David Pecker, the former CEO of the celebrity magazine and tabloid company American Media, was the first witness today, as prosecutors try to show the extent to which Donald Trump sought to suppress embarrassing stories in advance of the 2016 election.
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Pecker testified for about 25 minutes, telling the jury about his work publishing Star magazine, National Enquirer and other periodicals before the clock ran out on a court day that was scheduled to end early. He said matter-of-factly that he practiced “checkbook journalism, with budgets of $10,000 per story, sometimes more, for paying sources. Pecker will return to the stand on Tuesday after a morning hearing on a request by prosecutors to seek a contempt ruling against Trump for allegedly violating the judge's gag order in the case.
In opening statements, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo identified Pecker — who is testifying under a subpoena — as “the eyes and ears” in the “catch and kill” strategy to neutralize negative press coverage that was hatched by Trump, lawyer Michael Cohen and Pecker in August. 15 during a meeting at Trump Tower in New York, weeks after Trump had announced he was running for president.
The payment to Stormy Daniels was a product of that meeting, Colangelo said, and a direct response to the infamous Access Hollywood tape that surfaced the following year. Colangelo read the text of the tape back to jurors with the crude language that Trump used in the original recording.
Trump sank down into his chair as the prosecutor repeated Trump's own words about forcing himself on women.
"The campaign went into immediate damage control mode to blunt the impact of the tape," Colangelo said. One day after the story of the tape broke, Pecker heard from one of his tabloid editors that an adult film actress, Daniels, was claiming to have slept with Trump just months after his wife, Melania Trump, had given birth to their son.
The editor, Dylan Howard, contacted Daniels' lawyer and Cohen, and Cohen — acting "at Trump's direction" — negotiated the payment of $130,000 to Daniels to not go public with her story of a sexual encounter with the GOP candidate for president, Colangelo said. .