David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer, admitted Friday that he would have loved to publish the story of Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who claims she had an affair with Donald Trump, but that he declined to do so in order to help the former president's 2016 campaign.
The admission came as prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked Pecker to clearly outline whether or not he had previously conducted a similar arrangement to the one he had with Trump, wherein he would publish stories based on whether or not they would help one particular politician.
Pecker, previously the CEO of American Media Inc., under which the National Enquirer operated, denied ever doing this before.
"Prior to the August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower, did AMI ever agree to publish stories attacking Mr. Trump’s political opponents?" Steinglass asked. "No," Pecker said.
Through the arrangement with Trump, Pecker understood his job as using his company's network of sources to keep an eye out for "any information that would be coming out on Mr. Trump or the campaign, related to specific women who would be selling their stories," he said.
When these stories would come up, Pecker testified that he would speak to Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen, and tell him which stories were up for sale, as well as how urgent it was that they bought them before someone else got to them.
Cohen would then either buy them or try and make them disappear, Pecker said.
Steinglass questioned Pecker on the McDougal story, in particular.
“Had you published a story about a Playboy model having a year-old sexual affair while he was married with a presidential candidate, would that have sold magazines, you think?" Steinglass asked.
Pecker said it would have been, agreeing with the prosecutor's description of the tale as “National Enquirer gold."
Prosecutors argue that Pecker's arrangement with Trump reached at that August 2015 meeting, constituted illegal contributions to Trump's campaign. In McDougal's case, Pecker paid her $150,000 for the rights to her story.
"At the time you entered into that agreement, you had zero intention of publishing that story?" Steinglass asked. "Yes," Pecker said.
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