The protagonist of the sixth day of the trial which sees Donald Trump in the dock, accused of having developed a plan to hide a sexual relationship with porn star Stormy Daniels that could have damaged him in 2016, still is David Pecker.
Nicknamed the “king of the tabloids”, publisher of National Enquirer and friend of the tycoon since the nineties, Pecker picked up where he left off on Monday. And, in fact, he confirmed that in August 2015 the former president asked him how he could exploit his magazines «to help the electoral campaign». For this reason, Pecker became Trump’s “eyes and ears” during the campaign, ready to buy and cover up negative stories about him: “I published positive articles about him, and negative ones about his opponents.” In more than one case, Trump’s then lawyer, Michael Cohen, suggested what to print and what not to print, who also sent him material “which we then embellished in the editorial office”. According to the prosecution, this would demonstrate that Pecker was not simply protecting his friend’s reputation, but gave support to his race for the White House.
The editor then spoke of a series of three articles on Trump that, if published, “would be our biggest scoop since the death of Elvis Presley.” Articles never published due to the decision of Pecker himself, which collected the testimony of a Trump Tower doorman according to whom the former president would have had a child with a maid. Pecker had the story verified, which turned out to be false. In any case, the publisher underlined, “even if it had been true, I would have published those articles only after the elections” so as not to damage the tycoon.
The day opened with ahearing before a New York Supreme Court judge Juan Merchan, who was to assess whether Trump violated a procedural order that prohibited him from making public comments about trial witnesses, jurors, prosecutors’ aides and their families. The former president, the prosecution claimed, crossed that limit “in at least ten cases”; while his lawyer Todd Blanche responded that “my client was only responding to political attacks” and that “all the comments were part of the election campaign”.
Merchan threw several barbs at the lawyer — “you have presented nothing to support your case,” he admonished him, “esis losing its credibility before the court» — but in the end, after an hour and a quarter of discussion, he decided to postpone his decision, without specifying until when.
Trump took advantage of a pause of a few minutes to write on his Truth social network that “this judge has deprived me of my constitutional right to free speech.”
