Hush-Money Witness Reveals Trump’s Plan to Influence 2016 Election
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A longtime friend of Donald Trump’s admitted on the stand Tuesday that their relationship had devolved into an orchestrated scheme to influence the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf.
David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer and former CEO of its parent company, American Media Inc., told the court Tuesday that he and Trump had coordinated not just to publish positive coverage of his friend ahead of the 2016 election, but also to publish negative coverage of other presidential candidates. In doing so, Pecker practically admitted to the catch-and-kill media scheme that Trump has repeatedly denied.
Trump had asked “what can I do and what my magazines can do to help the campaign,” Pecker said. Pecker had responded that he could “publish positive stories about Trump” and “negative stories about his opponents.”
Stories about Hillary Clinton were already popular amongst the Enquirer’s audience, so continuing to publish those articles was a “mutual benefit,” according to Pecker. Still, Pecker knew the plan should be kept “highly, highly confidential,” describing the undocumented meeting he had with Trump and Trump’s then-fixer Michael Cohen in August 2015 as “just an agreement among friends.” Pecker would later tell the Enquirer’s former editor-in-chief, Dylan Howard, to instruct the east and west coast bureau chiefs of the publication to redirect any stories about Trump to Pecker.
“We’re gonna try to help the campaign, and to do that I want to keep this as quiet as possible,” Pecker recalled telling Howard.
That, effectively, made Pecker the “eyes and ears” for the Trump campaign regarding “women selling stories.” Pecker promised to notify Cohen in order to have such stories “killed.”
Trump is accused of using Cohen to sweep an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election. He faces 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.
