Days before Donald J. Trump became president in 2017, a cadre of advisers, officials and allies descended on his office at Trump Tower: a future secretary of state, his soon-to-be chief of staff, the F.B.I. director — and the publisher of The National Enquirer.
The publisher, David Pecker, may have seemed out of place, but he had just performed an indispensable and confidential service to the Trump campaign: He had paid off a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who had said she had an affair with Mr. Trump, and a doorman who had heard that Mr. Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock. The future president, triumphant, thanked Mr. Pecker for his service.
“He said, ‘I want to thank you for handling the McDougal situation,’ and then he also said, ‘I wanted to thank you for the doorman situation,’” Mr. Pecker testified at Mr. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan Thursday, leaving it unclear if anyone else heard the exchange. “He said that the stories could be very embarrassing.”
Mr. Trump also asked after Ms. McDougal: “How’s our girl?” Mr. Pecker said he replied, “She’s cool. She’s very quiet. No issues.”
That remarkable scene — where Mr. Trump’s lofty new status as president-elect collided with his colorful New York habitat — was private until Thursday, when Mr. Pecker recounted it to jurors. He described in vivid detail how Mr. Trump depended on him to buy and bury damaging stories that could have derailed Mr. Trump’s campaign, the plot that prosecutors put at the center of the case.
Mr. Pecker’s testimony in the first criminal trial of an American president underscored how his support in 2016 is haunting Mr. Trump in 2024.
The former publisher transported jurors into the room at Trump Tower that day in January 2017. He was there alongside four people who would become key figures in the Trump presidency: Sean Spicer, press secretary; Reince Priebus, chief of staff; Mike Pompeo, C.I.A. director and later secretary of state; and James Comey, the F.B.I. director whom Mr. Trump would ultimately fire.
Mr. Trump introduced Mr. Pecker to the men and then added slyly that Mr. Pecker probably “knows more than anyone else in this room.”
“It was a joke,” Mr. Pecker testified. “Unfortunately, they didn’t laugh.” (On Thursday, however, Mr. Trump chuckled at the defense table.)
Over nearly six hours of testimony on Thursday, Mr. Pecker described how he had helped quash three scandalous stories about Mr. Trump, including by setting in motion a hush-money deal with a porn star, Stormy Daniels. That payment is central to the prosecution’s case: Prosecutors have charged Mr. Trump with 34 felonies, accusing him of covering up the payoff to Ms. Daniels.
Mr. Pecker’s testimony, which kept many jurors rapt as Mr. Trump shifted and slumped in his chair, spoke to a central theme in the prosecution’s case. Mr. Pecker, prosecutors contend, joined a three-man conspiracy with Mr. Trump and Michael D. Cohen, the then-candidate’s personal lawyer. The men, they say, hatched a plot to hide damaging stories from the American people.
Mr. Pecker introduced the jury to a dark art in the world of supermarket tabloids, the practice known as “catch and kill” — buying the rights to a story with no intention of publishing it. The National Enquirer used the tactic to silence Ms. McDougal and the doorman with his account of an out-of-wedlock child, which turned out to be false.
He took jurors behind the scenes of the shady machinations, detailing how he had bought Ms. McDougal’s story for $150,000 and packaged the payment in a deal with other services that she would supposedly provide, including writing columns. Those services, he acknowledged, were camouflage for what he knew could have been an illegal donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign.
In a powerful moment for the prosecution, Mr. Pecker acknowledged a clear-cut motive for keeping the model’s story under wraps: protecting Mr. Trump’s chance of winning the White House.
“We didn’t want the story to embarrass Mr. Trump or embarrass or hurt the campaign,” Mr. Pecker testified.
He also acknowledged that it is unlawful for a corporation to spend money that way to influence the election, another pivotal moment in the early days of the trial.
(The Federal Election Commission later punished The Enquirer’s parent company with fines of $187,000; Mr. Trump’s campaign was not sanctioned.)
The Trump campaign was particularly concerned about Ms. Daniels’s story. Mr. Pecker explained to the jury that he had learned Ms. Daniels was looking to sell her story just as Mr. Trump’s campaign was reeling from the publication of the “Access Hollywood” recording, in which Mr. Trump boasted of grabbing women by their genitals.
