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Post by Webster on Apr 23, 2024 12:27:27 GMT -5
(The Guardian) The court has just resumed after taking a short break, and David Pecker is returning to the witness stand. Donald Trump was seen leaving the courtroom earlier at the start of the break, and did not wave or respond to shouted questions from reporters.
We’re now moving into nitty gritty of specific catch-and-kill efforts. “Does the name Dino Sajudin mean anything to you?” Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked. “Dino Sajudin was a doorman at Trump Tower.” David Pecker said Dylan Howard, the National Enquirer editor-in-chief at the helm during the alleged hush-money schemes, apprised him that Sajudin was trying to sell a story “that Donald Turmp fathered an illegitimate girl with a maid at Trump Tower and the maid worked in Mr. Trump’s penthouse.” Pecker said, “I called Michael Cohen and I described to him exactly what I was told by Dylan,” in keeping with his agreement with Trump. Cohen insisted the account was “absolutely not true, but I’ll check it out,” Pecker also testified.
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Post by Webster on Apr 23, 2024 17:17:47 GMT -5
(The Guardian) 2:46pm Summary--Judge Juan Merchan held off on deciding whether Trump should be fined $10,000 for attacking expected trial witnesses in direct violation of a gag order designed to protect trial participants from being the target of Trump’s abuse. --Merchan subjected Trump to a gag order before the trial began, covering prosecutors (but not the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg), witnesses, court employees, jurors and their families. Before the trial, Merchan then extended the gag order to cover his own family and Bragg’s family. Trump remains free to criticize Merchan himself, though doing so would be unlikely to win any favors from the judge, who will decide Trump’s sentence should the jury find him guilty. --Judge Merchan reserved ruling from the bench on Tuesday, but he appeared deeply unconvinced by arguments from Trump’s lead lawyer Todd Blanche that a series of social media posts were just responses to political attacks on Trump and therefore permitted. “Mr Blanche, you’re losing all credibility,” Merchan said. --David Pecker, Trump’s longtime ally and former publisher of the National Enquirer, was on the stand again as a prosecution witness following a brief appearance on Monday after opening statements. --Pecker told the court about being invited to a meeting with Trump and his then lawyer, Michael Cohen, in New York in 2015 after Trump had just declared his candidacy for president and was seeking a friendly and powerful media insider. “I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents, and I said that I would also be the eyes and ears,” Pecker told jurors. --Pecker said he had a “great relationship” with Trump over the years and considered him a “friend”, describing the former president as “very detail oriented … almost micromanaging”. --Pecker discussed the first of three “catch and kill” schemes, involving negative stories for Trump that prosecutors allege he suppressed to help his campaign. The first involved a former Trump Tower doorman, Dino Sajudin, who alleged that Trump fathered illegitimate children. Pecker testified that he negotiated to pay $30,000 for the story, and that Cohen told him that “the boss”, referring to Trump, was “very pleased”. The story turned out not to be true, Pecker said. --Pecker also began to discuss Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who alleged that she had an affair with Trump. McDougal is expected to take the witness stand during this trial. Trump spoke to the media outside the courtroom, where he rallied against pro-Palestinian protests happening in various US college campuses. --The court adjourned early at 2pm ET for the Passover holiday. Pecker is expected to testify further when the trial resumes on Thursday.
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Post by Webster on Apr 25, 2024 11:55:18 GMT -5
(The Guardian) David Pecker returns to witness stand in hush-money trialDavid Pecker returns to the witness stand today in the case of the People of the State of New York versus Donald Trump – the first ever criminal trial of a former US president. Trump is accused by the prosecution of “orchestrat[ing] a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election” in his efforts to cover up an alleged affair with the adult film star Stormy Daniels. They call it “election fraud – pure and simple”. Trump’s defense says there was no crime committed because paying hush money is not illegal and neither is trying to influence the outcome of an election – “It’s called democracy.” Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the alleged affair Daniels just weeks before the election. As a reminder (no shame – this stuff is confusing), it’s the first of four (4) criminal cases against the presumptive Republican nominee to reach trial. It hinges on a $130,000 payment that Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, made to Daniels to keep her story under wraps. Bragg contends that Trump masked the true nature of the payment in business records, by describing repayments to Cohen as lawful legal expenses. Because Trump paid the money to influence the election, Bragg says it’s a campaign expense, so by lying about it he violated federal campaign law – causing the fraud to rise from a misdemeanour to a felony.
