April 23, 2024 02:44 PM UTC

Trump Hush Money Trial: Day Of The Pecker, Part 2

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• by: Colorado Pols

The first witness in the trial currently underway over former President Donald Trump’s alleged falsification of business records to conceal a “hush money” payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, former National Enquirer publisher and longtime Trump business associate David Pecker, only had a few minutes to preview yesterday the full extent of his role in both “catching and killing” embarrassing news stories for Trump via exclusive story rights that were never intended to go to print, as well as the Enquirer’s relentless publication of factually indifferent attacks on Trump’s political opponents during his rise to power in 2016.

As CNN reports, today jurors got the proverbial goods:

Former tabloid executive David Pecker was back on the stand Tuesday to resume his testimony in the hush money trial against former President Donald Trump.

Pecker testified about a myriad of topics — but mainly established the substance of the August 2015 meeting at the crux of the “catch and kill” practice that is central to the case.

As the then-chairman of American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, Pecker was involved in numerous schemes to kill negative stories about Trump, and he allegedly helped broker the deal with Stormy Daniels.

As the New York Times reports, Mr. Pecker was quite candid about turning the National Enquirer into essentially an arm of the Trump campaign, simultaneously covering up negative stories while shoveling dirt at Trump’s opponents:

Mr. Pecker said…that he, Mr. Trump and Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, met at Trump Tower in Manhattan to hatch a plan to write promotional stories about Mr. Trump and negative stories about his political opponents.

Mr. Pecker said he acted as the campaign’s “eyes and ears,” notifying Mr. Cohen about possible scandals, particularly regarding women in Mr. Trump’s life.

Mr. Pecker on Tuesday walked through one of the “catch-and-kill” deals. He said that The National Enquirer learned that a doorman at a Trump building was looking to sell a story about Mr. Trump fathering a child out of wedlock. The tabloid discovered that the story was apparently false, but paid $30,000 anyway, “because of the potential embarrassment” it could have caused Mr. Trump, Mr. Pecker said.

As for the nonstop gutterballs aimed at Trump’s opponents from the primary to the 2015 general election, they’re a matter of record:

And of course no one endured the wrath of the Pecker quite like Hillary Clinton:

(The Globe is another American Media tabloid). Although the specific crime that Trump is on trial for pertains to falsifying business records to conceal the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels related to an affair Trump insists never happened, the prosecution’s establishment of all the underlying details related to that payoff is exposing a whole corrupt public relations ecosystem dedicated to intercepting negative press for Trump under the guise of “buying the story”–while using these same tabloids’ vast low-information reach to freely spread falsehoods about Trump’s opponents. If it was anyone other than Trump, these revelations on their own would be career-ending. Can you imagine the hue and cry if a media outlet was caught doing anything remotely close to this for Joe Biden?

It’s not the first time recently we’ve been shocked to acknowledge it, but outgoing Sen. Mitt Romney once again appears to have said it best:

 

Post by @acynig

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Like busting Al Capone for tax evasion, the vehicle of justice is less important than the net effect. What the public is learning about not just Trump’s personal character but fraudulent means of concealing his misdeeds is extremely damaging for anyone who is actually paying attention. While seemingly nothing and certainly not this well-spun tale will sway Trump’s most faithful supporters, anyone still evaluating their choice in 2024 on moral grounds has got to be appalled by these disclosures.

Unfortunately, we said that about the Access Hollywood tape in October of 2016. Even Cory Gardner agreed. Assuming there is a tipping point, we may not know it’s been reached until we’ve passed it.