Trump’s lawyer exposes discrepancy in Pecker’s ‘catch-and-kill’ testimony
During Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York, a defense attorney questioned David Pecker about inconsistencies in his testimony regarding burying negative stories. Pecker, the ex-CEO of American Media, Inc., faced scrutiny by Trump’s lawyer about conflicting accounts of Trump thanking him for suppressing a story in 2016. The trial aims to prove Trump’s involvement in concealing payments to silence women during the 2016 election.
A defense attorney grilled David Pecker on Friday as part of former President Donald Trump‘s hush money trial in New York and identified an inconsistency in Pecker’s testimony regarding his practice of burying negative stories about public figures.
Pecker, the former CEO of tabloid publisher American Media, Inc., faced questions from Trump attorney Emil Bove about Pecker’s contradictory recollections of whether Trump personally thanked him for suppressing a story in 2016 ahead of the presidential election, according to reports from the courtroom.
Bove asked Pecker about an interview he gave to the FBI in 2018 during which Pecker discussed a process known as “catch-and-kill,” which involved buying rights to stories about high-profile people and then never publishing them.
During a meeting between Pecker and Trump on Jan. 6, 2017, “Trump did not express any gratitude to Pecker and AMI” for killing a story about Trump, according to the FBI’s notes from the following year, Bove observed.
The defense attorney then pointed out how Pecker testified from the witness stand one day earlier with an entirely different account. Pecker had said Thursday that Trump did in fact thank him at the meeting because AMI-owned National Enquirer reached a $30,000 deal with a doorman during Trump’s presidential run that prevented the doorman from going public with an unproven allegation that Trump fathered a child out of wedlock.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, charged Trump with concealing payments made to two women in 2016 to silence them after they wanted to come forward about alleged affairs they had with Trump, and prosecutors have sought to prove Trump’s motivation was to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Trump thanking Pecker right after he won the election would bolster prosecutors’ argument that the election drove Trump to participate in Pecker’s catch-and-kill schemes.
However, Bove emphasized during his cross-examination of Pecker how his accounts of the meeting with Trump in 2017 appeared to change.
“I know what I testified to yesterday, and I know what I remember,” Pecker said as Bove became louder and noted that lying under oath is a crime.
“Are you suggesting the FBI made a mistake here?” Bove asked.
Pecker doubled down on his testimony from the prior day.
“I know what the truth is. I can’t state why this is written this way. I know what was said to me,” he said.
Pecker, the first witness in Trump’s trial, appeared on the stand Friday for a fourth consecutive day as he testified about how he helped Trump in 2016 by publishing positive stories about him while also negotiating two agreements with sources, the doorman and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, on Trump’s behalf to quash their negative stories.
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Trump’s attorneys have highlighted how Pecker also helped suppress stories about other high-profile politicians, such as former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
They have also noted how politicians meeting with media organizations is normal and how nondisclosure agreements, such as those that Pecker reached with sources, are legal.
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