One thing that could be resolved today – though no guarantees in this courtroom – is the matter of the gag order. Judge Merchan held off on deciding whether Trump should be fined $10,000 for attacking expected trial witnesses, mostly on social media, in direct violation of a gag order designed to protect trial participants from being the target of Trump’s abuse. Merchan subjected Trump to a gag order before the trial began, covering prosecutors (but not the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg), witnesses, court employees, jurors and their families. Before the trial, Merchan then extended the gag order to cover his own family and Bragg’s family, after Trump posted about Merchan’s daughter, who worked for a company that helped Democratic candidates with digital campaigns. Trump remains free to criticize Merchan himself, though doing so would be unlikely to win him any favors with the judge, who, let’s remember, would be the one deciding Trump’s sentence if he’s found guilty. The judge reserved ruling from the bench on Tuesday, but he appeared deeply unconvinced by arguments from Trump’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, that a series of social media posts were just responses to political attacks on Trump and therefore permitted. “Mr Blanche, you’re losing all credibility,” Merchan said.
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Post by Webster on Apr 25, 2024 11:56:15 GMT -5
(The Guardian) So who is David Pecker again? Trump’s longtime ally and former publisher of the National Enquirer, Pecker was allegedly the key figure at the heart of the “catch and kill” schemes, whereby he paid people for their negative stories about Trump in order to keep them from being published anywhere. On Tuesday, when he took the stand on Tuesday, he the court about being invited to a meeting with Trump and his then lawyer, Michael Cohen, in New York in 2015 after Trump had just declared his candidacy for president and was seeking a friendly and powerful media insider: I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents, and I said that I would also be the eyes and ears,” Pecker told jurors.Pecker said he had a “great relationship” with Trump over the years and considered him a “friend”, describing the former president as “very detail-oriented … almost micromanaging”. Pecker discussed the first of three “catch-and-kill” schemes, involving negative stories for Donald Trump that prosecutors allege he suppressed to help Trump’s campaign. The first involved a former Trump Tower doorman, Dino Sajudin, who alleged that Trump fathered an illegitimate child. Pecker testified that he negotiated to pay $30,000 for the story, and that Cohen told him that “the boss”, referring to Trump, was “very pleased”.
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Post by Webster on Apr 25, 2024 11:57:26 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Trump in court as David Pecker to resume hush-money testimonyDonald Trump has now taken his seat at the defense table. The former president spoke to the media outside the Manhattan courthouse, where he mostly focused on the latest economic figures which show US gross domestic product rose at a 1.6% annualized rate last quarter. “The numbers are very bad,” the former president said. “This is Bidenomics … It’s destroying our country.” Trump spoke about his “fantastic” meeting with construction workers at the new JP Morgan Chase headquarters in midtown Manhattan this morning, before turning to the hush money case. Trump said: My constitutional rights have been taken away from me. There is no case here. This is just a political glitch.He added that he would have “loved to have been” at the supreme court hearing on his immunity claims but that judge Juan Merchan would not allow it and “put himself above the supreme court.”
Donald Trump, dressed in a red tie, has taken his seat at the defense table and the seventh day of his criminal trial in Manhattan is set to begin shortly. Trump is chatting with Emil Bove and Todd Blanche, two of his lawyers, while we wait for judge Juan Merchan to take the bench.
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Post by Webster on Apr 25, 2024 11:58:40 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Prosecutors accuse Trump of four more gag order violationsProsecutors began the hearing submitting four new instances in which they say Donald Trump violated the gag order in effect in the case. Two of them involved comments about Michael Cohen he made earlier this week. The third involved comments he made about his perception about the partisan lean of the jury. The fourth involved comments this morning he made about David Pecker. Trump said this morning Pecker’s been “very nice” which prosecutors said was a veiled threat to other witnesses that Trump could use his megaphone to say nice things about them or to insult them.
