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PECKER SCREWS TRUMP IN TESTIMONY AT HUSH MONEY TRIAL

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Media mogul and one-time close Donald Trump associate David Pecker delivered testimony in the so-called hush money election interference criminal trail that experts contend was highly damaging to the former President.

Pecker described a mutually beneficial relationship between The National Enquirer and Trump: the National Enquirer essentially became a propaganda magazine that ran stories favorable to Trump and smear stories – many made up – about Trump’s rivals during the 2015-2016 race for the Republican Presidential election and his campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton. The Enquirer would also do “catch and kill,” by spending big bucks on stories unfavorable to Trump and not run them.

The Hill reports:

Former President Trump’s trial was dominated on Tuesday by the testimony of former magazine executive David Pecker.

Pecker was previously the publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid. In that role, he engaged in the unusual practice of “catch and kill” — in essence securing the rights to publish a story in order to quash it.

Pecker testified he did this to assist Trump.

…..The most striking thing about Pecker’s testimony was how directly he spoke about his efforts to use his magazine’s power to help Trump.

He put flesh on the bones of other stories, besides that of Daniels, where the tabloid had engaged in catch-and-kill tactics.

Considerable time was spent on the tale of Dino Sajudin, a former doorman at Trump Tower who contended that Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock.

“I made the decision to purchase the story because of the potential embarrassment it had to the campaign and to Mr. Trump,” Pecker testified.

Pecker and his staff ultimately concluded Sajudin’s story was untrue. According to reporters in the court, mentions of it seemed to irritate Trump.

But the National Enquirer’s power wasn’t solely about silencing stories that could be helpful to Trump. It also ran stories that damaged his rivals for the 2016 GOP nomination.

In Pecker’s account, Cohen would call him suggesting the tabloid target candidates who seemed to be posing the biggest threat to Trump.

One example was a story suggesting falsely — and somewhat absurdly — that Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) father was somehow connected to the assassination of President Kennedy

The relationship between Trump and the National Enquirer was not a one-way street, according to Pecker.

His close relationship with the then-candidate helped fuel newsstand sales.

Trump, who has in the past called himself a “ratings machine” on TV, appears to have had a similar impact upon the Enquirer’s sales.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (who supports Trump) was the target of an Enquire hit piece that was totally made up:

David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, testified at Donald Trump’s trial Tuesday that the tabloid completely manufactured a negative story in 2016 about the father of Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, who was then Trump’s rival for the GOP presidential nomination.

The paper had published a photo allegedly showing Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963, not long before Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

Trump repeatedly referred to the story on the campaign trail and in interviews.

“I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?” Trump said in an interview with Fox News in May 2016. “It’s horrible.”

Manhattan prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked Pecker about the story’s origins during the trial Tuesday in Manhattan. Pecker said that then-National Enquirer editor-in-chief Dylan Howard and the tabloid’s research department got involved, and Pecker indicated that they faked the photo that was the foundation for the story.

“We mashed the photos and the different picture with Lee Harvey Oswald. And mashed the two together. And that’s how that story was prepared — created I would say,” Pecker said on the witness stand.

Asked by Steinglass whether Cruz had gained popularity in the presidential race at the time, Pecker said, “I believe so.”

The revelation came up as the prosecution focused on negative articles that were published by the tabloid about Trump’s Republican opponents at the time. Pecker explained that it was Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer, who would orchestrate the planting of these stories.

Pecker said Cohen would call and say they’d like his publication to run an article on a certain candidate, adding that Cohen would then send him a piece about Cruz, for example, and the National Enquirer “would embellish it from there.”

Pecker suggested that Trump was directly involved in the process, too. He said that the negative stories about Trump’s opponents were published as part of an arrangement that was struck in 2015 at a Trump Tower meeting that also included a directive to write positive stories about the real estate mogul.