Donald Trump's hush money criminal trial will pick back up
tomorrow with court in recess today.
In this historic trial on Friday,
former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker wrapped up his testimony.
Wow. The defense tried to poke holes at his credibility
as a witness,
seeking to establish how his tabloid stood to profit off
the stories it bought.
Earlier in the week, Pecker testified about catch and kill
agreements linked to Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
But before his testimony ended,
Pecker revealed details about a conference call Trump set up
between the tabloid publisher and two of Trump's White House
aides,
Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Hope Hicks.
The call took place soon after former Playboy model Karen
McDougal gave an interview to CNN in March of 2018.
On the call, Pecker told the two ways he planned
to extend an agreement with McDougal that would keep her
from speaking more widely about her alleged affair with the
former president. Pecker said Sanderson Hicks quote,
thought it was a good idea.
Joining us now, former litigator and MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa
Rubin.
You know, Lisa, it's interesting
the the argument that the defense was making
really fell flat when when they suggested
that Pecker was doing this for profit,
All of this for profit,
when in fact if he had run the McDougal Trump
story
it it probably would have broken records.
But he decided to sit on it because,
as he said throughout his testimony,
he wanted to help Donald Trump,
his friend, get elected president.
That's true. And Joe, it was really underscored by the
fact that in much of his testimony,
David Pecker's bottom line was clear as the primary motivating
factor for him.
But as Joshua Steinglass, who is the representative of the
DA's office,
established with him on his redirect,
yes, it was to his benefit to run positive stories
about Donald Trump,
who had long been a reader favorite among National Enquirer
readers.
But as Steinglass asked him,
your intention was never to run this story about McDougal
and Pecker affirmed.
I had 0 intention, he said.
In fact, if you had run it,
that would have been a equivalent to National Enquirer Gold,
right? And Pecker had to say absolutely it would have
been Enquirer Gold.
It's a story about a Playboy Playmate of the Year
who was alleging and a story I believed by the
way,
a years long affair with the Republican candidate for President
of the United States who was also a known celebrity
and commodity.
In my universe that would have been Enquirer Gold.
And at that point we broke for lunch.
And it was the perfect point for the DA
to have reestablished. This was far from what the Trump
world was calling standard operating procedure for The Enquirer.
So, Lisa, there was a lot from the pecker testimony
about affairs.
Hush, money,
catch and kill. The whole concept of that type of
journalism,
none of which is against the law or the crime
that he's
accused of the former president.
Did Pecker's testimony help prove or begin to help prove
the crime that he's accused of?
Absolutely. Because Mika, the crime that the former president has
been charged with is falsification of business records as a
felony.
And in order to establish that he's committed a felony
as opposed to a misdemeanor,
you have to show that he falsified business records with
the intent to conceal another crime.
And that's where David Pecker comes in.
David Pecker is critical to the establishment of the conspiracy
to promote
Trump's election through unlawful means,
where at least one act was taken in the direction
of those unlawful means.
David Pecker was there for the formation of the conspiracy.
David Pecker helped execute the conspiracy.
David Peckers payment to Karen McDougal,
which he understood would pose campaign
finance law problems. Was that unlawful means?
So through David Pecker, prosecutors have gotten a lot of
what they needed to establish that this was felonious and
not just your,
you know, everyday garden variety misdemeanor
trying to pull back. Does.
Does that testimony seem to add
value to what the DA is trying to prove?
Did we expect Pecker to be as strong as he
was or were we looking for that in other witnesses
that are yet to come?
Well, Pecker had a lot of information that we didn't
quite know that he would had.
Namely, he put himself at multiple conversations,
either with Donald Trump and Michael Cohen
or with Donald Trump alone,
that help establish that Trump was a participant at the
conspiracy and that he knew and intended the results of
that conspiracy,
which were to promote his own
his own election, by subverting the Karen McDougal story.