Donald Trump described former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, who is returning to the witness stand today, as having been “very nice, a nice guy.” As (Guardian correspondent) Sam Levine has just reported, prosecutors have submitted four new instances in which they said the former president violated a court-imposed gag order, including his latest comments about Pecker. Speaking to reporters earlier this morning, Trump was also dismissive when asked about the gag order earlier this morning. “Oh, I have no idea,” he replied when asked if he would pay the $1,000 fine for each of 10 posts, adding: “They’ve taken my constitutional right away with a gag order.”
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Post by Webster on Apr 25, 2024 12:00:57 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Pecker resumes testifying about former Playboy model Karen McDougalDavid Pecker is back on the stand and has begun testifying. On Tuesday, Pecker testified that he first heard about Karen McDougal through the former National Enquirer editor in chief Dylan Howard. Pecker said on Tuesday: Dylan came to me in early June of 2016 and said that he received a call from one of his major sources, in California, that there’s a Playboy model who is trying to sell a story about a relationship that she had with Donald Trump for a year.“What kind of relationship?” Prosecutors asked. “Uh, romantic relationship,” Pecker replied on Tuesday.
“He said she was a 12 out of 10,” David Pecker says the former editor in chief of the National Enquirer, Dylan Howard, told him about Karen McDougal after meeting with her. Pecker says McDougal told Howard she didn’t want her story about Trump to be published. He says: She said she didn’t want to be the next Monica Lewinsky … She wanted to restart her career.
David Pecker says that he, Michael Cohen and Dylan Howard discussed buying Karen McDougal’s story, discussing other potential offers she said she was getting. One was from ABC, “they were offering her a slot on Dancing with the Stars”, and the other was from a “Mexican group” that was reportedly offering a large sum (over a million) for the story. Pecker says he didn’t believe that this Mexican group existed. Pecker had a call with Donald Trump in June 2016 where Trump said he spoke to Cohen about McDougal. Trump said “Karen is a nice girl” and asked Pecker whether he believed the Mexican group existed, but Pecker told Trump “I think you should buy the story and take it off the market.”
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Post by Webster on Apr 25, 2024 12:05:30 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Pecker testifies Cohen said 'the boss will take care' of McDougal story paymentDavid Pecker says that he advised Trump to buy the Karen McDougal story because: I believed the story was true. It would have been very embarrassing to himself and also to his campaign.After he spoke with Trump, Pecker said Michael Cohen followed up and advised him to go ahead with purchasing the story. When Pecker asked who would pay for it, He said to me, don’t worry, I’m your friend. The boss will take care of it.Pecker took that to mean he would be reimbursed by Trump or the Trump Organization. Donald Trump is sitting expressionless as Pecker testifies.
Prosecutors had David Pecker emphasize that Michael Cohen didn’t seem to have the direct authorization to reimburse for any payment to Karen McDougal. They seem to want to emphasize to jurors that Trump, not Cohen, was ultimately behind the payment. Pecker says: Every time we went out for lunch, I always paid. I didn’t think (Cohen) had any authorization… without Mr. Trump’s approval.
Once Dylan Howard had negotiated the price with Karen Mcdougal, David Pecker asked Michael Cohen again who was going to pay the $150,000. Cohen again said, “I’m your friend, don’t worry about it, the boss will take care of it,” Pecker testified. Prosecutors are establishing that this was done with Trump’s approval, not just Cohen acting alone.
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Post by Webster on Apr 25, 2024 12:07:00 GMT -5
(The Guardian) David Pecker is emphasizing that he expected to be reimbursed for the $150,000 payment he made to Karen McDougal. He recalled a call he had with Michael Cohen where he asked him: Why would I pay? I just paid $30,000 for the doorman story. Now you’re asking me to pay $150,000 for the Karen story and all these additional items that she wants to do. I don’t have a problem doing anything else you request … that’s not an issue. $150,000 – who is going to reimburse me for this?Pecker said Cohen reiterated: I’m your friend, the boss will take care of it.
David Pecker also described earlier this week a meeting at Trump Tower in August 2015 at which he, Donald Trump and Michael Cohen discussed how the National Enquirer could publish negative stories about opponents while quashing stories about Trump himself. Again, prosecutors wanted to show Trump had been dealing with Pecker specifically to influence an election. The relationship continued with Trump in power. In 2017, the New Yorker magazine described how Pecker rejected suggestions that the Enquirer cover a notable slap of Trump’s hand by his wife, Melania, on an overseas visit. Things unravelled when Stormy Daniels went public the following year. It all means one Enquirer story from 2016, used by prosecutors this week, has acquired an irony all of its own. “Ted Cruz Shamed by Porn Star,” the headline read, above a picture of a woman wearing a bikini. The actual story was about the Texas senator having to pull an ad when an actor had turned out to work in adult films. The headline and picture led readers to other conclusions. Such is the world of the gutter press, from which Pecker came, to help Trump pull America into a gutter all of his own.
