Key Hush-Money Trial Witness Admits He Broke Law to Help Trump

Donald Trump’s old friend-turned-key-witness in his New York hush money trial blatantly admitted Thursday that he violated campaign finance laws to help the former president’s 2016 campaign.

David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer and former CEO of its parent company, American Media Inc., told the court in Trump’s hush-money trial that he knew he had to obey campaign finance laws but still failed to report $150,000 to the FEC. That sum came from a payment he issued via Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen to Playboy model Karen McDougal for the rights to her story regarding her alleged affair with Trump.

“We didn’t want the story to embarrass Mr. Trump, or embarrass or hurt the campaign,” Pecker testified.

Pecker claimed he knew that failing to report the payment would skirt campaign finance regulations due to an earlier catch-and-kill effort that aided Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign for California governor. After Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy, several women came to the National Enquirer with their stories—but even after scooping them up, one story leaked to the press, forcing Pecker to learn he had run afoul of campaign finance laws.

“Based on what happened 14 years ago, I wanted to be comfortable that the agreement we were going to prepare for Karen McDougal met all the obligations with respect to a campaign contribution,” Pecker said, explaining that his company had consulted an election law attorney on the matter before signing the contract with McDougal.

The week has been full of admissions by Pecker, who has been offered an immunity deal by the government in exchange for his full cooperation in the Trump trial.

On Tuesday, Pecker admitted 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 recalled to the court. Pecker had responded that he could “publish positive stories about Trump” and “negative stories about his opponents.”

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.

Donald Trump is going to have to pony up $83 million to E. Jean Carroll after all, after a judge  on Thursday struck down Trump’s latest attempt to get a new trial. 

Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over both of Trump’s trials against Carroll, denied the former president’s appeal of the verdict in Carroll’s second defamation lawsuit A jury determined that Trump owed Carroll $83 million in damages for defamation.

Trump is unlikely to be happy about losing his appeal, considering how he can’t stop bashing Carroll even with multiple legal judgments against him for it. Kaplan even felt it necessary to warn the jury not to reveal their participation in the trial, after the court ruling in January.

Trump has also appealed the Carroll ruling to the Second Circuit court. That decision is pending. Kaplan’s Thursday ruling is just the latest in a series of setbacks in Trump’s attempt to avoid paying Carroll damages.

The former president was found guilty of defaming Carroll after she revealed that he sexually abused her in the mid-1990s. A jury awarded Carroll $7.3 million for damage to her reputation, $11 million for emotional harm, and $65 million for punitive damages. Carroll has big plans for the money: giving it to something Trump hates. 

“If it will cause him pain for me to give money to certain things, that’s my intent,” Carroll told Good Morning America in January. “Well, perhaps a fund for the women who have been sexually assaulted by Donald Trump.”

At least 26 other women have accused Trump of some kind of sexual misconduct, but Carroll’s case was the first to get into a courtroom, and twice at that: In May 2023, another jury found Trump guilty of defaming Carroll and liable for sexual abuse and battery against her.

The decision came as Trump was in court for his hush-money trial in Manhattan, where he faces 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. The court heard testimony from tabloid magnate David Pecker Wednesday and Thursday, and adult film actress Stormy Daniels is scheduled to testify later Thursday. 

Arizona has indicted nearly two dozen of Donald Trump’s allies and affiliates for their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and attorneys Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Christina Bobb, and Rudy Giuliani.

But while most of his co-defendants chose to stay relatively mum in wake of Wednesday’s announcement, Giuliani seemed to immediately forgo his right to remain silent, regardless of whether his bombastic take on the felony charges could be used against him.

“It’s not a coincidence that this is happening as we approach the summer before the election,” Giuliani’s spokesman Ted Goodman wrote in a statement, doubling down on exactly what the former New York City mayor was charged for. “The continued weaponization of our justice system should concern every American as it does permanent, irrevocable harm to the country.”

All in all, the indictment charges 18 individuals, some of whose names have been redacted, with orchestrating a scheme to use fake electors to flip Arizona’s 2020 election results over to Trump. It also names Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator. All of the indicted individuals are facing the same slew of charges, which includes counts for conspiracy, forgery, fraudulent schemes and practices, and fraudulent schemes and artifices—the last of which holds a potential sentence of up to five years in prison.

“In Arizona, and the United States, the people elected Joseph Biden as President on November 3, 2020,” the indictment reads. “Unwilling to accept this fact, Defendants and unindicted co-conspirators schemed to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency” to give Trump a consecutive presidential term “against the will of Arizona’s voters.”

Donald Trump’s lawyer pushed an outrageous line of thinking on Thursday during oral arguments at the Supreme Court over whether the former president has immunity for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election: that a U.S. president could order a military coup d’état with almost no chance of repercussions.

Justice Elena Kagan asked lawyer John Sauer about a hypothetical president who “ordered the military to stage a coup.”

“He’s no longer president. He wasn’t impeached, he couldn’t be impeached, but he ordered the military to stage a coup, and you’re saying that’s an official act?” she asked.

“I think it would depend on the circumstances whether it was an official act,” Sauer replied. “If it’s an official act, there needs to be impeachment and conviction before [criminal charges could be pursued].”

In response to other questions from the justices, Sauer defended a hypothetical political assassination ordered by an American president, the argument that sank Trump’s case in the D.C. circuit.

“If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military to assassinate him, is that within his official acts to which he has immunity?” asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

“That could well be an official act,” Sauer said.

Sauer also claimed a president could come up with a fake slate of electors to overturn an election, a brazen assertion in light of recent events. Putting forward slates of fake electors has already resulted in criminal charges in four states: Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia. Trump himself directly faces charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election results in the Peach State.

Questions from Sotomayor and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson soon had Sauer backpedaling, especially after Sotomayor pointed out he had essentially argued that an “allegation of improper purpose cannot drive immunity.”

Trump’s appeal to the Supreme Court to rule on his immunity has already delayed his election interference case in Washington, D.C. Depending on how the high court rules, arguably the most serious of his many legal cases could be delayed even further, or perhaps rendered moot.

Donald Trump couldn’t resist throwing an insult at the latest high-profile Republican to endorse him: his former attorney general, Bill Barr.

In a late-night Truth Social post on Wednesday, Trump gleefully posted news of Barr’s endorsement, with a jab thrown in:

“Wow! Former A.G. Bill Barr, who let a lot of great people down by not investigating Voter Fraud in our Country, has just Endorsed me for President despite the fact that I called him “Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy” (New York Post!),” Trump wrote. “Based on the fact that I greatly appreciate his wholehearted Endorsement, I am removing the word ‘Lethargic’ from my statement. Thank you Bill. MAGA2024!”

During Trump’s presidency, Barr did everything he could to protect Trump, from delaying Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, to intervening in the criminal cases against Trump advisers Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, and defending Trump in the lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll, among many other examples. But Barr failed to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, earning Trump’s ire, and thus resigned in the last few months of Trump’s presidency.

Since then, Barr has freely criticized Trump, lambasting the former president after he was indicted for mishandling classified documents last year and noting that special prosecutor Jack Smith probably had a lot of evidence.

“Should we be putting someone like this forward as the leader of the country, leader of the free world?” Barr said in June. “He will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country’s interest, there’s no question about it.”

But Barr’s own political views, specifically his belief that Christian hegemony is essential to American democracy, probably led him back to endorse Trump. As Michael Tomasky wrote last week for The New Republic, “Barr hates disorder and all the rest of it. But he hates something else more: liberalism.”