David Pecker reveals being 'eyes and ears' of Donald Trump's presidential campaign and killing his negative publications
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK: David Pecker, the key witness in Donald Trump’s hush money trial, testified for the second day on Tuesday, April 23.
Pecker, a former tabloid newspaper publisher detailed how he promised Trump to be his campaign’s "eyes and ears."
David Pecker’s role in Donald Trump’s campaign
Pecker also shared how he received a call from Michael Cohen, who served as vice president of the Trump Organization and personal counsel to Trump.
“I received a call from Michael Cohen telling me The Boss wanted to see me," Pecker said on the witness stand as reported by The Guardian.
"When I spoke to Michael Cohen, that’s how he would refer to Donald Trump, as the boss,” he explained.
He further said, “They asked me what can I do – and what my magazines could do – to help the campaign."
Pecker replied, "...I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents and I said that I would also be the eyes and ears because I know that the Trump organization had a very small staff.”
David Pecker’s strategy to 'kill' negative stories about Donald Trump
“I said that anything I hear in the marketplace if I hear anything negative about yourself, or if I hear anything about women selling stories, I would notify Michael Cohen as I did over the last several years," said Pecker.
"I would notify Michael Cohen and then he would be able to [have them] killed in another magazine or have them not be published or somebody would have to purchase them,” he continued.
Pecker said that he and Michael Cohen were in touch over the years, revealing they first met in 2000 in Barmitzvah. He also admitted that he met Trump at Trump Tower several times over the years.
David Pecker said that he and Michael Cohen were in touch over the years when Pecker noticed something that he thought Trump should know about. It increased when Trump announced his candidacy, he said.
What did David Pecker tell about 'women selling stories' before Donald Trump's presidential campaign?
Prosecutors asked David Pecker why he told Trump that he would notify Michael Cohen if he heard “anything women selling stories”.
To which he replied, “In a presidential campaign, I was the person that thought that there would be a lot of women would come out to try to sell their stories because Mr Trump was well known as the most eligible bachelor and dated the most beautiful women,” said Pecker.
He said that he has had experience that when someone is running for a public office, "it is very common for these women to call up a magazine like the National Enquirer to try to sell their stories."
"Or, I would hear it in the marketplace, [through] other sources, that stories were being marketed,” he added.
How running negative stories helped both Donald Trump and David Pecker?
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked David Pecker about negative stories on Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Pecker said, “I was running the Hillary Clinton stories. I was running Hillary as an enabler for Bill Clinton in respect to all the womanizing, and [it] was easy for me to say I was [going] to continue running those type of stories for the National Enquirer.”
On asking whether he thought it would help Trump’s campaign, he answered, “I thought it was a mutual benefit – it would help his campaign, it would help me.”
