Defence lawyers in Donald Trump’s hush money trial are poised to dig into an account of the former publisher of the National Enquirer and his efforts to protect Trump from negative stories during the 2016 election.
David Pecker will return to the witness stand for the fourth day on Friday as defence lawyers try to poke holes in his testimony, which has described helping bury embarrassing stories Trump feared could hurt his campaign.
Mr Pecker so far has painted a tawdry portrait of “catch and kill” tabloid schemes – catching a potentially damaging story by buying the rights to it and then killing it through agreements that prevent the paid person from telling the story to anyone else.
The cross-examination, which began on Thursday, will cap a consequential week in criminal cases the former president is facing as he vies to reclaim the White House in November.
The charges centre on $130,000 in payments that Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen.
He paid that sum on Trump’s behalf to keep pornography actor Stormy Daniels from going public with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier.
Trump has denied the encounter ever happened.
Prosecutors say Trump obscured the true nature of those payments and falsely recorded them as legal expenses.
He has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
The case is the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president and the first of four prosecutions of Trump to reach a jury.
