Takeaways from the first week of Donald Trump's criminal trial
Former President Donald Trump leans back in his chair at the defense table during a bench conference regarding the cross examination of David Pecker in Manhattan criminal court on Friday. Credit: AP/Elizabeth Williams
The first full-fledged week of former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial revolved around the testimony of David Pecker, a self-described Trump confidant and former tabloid media executive.
Over the course of four days, Pecker laid out how he worked with Trump and his then-attorney Michael Cohen to “catch and kill” the stories of alleged paramours ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office have charged Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
They questioned Pecker about his decadeslong friendship with Trump and the efforts of the National Enquirer to propel Trump’s candidacy by suppressing potential scandalous stories while promoting negative coverage of his 2016 political rivals.
Trump’s legal team, in cross-examination, sought to cast Pecker as a prosecution witness beholden to a non-prosecution agreement he signed in exchange for his cooperation.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, routinely complained to reporters outside Judge Juan Merchan’s lower Manhattan courtroom that the trial prevented him from campaigning against President Joe Biden. But he also used his time in front of cameras and reporters to attack Biden, as he typically does at campaign rallies and events.
Here are takeaways from the trial’s first week:
During Monday’s opening arguments, prosecutors and Trump’s defense team each laid out for jurors a preview of the legal jousting to come in the next six weeks or so.
Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo told jurors Trump’s alleged actions to direct payments to Daniels to silence her claim of an affair with the business mogul amounted to “election fraud, pure and simple.”
Trump is accused of falsifying business records by signing off on invoices and paperwork that concealed the payments as legal fees owed by The Trump Organization to Cohen, a Lawrence native who has said he fronted the money to pay Daniels to minimize Trump’s exposure.
“No politician wants bad press,” Colangelo said. “But the evidence at trial will show that this was not spin or communication strategy. This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior.”
Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, argued Trump’s willingness to pay Daniels to prevent other media outlets from getting her story is par for the course in politics.
“I have a spoiler alert: There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence the election. It’s called democracy,” Blanche told jurors. “They put something sinister on this idea, as if it was a crime. You’ll learn it’s not.”
Throughout his testimony, Pecker told prosecutors his efforts to purchase and suppress potentially damaging stories about Trump were explicitly to aid Trump’s 2016 presidential bid.
Pecker’s assertions played into the prosecution’s overall argument that Trump sought to falsify documents to conceal the payments to Stormy Daniels as part of an effort to influence the election by not allowing a potentially damning story to go public.
“We didn’t want the story to embarrass Mr. Trump or embarrass or hurt the campaign,” Pecker told prosecutors on Thursday when asked about the $150,000 payment American Media Inc. (AMI) — the parent company of the National Enquirer — made to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to suppress her allegations of an extramarital affair with Trump.
When prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked Pecker if his main purpose of entering into an agreement with McDougal was “to suppress her story so as to prevent it from influencing the election,”
Pecker replied, “Yes, it was.”
Pecker later said he encouraged Cohen to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her story to “catch and kill” her allegations of a tryst with Trump, after telling Cohen that AMI did not plan on paying for the story.
Trump’s defense team, in cross-examination, sought to cast Pecker’s relationship with Trump as mutually beneficial, noting negative coverage of Trump’s Republican primary opponents helped boost sales of the tabloid. Trump's lawyers also argued Pecker frequently used the “catch and kill” tactic to try to curry favor with other high-profile figures, including golfer Tiger Woods and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger before his 2003 winning gubernatorial campaign.
Gregory Germain, a law professor at Syracuse College of Law, in a phone interview told Newsday one of the challenges facing prosecutors is spelling out for the jury why the record falsification charges, typically misdemeanors, were elevated to felony charges.
State law indicates the charges can be elevated to felony charges if there was “intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof.”
But some legal analysts have criticized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for not clearly defining what other crime had been committed in connection with the falsifying documents charges.
“I think clearly if Donald Trump had directly paid Daniels hush money, there wouldn't be any potential liability here,” Germain said. “So why does reimbursing Michael Cohen for making the payments change that? It’s a very hard case to understand legally.”
