Trump trial live updates: David Pecker testifies about $150k payment to Playboy model Karen McDougal

When Pecker told Cohen that the deal was off, after his conversations with counsel about the transaction, “he was very, very angry, very upset, basically screaming at me. I said I’m not going forward with this agreement.”

“Michael Cohen said the boss will be very angry with you. I said I’m sorry, I’m not going forward, the deal is off,” Pecker said. “He said I can’t believe it. I’m the lawyer, I’m your friend.”

Steinglass: “Did AMI ever get reimbursed for the money it spent to acquire the exclusive rights to Ms McDougal’s story?”

The court is taking a short break.

Trump has been pretty relaxed, he seems to be getting used to this, and he’s been carefully watching Pecker’s testimony while only slightly slouched in his chair.

We see an invoice from Investor Advisory Service Inc to Cohen’s shell company Resolution Consultants LLC for $125,000 on 21 September 2016.

“When I spoke to Michal Cohen, he said he was creating a company to receive the lifetime rights and that would reimburse, paid, that $125,000,” Pecker says.

The invoice is for the “agreed upon ‘flat fee’ for advisory services.”

Under questioning from Steinglass, Pecker admits it was not for that at all.

“It was for the lifetime rights to the Karen McDougal story.”

Pecker said he agreed to sign over the rights, but Cohen wanted to take out $25,000 that he valued as “editorial expenses” for McDougal’s columns and cover photos.

In September 2016, Cohen told Pecker that Trump wanted to acquire the rights to McDougal’s story.

Trump also “wanted all of the content that the National Enquirer had or developed and retained on Mr Trump.”

“I told Michael that these are old files, boxes, that were in Florida. The company has been moved to New York City,” Pecker said. “He insisted he wanted those boxes, wanted that content.”

“Cohen said, ‘the boss said if I get hit by a bus … he wouldn’t want someone else to publish those stories’.”

For context: In the wake of Cohen’s plea deal with federal prosecutors and sentencing, AMI admitted that the company is subject to campaign finance laws and that such agreements are “unlawful.”

“We bought the story so it wouldn’t be published by any other organization… We didn’t want the story to embarrass Mr. Trump or embarrass or hurt the campaign,” says Pecker.

“Myself and Michael Cohen.”

The invoice was billed to AMI’s “president” department, which had a much larger budget for bigger expenses compared to the editorial budget. The $30,000 for the doorman’s story was also pulled from that account.

Now we see the ledger entry for the wire transfer. The payment voucher is dated 10 August 2016, and then the payment request form, which is basically the check.

Steinglass asks if the main purpose of buying the story was “to suppress her story as to prevent her from influencing the election?”

Steinglass then asks whether Pecker is aware that AMI is subject to federal campaign finance laws for such arrangements made at the request of a candidate.

Above objects and they’re now having a sidebar.

Pecker occasionally lets out a very large cackle, in sharp contrast to his soft-spoken, slow answers.

Who was aware of the agreement?

“I believe Donald Trump did.”

Keith Davidson, McDougal’s attorney at the time, sent an invoice to AMI on 9 August 2016 for $150,000. Pecker also volunteers that the payment was then wired to an escrow account.

“We’ll get to that in a minute”

In the agreement, a two-year contract granted her a monthly column on aging and fitness for Stars magazine, another for OK magazine, four posts a month on Radar Onlineand that AMI would provide her with ghostwriters.

AMI also acquired “limited life story rights” that are limited to “any romantic, personal and/or physical relationship McDougal has ever had with any then-married man.”

Why give her those other provisions?

“I wanted to substantiate the $150,000 payment,” Pecker says. He says the following very carefully with a few pauses:

“With respect to campaign, uh, laws, I wanted to have the contract be a record that stipulates that for the services that she was going to perform for American Media, has a basis for it.

“So when we talked about … all of the articles she was going to run, the photos … I was looking at an amount of money that I would have to acquire or pay for freelancers or other writers or reporters or visual people to validate to come up with the $150,000.”

She also had to pay the money back if she breached the contract, and she couldn’t write any books, do interviews, or make any social media posts about her story, without the consent of AMI.

Pecker also explains why he was skeptical about buying up politically linked stories.

In 2002, when Joe Weider’s health and fitness titles were up for sale, he spoke with Weider’s longtime friend Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wanted to be an editor-at-large for those fitness magazines, “and I want an agreement and, he said, you bought the tabloids – he’s referring to the Globe and the National Enquirer … He said I’ve had a number of litigations and lawsuits in both magazines because you always run negative stories about me. I plan on running for governor and I would like you not to publish any negative stories about me now and in the future, and I’ll continue being the editor of Muscle Fitness and Flex and be a spokesperson.”

“After that announcement, a number of women called up the National Enquirer about stories that they have stories to sell about different relationships, or contacts, or sexual harassment that they felt that Arnold Schwarzenegger did,” he said.

“The agreement I had with Arnold is I would call him and advise him of other stories that were out there and I would acquire them, buy them for a period of time.”

After he became governor, one of the women whose story was acquired by AMI went to The Los Angeles Times. “It was very embarrassing. Most of the press approached Arnold when he was governor. And his comment was, Ask my friend David Pecker.”

The ordeal “made me sensitive about buying any stories in the future. That’s how I became sensitive about this topic,” Pecker said.

The court is shown McDougal’s agreement with AMI, dated 5 August 2016.