And so nobody was expecting that David Pecker would come
in and say,
for example, I met with Trump alone in his Trump
Tower office in January of
2017. He asked me how Karen McDougal was doing,
which was less about care,
about her welfare and more about was she going to
be quiet and compliant.
And once I assured him that she was fine,
he said, I want to thank you for handling the
McDougal situation.
I want to thank you for handling the doorman situation.
Donald Trump was so grateful that he let David Pecker
essentially throw himself a White House dinner that summer.
After which, as they're walking in the Rose Garden,
Donald Trump resumes that same conversation.
How's Karen? How's she doing?
All Donald Trump cared about was that David Pecker had
an arrangement with Karen McDougal that allowed her to feel
satisfied that she was getting something out of the deal.
It became clear through David Pecker's testimony that Donald Trump
had the knowledge and intent that prosecutors not only want
to establish,
but have to establish as part of their case.
Kept asking how's our girl?
How's our girl?
David Beschloss, we have been watching for about
Michael Michael Beschloss. I'm sorry.
It's really it is fine.
David Packer, I was thinking David Packer,
Michael Beschloss, the two of us were sort of
witnessed this to history. Exactly,
right.
Yes, exactly. So I was thinking back
starting in
20/16/2017, Donald Trump started calling
the media enemy of the people.
He constantly throughout the campaign talked about fake news,
derided
mainstream press. And it is so interesting that,
yeah, sometimes the New York Times gets it wrong,
sometimes NBC gets it wrong,
sometimes the Post, Washington Post,
sometimes Wall Street Journal. And they'll Get the facts wrong,
despite all the editors they have and their best efforts.
And then they'll, they'll usually,
they'll retract it and they'll correct it.
It happens. When you get 1000 stories right,
you may get one or two wrong.
And yet Trump has seized on what they've got wrong,
or sometimes what they've got right,
and completely undermined a
majority of America's confidence in in the media.
Here you you have laid out
the definition of fake news
and we got to see
how Donald Trump masterminded lies about
Ted Cruz that his father had helped kill JFK.
Ben Carson
destroyed somebody's life by leaving a sponge in their brain.
Hillary Clinton saying back in 2016 she has six months
to live,
which of course Hillary's doing well.
We can report seven years later,
but one lie after another,
lie after another lie after another lie
that was put out to voters throughout that campaign and
you just talk about cynically undermining the news.
It is. It is a move out of
the old Soviet playbook, which is
try to undermine those telling the truth.
And while you are spreading
propaganda through a fire hose of falsehoods.
Yeah, that that's perfectly put.
And I guess if he were running against Christy Noam,
it wouldn't have been a good enough story that she,
she kills puppies when it actually happened in real life.
So they would have had to invent something worse,
amazingly enough. But that's what Authorian dictators do,
you know, Soviet Union is exactly where they did it.
When you saw people who were vilified in Pravda,
let's say at the orders of Stalin,
which they often times were,
for instance, there was a
chief of police called Beria,
and Beria was fired. And this is a little bit
later on the Great Soviet Encyclopedia,
which is obviously published by the government,
people were told to tear out the page that mentioned
Beria and insert a page of the Bering Strait.
That is what our lives could be like under that
kind of dictator,
if that ever happens. You know,
you were talking about 1968,
which I think is a perfect comparison because
Donald Trump, knowingly or otherwise,
is operating to some extent from Richard Nixon's blueprint.
You remember. Well, you don't remember.
But I remember that Nixon used to give speeches saying
when respect for the president of the United States and
tumult in this country
has become so. Nor tumult has drowned out the
president's voice that he can no longer speak almost anywhere
except for military bases.
It's time for new leadership,
he said. And Johnson at the time was not able
to speak on college campuses.
Same year, George Wallace's George Wallace was campaigning,
you know, in Arenas saying,
everyone look at those reporters back on the platform.
Those are bad people. You should go after them.
Who does that sound like?