Mitchell Epner, a white-collar criminal defense attorney based in Manhattan and a former federal prosecutor, told Newsday he believed the prosecution so far “has done an excellent job of telling a simple story from the start: This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a cover-up.”
One of Pecker’s key disclosures during the trial was saying that two of Trump’s top White House aides were aware of the hush money payments once he was in office.
Pecker said he was on a phone conference call with then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Hope Hicks, the White House communications director at the time, to discuss the prospect of paying McDougal more money for her silence.
“Both of them said that they thought it was a good idea,” Pecker told the court.
Huckabee Sanders, now the governor of Arkansas, told reporters at the time that Trump had done nothing wrong, when asked about reports about alleged hush money payments.
“As the president has said and we’ve stated many times, he did nothing wrong. There are no charges against him and we’ve commented on it extensively,” Sanders said in August 2018.
Trump is accused of violating — on 14 separate occasions this past week — a partial gag order prohibiting him from speaking publicly about the jurors, lawyers, potential witnesses, court personnel and their families.
Merchan has yet to rule on the alleged violations but has scheduled a Thursday hearing to weigh four of the alleged violations brought forward by prosecutors, who claim Trump used a live TV exchange with reporters to praise Pecker as a signal to other witnesses.
“This is a message to Pecker — be nice. It is a message to others. I have a platform and I will talk about you,” prosecutor Chris Conroy told Merchan. “It is a message to everyone involved in this proceeding and this court.”
Ten previous alleged gag order violations were discussed in an April 23 court hearing between prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers, but Merchan did not issue a ruling on violations, which carry a penalty of $1,000 per violation or possible jail time.
Trump’s former executive assistant, Rhona Graff, was the second witness to take the stand, testifying briefly Friday that Trump kept contact information for McDougal and Daniels in the company’s computer system. She was followed by Gary Farro, a banker, who testified he helped Cohen open two bank accounts used to transfer $130,000 to Stormy Daniels.
The trial will enter an abbreviated week — with Monday and Wednesday being scheduled as off days. Farro’s testimony is expected to resume on Tuesday.
The first full-fledged week of former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial revolved around the testimony of David Pecker, a self-described Trump confidant and former tabloid media executive.
Over the course of four days, Pecker laid out how he worked with Trump and his then-attorney Michael Cohen to “catch and kill” the stories of alleged paramours ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office have charged Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
They questioned Pecker about his decadeslong friendship with Trump and the efforts of the National Enquirer to propel Trump’s candidacy by suppressing potential scandalous stories while promoting negative coverage of his 2016 political rivals.
Trump’s legal team, in cross-examination, sought to cast Pecker as a prosecution witness beholden to a non-prosecution agreement he signed in exchange for his cooperation.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, routinely complained to reporters outside Judge Juan Merchan’s lower Manhattan courtroom that the trial prevented him from campaigning against President Joe Biden. But he also used his time in front of cameras and reporters to attack Biden, as he typically does at campaign rallies and events.
Here are takeaways from the trial’s first week:
Election fraud or politics as usual?
During Monday’s opening arguments, prosecutors and Trump’s defense team each laid out for jurors a preview of the legal jousting to come in the next six weeks or so.
Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo told jurors Trump’s alleged actions to direct payments to Daniels to silence her claim of an affair with the business mogul amounted to “election fraud, pure and simple.”
Trump is accused of falsifying business records by signing off on invoices and paperwork that concealed the payments as legal fees owed by The Trump Organization to Cohen, a Lawrence native who has said he fronted the money to pay Daniels to minimize Trump’s exposure.
“No politician wants bad press,” Colangelo said. “But the evidence at trial will show that this was not spin or communication strategy. This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior.”
Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, argued Trump’s willingness to pay Daniels to prevent other media outlets from getting her story is par for the course in politics.
“I have a spoiler alert: There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence the election. It’s called democracy,” Blanche told jurors. “They put something sinister on this idea, as if it was a crime. You’ll learn it’s not.”
Pecker: “Catch and kill” was to aid Trump campaign
Throughout his testimony, Pecker told prosecutors his efforts to purchase and suppress potentially damaging stories about Trump were explicitly to aid Trump’s 2016 presidential bid.
