NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump and tabloid allies used “catch-and-kill” tactics to stiff-arm bad press before the 2016 election and then lied about it on business records “over and over and over again,” New York prosecutors told jurors Monday.
“This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a cover-up,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said Monday in a Manhattan courtroom, kicking off the first criminal trial against a former U.S. president.
Mr. Colangelo said the alleged conspiracy began with an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower with Mr. Trump, his lawyer Michael Cohen and National Enquirer boss David Pecker. The meeting, he said, was supercharged by the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Mr. Trump spoke crudely about women, and it led to a payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels after she alleged an affair.
The plot tipped into illegal activity as Mr. Trump and his team documented hush money payments with false ledger entries and misled banks by describing the payments as income, not reimbursements, according to Mr. Colangelo. He also suggested the whole thing violated federal election laws.
“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 with something bad to say about this behavior,” Mr. Colangelo said in his opening statement.
The defense team will get its turn next.
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Mr. Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records in the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and says Democratic prosecutors are trying to stop his presidential campaign.
Mr. Trump, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Pecker had agreed to a scheme in which Mr. Trump and tabloid allies bought and killed certain stories about Mr. Trump, according to prosecutors.
“He had say over which stories to publish or not publish,” Mr. Colangelo said of Mr. Pecker. “You had the agreement to run positive stories, you had the agreement to attack his opponents, and then the core of the conspiracy was getting Mr. Pecker to act as eyes and ears for the campaign.”
Mr. Cohen is no longer Mr. Trump’s lawyer and Mr. Pecker stepped down as the CEO of the National Enquirer’s parent company in 2020.
Mr. Colangelo said in some cases, Mr. Cohen served as a go-between so that Mr. Trump’s team could have a say in positive or negative stories, including one that alleged GOP rival Ben Carson was accused of medical malpractice and one tying Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to the John F. Kennedy assassination.
“They used a tactic called catch and kill,” he said. “It’s a way of buying damaging information.”
The state is expected to call Mr. Pecker as its first witness.
Mr. Colangelo said the first deal involved a $30,000 payment to a doorman who claimed Mr. Trump had a child out of wedlock.
The second deal involved Karen McDougal, a former Playboy playmate who claimed to have an affair with Mr. Trump that lasted for nearly a year. Mr. Cohen ordered the Enquirer to buy Ms. McDougal’s story, with Mr. Pecker getting his company to front $150,000 for the long-term rights to that story.
Mr. Pecker got impatient with the lack of repayment, and Mr. Cohen recorded a conversation with Mr. Trump in which he concocted a plan to set up a shell company to deal with the reimbursement and own the rights to Ms. McDougal’s story.
The jury will hear a recording of the conversation, including Mr. Trump’s voice, though Mr. Pecker later agreed to eat the cost of the McDougal story.
After those episodes, there was a leak of Access Hollywood audio in which Mr. Trump seemed to chat with a television host about being able to do anything with women.
“Grab em by the p——, you can do anything — end quote,” Mr. Colangelo told the jury, adding the impact was “immediate and explosive.”
Mr. Colangelo said the Trump campaign was so concerned about the fallout of the tape that it went into “damage control mode” that led to a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Ms. Daniels claimed she had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump nearly two decades ago, a claim he denies. Yet she was ready to go public with the story on the cusp of the election.
“Donald Trump agreed to the payoff and directed Cohen to proceed,” Mr. Colangelo said.
Prosecutors allege Mr. Trump funneled payments to Mr. Cohen throughout 2017 and disguised them as payments for legal services.
“He did it to influence a federal election,” Mr. Colangelo said. “There was no retainer agreement, Mr. Cohen was not being paid for legal services.”
Mr. Cohen misled banks in opening the shell company to make the payments, and Mr. Trump hid the true nature of the payments by doubling the payment amount, according to Mr. Colangelo.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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