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Pecker at hush money trial says Trump feared trysts would hurt image, but didn't mention Melania

Molly Crane-Newman and Josephine Stratman, New York Daily News on

Published in Political News

Donald Trump never mentioned worrying about his wife getting wind of his alleged trysts with porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal — only his future in politics, a Manhattan jury heard Thursday during explosive testimony at the former president’s hush money trial.

During his third day on the witness stand, the former CEO of American Media, David Pecker, said the “catch-and-kill” scheme he helped carry out for Trump had one goal: to help win him the White House.

Pecker described a high-stakes scramble to silence women who claimed Trump cheated on his wife with them in the lead-up to the election and being showered with gratitude from the then-president after it appeared to succeed. The hush-money scheme was part of a broader effort to use stories in The National Enquirer and other AMI publications to advance Trump’s political brand, prosecutors allege.

Pecker answered with a simple “no” when Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass asked him if the defendant ever expressed concern about what Melania Trump would think of his affairs.

Prosecutors displayed a January 2017 black-and-white photo of Pecker and Trump walking by the White House Rose Garden, where Pecker testified the then-president invited him as a “thank you” and asked him how “our girl” was doing in reference to the former Playboy model Pecker paid $150,000 to silence.

“As we walked out, President Trump asked me, ‘How is, eh, how is Karen doing?” Pecker recalled. “So I said, ‘She’s doing well. She’s quiet. Everything’s going good.”

 

The longtime publisher walked the jury through how he worked closely with Trump’s ex-fixer, Michael Cohen — arranging for his company to pay off McDougal and for Cohen to pay him back through a shell company and making it look like a contract for McDougal’s services. The model has long claimed she and Trump had a 10-month affair in 2006 and 2007, shortly after his third marriage to Melania and the birth of their son, Barron Trump.

Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, alleging he covered up hush money payments as part of a sweeping scheme to defraud voters. He has pleaded not guilty.

Earlier this week, Pecker said the scheme to bury unflattering stories about presidential candidate Trump and elevate hit jobs about his opponents was devised at an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower attended by him, Trump and Cohen. Pecker agreed to publish pro-Trump stories while working to hide unsavory ones, taking them “off the market” by purchasing the exclusive rights to ensure they never got published in a scheme known as “catch-and-kill.”

On Thursday, Pecker, who kept calling Trump “the boss,” said that as the election grew near and women came out of the woodwork with stories about Trump, he began to worry about his legal liability.

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