That tape, he said, “was very embarrassing, very damaging to the campaign.”
Mr. Pecker then told Mr. Cohen, the fixer, of Ms. Daniels’s efforts to sell her story of having had sex with Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen ultimately paid her off, to the tune of $130,000.
Mr. Pecker warned Mr. Cohen that if Ms. Daniels went public, Mr. Trump would be furious.
But Mr. Pecker had already shelled out the $150,000 to Ms. McDougal, and he balked at paying Ms. Daniels, leaving it to Mr. Cohen to strike the hush-money deal with her. “After paying out the doorman, after paying out Karen McDougal, we’re not paying out any more moneys,” Mr. Pecker recalled telling Mr. Cohen.
The prosecutors, from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, accused Mr. Trump of falsifying business records when reimbursing Mr. Cohen for the $130,000 payment and charged the former president with 34 felonies — one for each check, ledger and invoice related to the repayment.
Mr. Trump denies that he and Ms. Daniels had sex and has said he did nothing wrong. If convicted, he could receive probation, or up to four years in prison.
Although Mr. Pecker was not directly involved in creating the false records, his story was essential to the prosecution case.
As he described his interactions with the district attorney’s office, Mr. Trump became animated, shaking his head several times in stern disapproval.
After prosecutors finished with Mr. Pecker, Mr. Trump’s legal team got a crack at cross-examining him. Under questioning from one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Emil Bove, the tabloid publisher acknowledged that it was a standard practice for his publication to buy stories as leverage for access and interviews with celebrities. He also admitted giving Mr. Trump a heads-up about negative stories for years before he ran for president, helping the defense argue that his actions were unrelated to Mr. Trump’s status as a candidate.
Mr. Bove also briefly attempted to portray the 72-year-old Mr. Pecker as unreliable, pointing to small inconsistencies or omissions in his recounting of the events. But Mr. Pecker remained mostly composed, and stuck to the testimony he gave prosecutors.
Under questioning from prosecutors, Mr. Pecker spent much of his time on the stand describing the deal with Ms. McDougal, whose lawyer brought the story to The National Enquirer, which then vetted the account.
Ms. McDougal, he said, was happy to stay quiet.
“She said she didn’t want to be the next Monica Lewinsky,” he explained.
Mr. Pecker alerted Mr. Cohen, who then pressed the tabloid to buy her story. When Mr. Pecker expressed concern about who would pay the $150,000 — noting that “this is a very, very large purchase” — Mr. Cohen reassured him. He said, “The boss will take care of it.”
And at one point, Mr. Trump and Mr. Pecker spoke directly about the deal, the former publisher testified. Mr. Trump, he said, called Ms. McDougal “a nice girl,” leading Mr. Pecker to believe that the candidate “knew who she was.”
Mr. Trump was reluctant to pay, and soon Mr. Cohen was waffling as well — instead, Mr. Cohen persuaded Mr. Pecker to have his company make the payment. He assured him that the boss would pay Mr. Pecker back.
Ultimately, when Mr. Cohen created a shell company to repay the tabloid, it was Mr. Pecker who got cold feet amid concerns about the legality of the arrangement.
“The deal is off,” Mr. Pecker said he told Mr. Cohen.
That was not the end of the saga. Just days before the election, The Wall Street Journal published a story revealing The National Enquirer’s deal with Ms. McDougal. This prompted an irate call to Mr. Pecker.
“Donald Trump was very upset,” Mr. Pecker said Thursday, describing how the candidate asked, “How could this happen? I thought you had this under control.” Mr. Trump, he said, blamed The National Enquirer for leaking the story. Then he hung up.
After Mr. Trump’s victory, Mr. Pecker encountered him at the Trump Tower meeting in January 2017 and then in July of that year at the White House.
“Mr. Trump asked me to join him in the walk from the Oval Office to the dining area,” Mr. Pecker recalled, and on the walk, Mr. Trump posed a question: “How is Karen doing?”
Mr. Pecker replied: “She’s doing well. She’s quiet. Everything’s going good.”
Maggie Haberman, Kate Christobek and Wesley Parnell contributed reporting.
