In the middle of the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump called David Pecker, publisher of The National Enquirer. The candidate was seeking advice about a former Playboy model who was trying to sell her story of an affair with him, Mr. Pecker told jurors in Mr. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial.
Mr. Pecker suggested a way to silence the model, Karen McDougal. “I think that the story should be purchased,” he said he told Mr. Trump. “And I believe that you should buy it.”
The episode involving Ms McDougal led to the second of three hush-money deals that prosecutors say Mr. Trump and his allies arranged during the 2016 election to suppress negative news. Mr. Pecker was involved in all of them, including the final deal in which Mr. Trump’s lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, a former porn star.
Mr. Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the Daniels payment as part of an effort to influence the election. It is the first criminal prosecution of an American president.
Mr. Pecker, the trial’s first witness, began testifying about Ms. McDougal on Tuesday before the trial’s midweek break and continued Thursday. The Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., ended up paying $150,000 to buy the rights to her story and then bury it, a tactic known as “catch and kill.” In a deal to avoid federal prosecution, the company later admitted that it had illegally tried to influence the election.
Ms. McDougal had been Playboy’s Playmate of the Year for 1998. She has said she met Mr. Trump at the Playboy Mansion in June 2006, and they began a 10-month affair.
As Mr. Trump’s campaign gained steam, Ms. McDougal, living in Arizona, saw a chance to revive a flagging modeling career. In June 2016, she hired a lawyer to represent her in the sale of her story. The lawyer contacted Dylan Howard, The Enquirer’s editor, who alerted Mr. Pecker.
At the outset of the campaign, Mr. Pecker, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump had met at Trump Tower to discuss helping Mr. Trump in part by identifying and burying dirt about him. Mr. Pecker said he had promised to be the campaign’s “eyes and ears.”
After learning about Ms. McDougal’s claims, he called Mr. Cohen, who insisted her story was untrue. But Mr. Pecker suggested vetting it, and Mr. Cohen agreed, the publisher testified. Mr. Pecker sent his editor to meet with Ms. McDougal and her lawyer in Los Angeles.
Mr. Cohen was anxious for updates, and asked Mr. Pecker to communicate via an encrypted messaging app to ensure secrecy.
“I had multiple calls every single day: ‘When is he going? When is he going to know? Is it done yet?’” Mr. Pecker testified. He added that he told Mr. Cohen to relax.
At their meeting, Mr. Howard debriefed Ms. McDougal, who now expressed reservations about coming forward and had no hard documentation of an affair. The Enquirer decided not to purchase her story — for the moment.
That changed. Mr. Trump called Mr. Pecker for advice, the publisher testified, but brushed off Mr. Pecker’s suggestion that he buy her story himself.
“I don’t buy stories,” Mr. Trump said, the publisher recounted, adding, “Any time you do anything like this, it always gets out.”
After conversations Ms. McDougal had started with ABC News about telling her story on air grew serious, American Media swooped in with an offer.
The company agreed in early August to pay Ms. McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story, one that The Enquirer would never publish. To camouflage the purpose of the deal, the contract guaranteed that American Media would put her on two magazine covers and have the right to publish fitness columns by her.
Mr. Cohen had promised Mr. Pecker that Mr. Trump would repay him. After Ms. McDougal was paid, Mr. Cohen tried do that, negotiating for Mr. Trump to use shell companies to buy the rights to her story from Mr. Pecker’s company. Mr. Cohen secretly taped Mr. Trump talking about that prospect — a recording jurors are likely to hear.
“So what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?” Mr. Trump asked on the recording.
One of Mr. Pecker’s lawyers advised againstselling the rights to Mr. Trump, and the deal never went through.
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