Pecker’s assertions played into the prosecution’s overall argument that Trump sought to falsify documents to conceal the payments to Stormy Daniels as part of an effort to influence the election by not allowing a potentially damning story to go public.
“We didn’t want the story to embarrass Mr. Trump or embarrass or hurt the campaign,” Pecker told prosecutors on Thursday when asked about the $150,000 payment American Media Inc. (AMI) — the parent company of the National Enquirer — made to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to suppress her allegations of an extramarital affair with Trump.
When prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked Pecker if his main purpose of entering into an agreement with McDougal was “to suppress her story so as to prevent it from influencing the election,”
Pecker replied, “Yes, it was.”
Pecker later said he encouraged Cohen to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her story to “catch and kill” her allegations of a tryst with Trump, after telling Cohen that AMI did not plan on paying for the story.
Trump’s defense team, in cross-examination, sought to cast Pecker’s relationship with Trump as mutually beneficial, noting negative coverage of Trump’s Republican primary opponents helped boost sales of the tabloid. Trump's lawyers also argued Pecker frequently used the “catch and kill” tactic to try to curry favor with other high-profile figures, including golfer Tiger Woods and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger before his 2003 winning gubernatorial campaign.
Gregory Germain, a law professor at Syracuse College of Law, in a phone interview told Newsday one of the challenges facing prosecutors is spelling out for the jury why the record falsification charges, typically misdemeanors, were elevated to felony charges.
State law indicates the charges can be elevated to felony charges if there was “intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof.”
But some legal analysts have criticized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for not clearly defining what other crime had been committed in connection with the falsifying documents charges.
“I think clearly if Donald Trump had directly paid Daniels hush money, there wouldn't be any potential liability here,” Germain said. “So why does reimbursing Michael Cohen for making the payments change that? It’s a very hard case to understand legally.”
Mitchell Epner, a white-collar criminal defense attorney based in Manhattan and a former federal prosecutor, told Newsday he believed the prosecution so far “has done an excellent job of telling a simple story from the start: This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a cover-up.”
Trump White House officials aware of payments
One of Pecker’s key disclosures during the trial was saying that two of Trump’s top White House aides were aware of the hush money payments once he was in office.
Pecker said he was on a phone conference call with then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Hope Hicks, the White House communications director at the time, to discuss the prospect of paying McDougal more money for her silence.
“Both of them said that they thought it was a good idea,” Pecker told the court.
Huckabee Sanders, now the governor of Arkansas, told reporters at the time that Trump had done nothing wrong, when asked about reports about alleged hush money payments.
“As the president has said and we’ve stated many times, he did nothing wrong. There are no charges against him and we’ve commented on it extensively,” Sanders said in August 2018.
Trump’s mounting gag order violations
Trump is accused of violating — on 14 separate occasions this past week — a partial gag order prohibiting him from speaking publicly about the jurors, lawyers, potential witnesses, court personnel and their families.
Merchan has yet to rule on the alleged violations but has scheduled a Thursday hearing to weigh four of the alleged violations brought forward by prosecutors, who claim Trump used a live TV exchange with reporters to praise Pecker as a signal to other witnesses.
“This is a message to Pecker — be nice. It is a message to others. I have a platform and I will talk about you,” prosecutor Chris Conroy told Merchan. “It is a message to everyone involved in this proceeding and this court.”
Ten previous alleged gag order violations were discussed in an April 23 court hearing between prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers, but Merchan did not issue a ruling on violations, which carry a penalty of $1,000 per violation or possible jail time.
The week ahead
Trump’s former executive assistant, Rhona Graff, was the second witness to take the stand, testifying briefly Friday that Trump kept contact information for McDougal and Daniels in the company’s computer system. She was followed by Gary Farro, a banker, who testified he helped Cohen open two bank accounts used to transfer $130,000 to Stormy Daniels.
The trial will enter an abbreviated week — with Monday and Wednesday being scheduled as off days. Farro’s testimony is expected to resume on Tuesday.
Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.
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