David Pecker, a key figure in the hush money case against Donald Trump, is reportedly slated to be the first witness to testify against the former president at his New York criminal trial.
Pecker is the former CEO of the company that published The National Enquirer and is expected to deliver the first testimony against Trump after opening arguments begin in his trial on Monday, a source familiar with the matter told the New York Times.
Prosecutors say Pecker’s hush money relationship with Trump and his former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen began at Trump Tower in August 2015, when he agreed to help Trump’s campaign identify negative stories about him.
Trump’s trial centers on allegations that his company’s internal records were obscured to hide reimbursement payments to his former fixer and attorney Michael Cohen, who arranged hush money payments to hide negative stories about him during the 2016 presidential race. The former president has pleaded not guilty to the 34 Class E felonies he faces, which can amount to four years or less in prison if he is convicted, or a lesser sentence like probation.
While Cohen’s payments to porn star Stormy Daniels serve as the case’s primary focus, the indictment against Trump details two other deals, including one with former Playboy model Karen McDougal and another with a former Trump Tower doorman, who claimed the then-presidential candidate had fathered a child out of wedlock.
Pecker and his tabloid purchased the silence of the doorman, whose narrative about the child out of wedlock turned out to be proven false. The media mogul also bought the rights to the story about McDougal and never published it, a practice the indictment describes as “catch and kill.”
In October 2016, when Daniels was preparing to go public and sell her story about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump, the former president’s campaign had just been jolted by the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump boasted about grabbing women “by the p****.”
Cohen eventually reached a deal with Pecker to silence the story about Daniels’s allegations for $130,000. While Trump has acknowledged reimbursing Cohen, he contends he didn’t know the details about what Cohen was doing.
The former attorney and fixer is expected to be the prosecutors’ star witness because his payments to the porn star are at the very center of Bragg’s indictment. But the problem for prosecutors, which Trump has already made loud and clear, is that Cohen appears to have lied to multiple branches of the federal government in just the past few years.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg‘s team will utilize Pecker’s testimony to help corroborate much of what the former attorney is expected to testify about, and also has plans to invite McDougal and Daniels to the stand. Trump has repeatedly said he would testify in his own defense.
Trump, who is under a gag order and is facing potential fines for speaking about Cohen, has heavily criticized the veracity of his testimony. He posted to social media on Sunday, calling on Justice Juan Merchan to “REMOVE THE GAG ORDER!!!”
“WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO HIDE???” Trump added in his post. Merchan is slated to hold a hearing on Tuesday about prosecutors’ allegations that Trump has violated the gag order ten times since the trial began last Monday and that he should be fined $1,000 per violation.
The revelation by the Times that Pecker would be the first witness comes as prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said Friday he would like Trump to remain clueless about who will testify on Monday, or at least until Sunday evening. Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, had asked on Thursday if Steinglass could tell him who the first three would be.
“Mr. Trump has been tweeting about the witnesses,” Steinglass told Merchan last week. “We’re not telling them who the witnesses are.”
Attorney Karen Agnifilo, a Trump critic who formerly worked in top positions in the Manhattan DA’s office, told the Washington Examiner in an email that prosecutors denying defense attorneys notice about their witness order was abnormal, but she also indicated that she viewed it as justifiable.
“He threatens witnesses so when that happens that is what they do,” Agnifilo said.
Opening arguments will begin on Monday at around 9:30 a.m. local time, following a tumultuous first week of the trial, which included interviews with nearly 300 potential jurors — many of whom were immediately dismissed after they said they could not judge the case impartially.
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The selection process resumed on Thursday with two previously sworn-in jurors who were subsequently dismissed for separate reasons. The court was able to seat all 12 jurors and six alternates just before the end of the day on Friday.
A spokeswoman for Bragg’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The Washington Examiner reached out to both Trump’s legal and campaign team for comment.
