1 of 4 | Testimony resumes Thursday in former president Donald Trump’s felony criminal trial in New York. Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker will testify on his role in the plot to pay off porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep her story about Trump from voters in the 2016 election. Pool Photo by Spencer Platt/UPI | License Photo
As Donald Trump’s New York felony criminal case resumes Thursday, David Pecker will testify on his role in a scheme to pay off women to silence their stories about Trump in order to affect the 2016 presidential election.
Former National Enquirer publisher Pecker’s Thursday testimony is expected to focus on what he did to help Trump pay off the women to prevent their stories from being known by voters. Advertisement
Trump is charged with 34 felonies alleging falsifying business records in order to facilitate hush money payments to the women to keep their stories away from voters.
Pecker is expected to detail his role in deals with adult film actress Stormy Daniels as well as Playboy model Karen McDougal, both of whom allege they had affairs with Trump.
Trump has denied the affairs and pleaded not guilty to the alleged crimes.
As the trial resumes Judge Juan Merchan is also considering whether Trump violated a gag order in the case 10 times as the prosecution alleges.
Trump said if the judge orders fines for violating the gag order he doesn’t know if he will pay them. Advertisement
“I have no idea. They’ve taken my constitutional right away with a gag order. That’s all it is. It’s election interference,” he said.
The order is very limited in scope and does not prevent Trump from exercising First Amendment free speech rights.
Merchan’s order says while the trial is underway Trump can’t make public statements about “counsel in the case other than the District Attorney, members of the court’s staff and the District Attorney’s staff, or the family members of any counsel, staff member, the Court or the District Attorney, if those statements are made with the intent to materially interfere with, or to cause others to materially interfere with, counsel’s or staffs work in this criminal case.”
Merchan said Tuesday after a hearing he would “reserve a decision” on the gag order violations.
During testimony Tuesday Pecker detailed a scheme called “catch and kill” where the National Enquirer would buy off people who had negative stories to tell about Trump by paying them for their stories to stop the stories from going public.
Pecker testified that he worked with Trump’s attorney and “fixer” at the time, Michael Cohen.
Pecker said the role he and the National Enquirer played helped Trump’s campaign, which is at the core of the prosecution’s case. Advertisement
Pecker also testified Tuesday that he would concoct fake negative news stories in the National Enquirer designed to hurt Trump’s Republican primary opponents in the 2016 election.
He said Trump would send him phony information about Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Ben Carson which the Enquirer would use to publish fake news stories to hurt them and help Trump.
