NEW YORK –
As Donald Trump was running for president in 2016, his old friend at the National Enquirer was scooping up potentially damaging stories about the candidate and paying out tens of thousands of dollars to keep them from the public eye.
But when it came to the seamy claims by porn performer Stormy Daniels, David Pecker, the tabloid’s longtime publisher, said he put his foot down.
“I am not paying for this story,” he told jurors Thursday at Trump’s hush money trial, recounting his version of a conversation with Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen about the catch-and-kill scheme that prosecutors alleged amounted to interference in the race. Pecker was already US$180,000 in the hole on other Trump-related stories by the time Daniels came along, at which point, he said, “I didn’t want to be involved in …