Trump trial live: David Pecker returns to testify on ‘catch-and-kill’ payouts

In the agreement, a two-year contract granted her a monthly column on aging and fitness for Star magazine, another for OK magazine, four posts a month on Radar Online, and that AMI would provide her with ghostwriters.

AMI also acquired “limited life story rights” that are limited to “any romantic, personal and/or physical relationship McDougal has ever had with any then-married man.”

Why give her those other provisions?

“I wanted to substantiate the $150,000 payment,” Pecker says. He says the following very carefully with a few pauses:

“With respect to campaign, uh, laws, I wanted to have the contract be a record that stipulates that for the services that she was going to perform for American Media, has a basis for it.

“So when we talked about … all of the articles she was going to run, the photos… I was looking at an amount of money that I would have to acquire or pay for freelancers or other writers or reporters or visual people to validate to come up with the $150,000.”

She also had to pay the money back if she breached the contract, and she couldn’t write any books, do interviews, or make any social media posts about her story, without the consent of AMI.

Pecker is explaining why he was sceptical about buying up politically linked stories.

In 2002, when Joe Weider’s health and fitness titles were up for sale, he spoke with Weider’s longtime friend Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wanted to be an editor-at-large for those fitness magazines, “and I want an agreement and, he said, you bought the tabloids – he’s referring to the Globe and the National Enquirer … He said I’ve had a number of litigation and lawsuits in both magazines because you always run negative stories about me. I plan on running for governor and I would like you to not publish any negative stories about me now and in the future, and I’ll continue being the editor of Muscle Fitness and Flex and be a spokesperson.”

“After that announcement, a number of women called up the National Enquirer about stories that they have stories to sell on different relationships, or contacts, or sexual harassment that they felt that Arnold Schwarzenegger did,” he said.

“The agreement I had with Arnold is I would call him and advise him of other stories that were out there and I would acquire them, buy them for a period of time.”

After he became governor, one of the women whose story was acquired by AMI went to The Los Angeles Times. “It was very embarrassing. Most of the press approached Arnold when he was governor. And his comment was, Ask my friend David Pecker.”

The ordeal “made me sensitive about buying any stories in the future. That’s how I became sensitive about this topic,” Pecker said.

The court is shown McDougal’s agreement with AMI, dated 5 August 2016.

We see a 23 July 2016 email from Dylan Howard: “Spoke to MC about that other issue. Obviously concerned that it is proceeding with filming dates etc and wants me to handle. I’m on it.”

Pecker, the same day: “Good move and follow up.”

Cohen suggested that Pecker should should pay it.

“I just paid 30,000 for the doorman’s story,” Pecker says. “I don’t have a problem with doing everything else she requested … $150,000, who’s going to reimburse me for this? … He said again, Don’t worry about it, I’m your friend, the boss will take care of it.”

Text messages between Pecker and Howard are shown to the court.

Pecker recalls what Howard was hearing from McDougal about the terms of a deal.

For lifetime rights, she wanted $150,000, “plus Karen wanted to restart her career, she wanted to write for celebrity magazines, she wanted to be on the cover of some of the health and fitness titles, she had a major problem when her breast implants were removed, she wanted to write articles about that … she also wanted to launch a fitness clothing line as well as a beauty product company … and she wanted to be an anchor for the red carpet events.”

“He said, You should go ahead and buy this story. So I said to him, I’m gonna have Dylan Howard negotiate the terms. And then I said, Who’s going to pay for it? He said Don’t worry, I’m your friend, the boss will take care of it.”

How did you feel about Cohen’s representation that Cohen would reimburse you?

“Over the years knowing Michael Cohen, I know he didn’t have any authorisation to disburse funds from the Trump Organization. Every time we ate lunch, I was paying.”

In June 2016, Pecker got a call from Trump.

“Trump said to me, I spoke to ’Michael (long pause) Karen is a nice girl. Is it true that a Mexican group is looking to buy a story for $8m?’”

“I said I absolutely don’t believe [that]. He said what do you think I should do? I said you should buy the story and take it off the market.”

“I believed the story was true. I think it would have been very embarrassing for himself and for his campaign.”

Pecker recalls National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard’s recap from his interview with former Playboy cover star Karen McDougal: “He described to me who Karen McDougal was … She claims that she had a year-long relationship with Mr Trump, a sexual relationship … He said that she was a 12 out of 10.”

He said there was “no corroborating evidence” but “believed the story to be true,” he offered $10,000 to buy the story, “and it was refused.”

On a three-way call with Michael Cohen, Cohen said it wasn’t true, but he was going to check it out.

“First [Cohen] said the story wasn’t true, then he said having that story out … Dylan mentioned that ABC was interested in acquiring the story [and] mentioned that a Mexican group made an offer for $1m, Michael and I both said we didn’t believe a Mexican group was going to buy the story.”

He told him that McDougal said that ABC was offering her a slot on Dancing with the Stars, but “I knew from my experience that ABC doesn’t buy stories,” Pecker said.

“Dylan also mentioned that Karen McDougal said she didn’t want the story to be published. She said she didn’t want to be the next Monica Lewinsky,” he added. “[Howard] felt that she had been more interested in having American Media buy the story than anyone else.”

Assistant district attorney Christopher Conroy is outlining several alleged violations of the gag order from just this week.

Two involve his press conferences in the courtroom hall on 22 April about Michael Cohen, including a “nine-minute rant” where he said: “all the lies Cohen did in the last trial … He got caught lying, pure lying, when are they going to look at that?”

That night, he said “I can’t get away from the trial. He’s rushing the trial like crazy … jury was picked so far, 95 per cent Democrat.”

The next day, 23 April, just before the gag order hearing, he gave an interview with a Pennsylvania TV station and said: “Cohen is a convicted liar and he’s got no credibility whatsoever.”

This morning, when he was asked at the press event “What have you thought about David Pecker’s testimony so far?”, Trump said “he’s been very nice. A nice guy.”

“This is a message to Pecker. Be nice,” Conroy told the judge. “It’s a message to others. I have a platform, I can talk about you, and I can say things like this or like I said about Michael Cohen.”

We are not going to hear the judge’s decision on the gag order.

Tabloid mogul David Pecker is back on the stand and jurors are being walked in now.