOUNDBITE++
STORYLINE:
A veteran tabloid publisher has testified that he pledged to be Donald Trump’s “eyes and ears” during his 2016 presidential campaign, recounting for a jury how he promised the then-candidate that he would help suppress harmful stories and had even arranged to purchase a doorman’s silence.
The testimony from David Pecker was designed to bolster prosecutors’ assertions of a decades-long friendship between Trump and the former publisher of the National Enquirer that culminated in an agreement to give the candidate’s lawyer a heads-up on negative tips and stories so they could be quashed.
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