Donald Trump offered to take a DNA test to disprove a false story that he had fathered a ‘love child’ with a Trump Tower maid, his blockbuster hush money trial heard.
Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, who got wind of the fake tale, said it would have been the magazine’s biggest story ‘since the death of Elvis Presley’ had it been true.
Pecker, the first witness in the case, told how his magazine bought the story from a Trump Tower doorman for $30,000 as part of a scheme to stop damaging allegations about Trump being published.
Trump repeatedly shook his head and laughed as details of the story, which Pecker said turned out to be ‘1,000 percent untrue,’ were laid out in court.
Former President Donald Trump appears in Manhattan criminal court on Tuesday, April 23, 2024 in New York
David Pecker is questioned by prosecutor Joshua Steinglass during former U.S. President Donald Trump’s criminal trial on charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, in Manhattan state court in New York City, U.S. April 23, 2024 in this courtroom sketch
Karen McDougal at the Playboy Golf Finals Party. Playboy Mansion, Los Angeles, 2007
The court also heard how the tabloid alerted Trump to allegations of an affair by Playboy model Karen McDougal.
In wide-ranging testimony Pecker detailed how he had pledged to ‘catch and kill’ bad stories about Trump in the 2016 election campaign.
The tabloid chief told the court he had been Trump’s ‘eyes and ears’ on the lookout for claims by women that could damage his friend, who he called the ‘most eligible bachelor.’
After forging an agreement with Trump he also published negative stories about his rivals and opponents including Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton.
Pecker is the first witness in Trump’s historic trial in Manhattan where he faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Those records relate to payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about claims of an alleged affair.
Trump, the first former president to face a criminal trial, shuffled papers and watched Pecker intently as he gave evidence just feet away.
Pecker described to the jury of five women and seven men a key meeting in August 2015 at Trump Tower.
It also included Trump’s ‘fixer’ Michael Cohen and another aide, Hope Hicks, who was ‘in an out’ of the meeting.
Porn star Stormy Daniels who received a $130,000 payment from Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen
Trump looks on as David Pecker gives evidence in his trial
Natalie Harp is among Trump’s communications aides who have been attending the trial
The publisher, who had already been friends with Trump for decades, said he was asked what he could do for the campaign.
Pecker said he volunteered to publish positive stories about Trump, and negative stories about his opponents.
He then told Trump ‘I will be your eyes and ears’ detecting ‘anything I hear in the marketplace, anything negative about yourself, or about women selling stories.”
It was agreed that he would the notify Cohen so the rights to stories could be purchased and ‘they would not get published.’
Pecker said: ‘We used checkbook journalism and we paid for stories.
‘When someone is running for public office like this it is very common for these women to call up a magazine like the National Enquirer to try to sell their stories.’
Prosecutor Josh Steinglass asked Pecker about the deal with former Trump Tower doorman Dino Sadujin.
In late 2015, Pecker said that Howard had gotten a tip about a story.
He said: ‘Dino was in the market, selling a story that Donald Trump fathered an illegitimate girl with a maid at Trump Tor and the maid worked in his penthouse’.
At this Trump repeatedly shook his head.
Donald Trump with ex-Playboy model and actress Karen McDougal
Former national Enquirer publisher Davi=d Pecker
Pecker said he immediately called Cohen and gave him the names of the doorman and the housekeeper.
Cohen told him the story was ‘absolutely not true’.
Sajudin then signed an agreement for them to have exclusive rights to the story.
Pecker said Cohen thanked him and said ‘the boss will be very pleased. The boss would be Donald Trump.’
According to Pecker, Cohen said that ‘Mr Trump would take a DNA test, he’s German Irish and this woman is Hispanic and it’s absolutely impossible.’
Pecker said: ‘I told Michael Cohen that won’t be necessary, we’ll vet the story.’
The National Enquirer hired a private investigator and established it ‘was absolutely 1,000% untrue.’
But Pecker said they paid for it because if it ‘got out to another publication or another media outlet it would have been very embarrassing to the campaign.’
He said: ‘I bought the story. If the story was true and I published it, it would be probably the biggest sale in the National Enquirer since the death of Elvis Presley.’
Trump laughed after the Elvis mention.
Pecker said, if the story had been true, he would have waited until after the 2016 election to publish it.
Protesters at Donald Trump’s trial
Pecker also detailed the case of Karen McDougal, a Playboy model, who he became aware had offers from media organizations to buy her story of an affair with Trump.
The National Enquirer interviewed McDougal and Pecker kept Cohen updated.
Cohen suggested they speak on the encrypted app Signal rather than a landline.
Pecker also received a call from Trump and he told the presidential candidate he should buy the story, but Trump said ‘I don’t buy any stories.’
The tabloid publisher said Cohen started to become ‘very agitated’ like he was ‘getting a lot of pressure’ to obtain details of the Enquirer interview with McDougal.
Pecker said: ‘He kept on calling and each time he seemed more anxious. I assumed he had a conversation with Mr Trump and Mr Trump was asking Michael Cohen did we hear anything?’
Pecker said he told Cohen to ‘relax’.
He also recounted telling National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard that the agreement, which was not written down, was ‘highly confidential’.
Michael Cohen, who will be the star witness in the case
‘I said any stories that are out there about Donald Trump, his family, the election, whatever it might be. I want you to vet the stories,’ Pecker said. ‘I want you to bring them to me. We’ll have to speak to Michael Cohen. You’ll call him, or I will, and we’ll tell him what the stories are.’
Pecker said Cohen would call him and say ‘we would like for you to run a negative article’ on a rival.
He told the court: ‘Let’s say it’s on Ted Cruz. He would send me information about Ted Cruz or about Ben Carson, or Marco Rubio, and that was the basis of our story. We would embellish it from there.’
Pecker was asked by the prosecutor who he thought Cohen meant by ‘we’.
He said: I assumed he was talking to Mr Trump.’
Donald Trump and his lawyer Todd Blanche leave court
The court was shown National Enquirer headlines including ‘Bungling surgeon Ben Carson left sponge in patient’s brain’ and ‘Ted Cruz Shamed By Porn Star’ and ‘Perv Ted Cruz Caught Cheating’.
Another headline was: ‘Donald Trump blasts Ted Cruz’s Dad for Photo with JFK Assassin’
Pecker confirmed that Carson and Cruz had been rising in the polls when the stories were published.
He said: ‘After the Republican debates, and based on some of the success some of the candidates had, I would receive a call from Michael Cohen and he would direct me on which candidate and which direction we should go. That’s the process.
‘We would also send him the PDFs of the story before it was published so he could see the direction we were going.
‘He would comment on them. We would add content based on the information that Michael Cohen had.
Judge Juan Merchan presides over Donald Trump’s trial in Manhattan criminal court, Tuesday, April 23, 2024, in New York
Pecker, 72, told the jury he has known Trump since the 1980s and once worked with him on a magazine called ‘Trump Style.’
He said Trump was a fixture on the National Enquirer’s front pages, and a survey found 80 percent of the magazine’s readers said they would back him if he ran for president.
He described Trump’s approach to money as ‘very cautious and very frugal’ and called him a ‘micromanager’ in business.
Prosecutors displayed an email from Cohen inviting Pecker to Trump’s 2015 campaign launch.
‘No one deserves to be there more than you,’ Cohen wrote.
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