Trump defense: National Enquirer’s moves in 2016 were good business, not a scheme

NEW YORK — The former leader of the National Enquirer testified Friday he would have published a Trump Tower doorman’s story about Donald Trump having a child out of wedlock if it were true as defense attorneys cast a payoff to the man as an attempt to protect the tabloid’s reputation for scoops and not an election-related scheme.

Mr. Trump’s lawyer Emil Bove told the ex-publisher, David Pecker, that refusing the story and letting the doorman sell it to some other paper “would not make business sense.”

“No,” Mr. Pecker agreed. The Enquirer paid $30,000 for the story rights but determined it was untrue.

Mr. Pecker, who led the National Enquirer at the time as chairman of American Media Inc., testified earlier this week he agreed in August 2015 to run positive stories about Mr. Trump during the campaign while elevating negative stories about his opponents.

Yet Mr. Pecker, under cross-examination by Mr. Trump’s lawyers, said there was no mention of either the term “catch and kill” at the meeting or financial payoffs. He also suggested that many stories saw the light of day — or did not — as a simple matter of tabloid business.

The Enquirer began running negative stories about Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, who ultimately faced Mr. Trump in the 2016 presidential election, before the August 2015 meeting.

Mr. Bove also highlighted negative stories about Mr. Trump’s GOP opponents, including Ben Carson and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, that ran in the Enquirer but appeared to use old content from other media outlets.

Mr. Bove suggested the Enquirer would have done that as a standard business practice.

Mr. Trump sat back in his chair and quietly watched the testimony. Four TV monitors in the courtroom let him watch the action from different angles.

Earlier, he complained in the hallway about the cold temperature in the room and the fact he had court on his wife’s birthday.

Prosecutors called Mr. Pecker as their first witness to build a foundation for the crux of their case: that Mr. Trump and his lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, used payoffs to suppress bad press before the 2016 election and criminally concealed a payment to porn star Stormy Daniels through a series of checks and business entries that misled banks and triggered election and tax offenses. 

Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records and says the case is designed to thwart his presidential campaign. He also denies having a sexual encounter with Ms. Daniels in 2006, as she alleges.