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Post by Webster on Apr 25, 2024 12:07:48 GMT -5
(The Guardian) David Pecker just recounted how he agreed to buy negative stories about Arnold Schwarzenegger in the early 2000s when Schwarzenegger was running for California governor. The experience made him sensitive of campaign finance issues around buying stories for a candidate for office. So when they negotiated the Karen McDougal contract, Pecker said, they wanted to make sure they met all of the obligations from a campaign finance perspective.
We’re looking at the agreement American Media gave to Karen McDougal over the payment. The agreement included language about a monthly column on ageing and fitness McDougal would write for the magazine, along with other work that McDougal would do for American Media. David Pecker said that the main purpose of the agreement was to buy “life rights” to McDougal’s story on “any romantic, personal and/or physical relationship McDougal has ever had with any then-married man” – as the agreement reads – but the agreement included details about work McDougal would do for American Media to “substantiate the $150,000 payment”. Prosecutors are emphasizing that Pecker and American Media appeared nervous about facilitating the hush-money payment and wanted to validate the payment by saying that the company was paying McDougal for work, not just for her story.
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Post by Webster on Apr 25, 2024 12:09:17 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Pecker testifies he believed Trump was aware of Karen McDougal contractDavid Pecker testifies that Karen McDougal’s contract with American Media Inc included provisions that she would write fitness columns, among other things, to justify the $150,000 it was paying her. But the true purpose of the agreement, he testified, was to purchase her story about having an affair for Donald Trump. Pecker wanted to disguise the true purpose of the agreement for campaign finance purposes. It’s important to note that Pecker has not said Trump or Michael Cohen directed him to do this, but rather it’s something he did on his own. Pecker says he believes Cohen and Trump were aware of AMI’s agreement with McDougal.
Now we’re looking at documented evidence of American Media’s payment to Karen McDougal. Prosecutors showed the invoice McDougal’s attorney sent to American Media and a record of the wire transfer for the $150,000 payment for her story.
Asked whether his principal intention in buying Karen McDougal’s story was to suppress it and prevent it from interfering in the election, David Pecker says: Yes it was.
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Post by Webster on Apr 25, 2024 12:10:56 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Pecker testifies he bought McDougal story so it did not 'hurt Trump campaign'When asked why AMI paid Karen McDougal, David Pecker paused for a few second. -- We purchased the story so it wouldn’t be published by any other organization.When asked to clarify, Pecker said, reiterated: We didn’t want this story to embarrass Mr Trump or embarrass or hurt the campaign” – ‘we’ being ‘myself and Michael Cohen.’
In September of 2016, Michael Cohen told David Pecker that Donald Trump wanted to acquire the lifetime rights to Karen McDougal’s story as well as all of the National Enquirer’s files on Trump. Cohen called Pecker constantly about this, Pecker testified. Even though Pecker said most of the content was old news files, Cohen said Trump still wanted it. Pecker said of Cohen: He said the boss said that if I got hit by a bus or if the company was sold, he did not want someone else to potentially publish those stories.
In September of 2016, AMI had reached an agreement for Michael Cohen to reimburse them $125,000 for the rights to Karen McDougal’s story. The agreement was signed by David Pecker and Cohen on 30 September 2016. But then Pecker spoke with AMI’s lawyer and decided to call the agreement off. Prosecutors did not ask Pecker about the contents of that conversation, citing attorney client privilege. When Pecker told Cohen the agreement was off, Cohen was furious, Pecker testified: He was very, very angry, very upset, screaming basically at me. And I said I’m not going forward with this agreement.
