Trump hush money trial live updates: David Pecker returns to the stand for cross-examination

Bove recalls Cohen trying to get a job with Mark Cuban in summer 2016, and Cohen calling on Pecker for a “little help” to arrange paparazzi to cover a meeting between them.

Publishing those photos would “put pressure on Trump to treat Cohen differently,” Bove says.

“Michael Cohen never said that to me,” Pecker says. He admits that it could’ve looked that way.

Media reporter Brian Stelter says on CNN that six or seven Trump supporters are outside the courthouse, some attempting to sell merchandise.

Pecker recalls Trump calling him in June 2016, which he previously recounted earlier this week.

“Mr Trump called my office… Since I was in Chatham, New Jersey, my assistant transferred the call to Chatham. When the call came in, the assistant in the office, a small office, came over and told me President Trump was on the phone.”

“When I spoke to Mr. Trump, he wanted to know, he asked me, I spoke to Michael [Cohen], and I want to talk to you about Karen McDougal. So he said, Is it true there’s a Mexican group looking to buy the story for $8m? I said no, I don’t believe that’s true. Two, he said that [long pause] I’m recollecting completely. He said that [pause] I said that this story about Karen, since she’s claiming she had a relationship with you, should be taken off the market. Mr Trump said I don’t buy stories because it always gets out. I said I still think you should buy the story. Mr Trump said I’ll speak to Michael and get back to you.”

One note: when Bove introduced McDougal, he was trying to get Pecker to admit that he knew about her because she was once a cover model for AMI property Men’s Fitness. But Pecker said they never met. He didn’t know her.

Cross-examination moves on to discuss Karen McDougal.

Bove tells Pecker that McDougal didn’t want to publish her story but rather restart her career at AMI.

“Her main interest was not publishing this story,” Bove asks.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass has been trying to object to Bove calling Trump “President Trump” referencing periods when he was not the president.

“He wasn’t president in June 2016,” Steinglass says partially off-mic, laughing in frustration.

Questioning moves on to Dino Sajudin, the Trump World Tower doorman who had a false story about Donald Trump fathering an illegitimate child with a housekeeper.

Pecker confirms that he never talked about it with Trump.

We’re looking at the AMI contract with Dino for $30,000 to buy the rights to his story.

Bove reminds Pecker that he previously testified that, if the story was true and he ran it, it would sell 10 million copies and be a bigger story than the death of Elvis.

“At some point when this agreement was signed and the vetting process was completed, Sajudin was starting to make threats [to] go somewhere else, that’s why you paid him $30,000, right?”

“You couldn’t have him going to another publication if that was true, right?”

We’re looking at the contract amendment.

Bove says it was “still possible” in Pecker’s mind that the story was true, and Pecker “couldn’t walk away.” Pecker agrees.

Bove’s line of questioning is trying to make the Enquirer look as if it was merely republishing other outlets, not singularly scheming to boost negative stories about Trump.

“With substantially everything in the exhibits you were shown… The National Enquirer was recycling content from other publications because it was cost-efficient and it made business sense?”

Bove is trying to suggest that Pecker’s agreement with Trump and Cohen in 2015 was already in line with what The National Enquirer was doing, and not evidence of a conspiracy.

Again — as yesterday — he’s framing every single question as a yes or no.

“It made sense for the business to run articles about Bill and Hillary Clinton… Those articles were negative, right? … It’s easy to say that you would continue to do that during that August 2015 meeting, right? … Running those stories was beneficial to AMI, right? … Doing what’s good for AMI was standard operating procedure, right?”

“There wasn’t much new content in those stories, was there,” regarding negative stories of Trump’s opponents Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. “It was standard operating procedure for The National Enquirer to recycle content from other publications and frame it slightly differently, right?”

Above gives the example that The Guardian had already run articles about Carson’s malpractice before the Enquirer ran headlines about Carson leaving sponges in people’s brains.

Pecker is reading through a transcript in a defense exhibit of his testimony to a federal grand jury in 2018 about the fateful Trump Tower meeting in 2015.

Basically, Bove is trying to pin down the fact that Pecker didn’t bring up Hope Hicks in that meeting with the feds, yet later said that she was in and out of that meeting in some capacity.

Also, Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn is here in the court — as he was yesterday — in the same seat two rows behind Trump, one row behind the Secret Service.

Bove’s whole schtick yesterday just got sunk by Merchan.

Merchan instructs the jury that there’s nothing weird about prosecutors speaking with witnesses before a trial.

“The law allows the witness to do so,” he said. “Speaking to a witness about his or her testimony, reading materials, is a normal part of preparing for trial. It is not improper, as long as the witness does not depart from the truth.”

Before getting back to Hope Hicks questions, Bove tells Pecker: “I want to apologize and move on from that.”

Assistant district attorney for Manhattan Joshua Steinglass raised a couple of issues, including the defense’s “improper impeachment” of tabloid mogul David Pecker on the stand yesterday, and defense attorney Emil Bove’s conflation of state and federal prosecutors – both of which made things (intentionally) unclear to the jury, in what seemed like an obvious attempt to derail his testimony and make him look unreliable.

Pecker returns to the witness stand, for likely his last day in court (for now), and the jury is walking in.