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Post by Webster on Apr 25, 2024 12:11:44 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Who is Karen McDougal, the other woman in Trump’s hush-money case?The hush money payments Donald Trump has been accused of making involve not only adult film star Stormy Daniels, who has dominated headlines in recent months, but also Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model. In 2018, McDougal told CNN she had an extramarital affair with the former president that began in 2006, which Trump denies. He has been married to his third wife, Melania Trump, since 2005. According to McDougal, the affair involved having sex with Trump “many dozens of times” and occurred in multiple locations including at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, California, and at his private golf club in New Jersey, as well as in Trump Tower in New York City, where she was allegedly brought in through the back entrance. Despite Trump’s denials that an extramarital affair with McDougal ever occurred, the New York prosecution team has cited evidence of payments made to McDougal by Trump. Born in Indiana, McDougal is a 52-year old actor and former Playboy model. According to her website, she began her career in her 20s as a fitness model for various health and fitness publications. In 1997, McDougal became a Playboy “playmate” and made “playmate of the year” in 1998. In 1999, McDougal appeared on the cover of Men’s Fitness magazine. Since then, McDougal made various appearances as a sports radio personality and was cast in the 2001 direct-to-video film The Arena by Russian-Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov. In The Arena, McDougal plays an Amazon slave who is forced to become a gladiator in Rome. According to her website, McDougal is a national advocate for breast implant illness and is an active member in various support groups, following her implant removal in 2017. Her activism work also includes raising awareness on deep vein thrombosis and animal rights.
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Post by Webster on Apr 25, 2024 12:13:21 GMT -5
(The Guardian) In 2018, the New Yorker published a letter written by Karen McDougal about her alleged experiences with Donald Trump during their first date at the Beverly Hills Hotel. In the letter, McDougal wrote: We talked for a couple hours – then, it was ‘ON’! We got naked + had sex. After we got dressed (to leave), he offered me money. I looked at him (+ felt sad) and said, ‘No thanks – I’m not ‘that girl.’ I slept w/you because I like you – NOT for money’ – He told me ‘you are special.’That same year, McDougal publicly apologized to Melania Trump for the alleged affair, saying on CNN: I’m sorry, I wouldn’t want it done to me … When I look back, where I was back then, I know it’s wrong … I’m really sorry for that. I know it’s a wrong thing to do.
Now David Pecker is being asked about the Access Hollywood tapes, which were released in October 2016, just a month before the election. The judge had ruled against the tape itself being a part of evidence in the trial, so prosecutors had Pecker describe the tape. A pretty bizarre moment. Pecker said that the tape was: Donald Trump and Billy Bush, an anchor for Access Hollywood, going on a bus, and [Trump] said the comment … ‘You can grab a woman by their genitals’.Donald Trump appeared to be fidgeting in his seat as Pecker was talking about the tape. When asked what happened when the tape was released, Pecker said: It was very embarrassing and very damaging for the campaign.Seems like prosecutors are setting up Pecker up to talk about Stormy Daniels, who was paid $130,000 just three weeks after the tapes were released. In court documents, prosecutors have argued that the release of the tapes amped up pressure on the campaign to kill any other negative stories that could come out about Trump.
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Post by Webster on Apr 25, 2024 12:14:35 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Pecker begins testifying about Stormy DanielsDavid Pecker repeats something that is well known about Donald Trump: that he doesn’t use email. Pecker says he has never communicated with Trump by email and always through office phone. Pecker says he got an urgent call one Saturday evening in early October from Dylan Howard, the National Enquirer editor-in-chief, when he was having dinner with his wife. Pecker left the restaurant and said Howard had gotten a call from his two best sources saying Stormy Daniels was looking to sell her story about having an affair with Donald Trump. Howard told Pecker they could have the story for $120,000 if they decided right then. This is the first time Daniels has come up today after prosecutors spent the morning going through how Pecker bought the Karen McDougal story.
Prosecutors are showing a text from Dylan Howard to David Pecker in court about Stormy Daniels. Howard texted: I know the denials were made in the past - but this story is true. I can lock it on publication now to shut down the media chatter and we can assess next steps thereafter. Ok?Pecker said that Howard wanted to buy Daniels story for $120,000, but Pecker told Howard over the phone that he was wary. -- I said I don’t want the National Enquirer to be associated with a pornstar. Our largest retailer, Walmart … This would be very damaging for the magazine, very damaging for American Media.He said he told Howard: If anyone was going to buy it, I think Michael Cohen and Donald Trump should buy it.
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