President Trump’s defense attorney, Emil Bove, grilled the first witness during cross examination on Friday, firing questions at the 72 year-old former publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker. Following Mr. Bove’s questioning, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass returned with a redirect examination, followed by yet another re-cross from Mr. Bove. In the afternoon the prosecution called two more witnesses, Mr. Trump’s longtime secretary, Rhona Graff, and a banker, Gary Farro.           

Using classic tactics of making a witness feel insecure and vulnerable, Mr. Bove attempted to distance his client from Mr. Pecker and the Enquirer, while showing that what the magazine did during the 2016 election was standard tabloid practice. Mr. Bove used every chance, no matter how small, to challenge the witness’s credibility.   

“Not telling the truth could be a crime, right?” Mr. Bove asked Mr. Pecker in a fast paced, condescending tone, invoking the specter of perjury. “It’s serious business, right?”   

Then, he went for the lie like a hawk diving to catch its prey. “Are you suggesting the FBI made a mistake here?” Mr. Bove asked Mr. Pecker.   

“I know what the truth is. I can’t state why this is written this way. I know what was said to me,” Mr. Pecker testified, his voice shaking. 

Mr. Bove was referring to Mr. Pecker’s visit to Trump Tower on January 6, 2017, where the then president-elect had met with the FBI director, James Comey, future CIA director and secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, future chief of staff Reince Preibus, and future press secretary Sean Spicer. According to his testimony, during this star studded meeting Mr. Trump thanked the former tabloid publisher for his help in the 2016 election campaign.  

Mr. Pecker had testified that Mr. Trump, Cohen and he devised a scheme to catch-and-kill unfavorable stories about Mr. Trump during the election, such as the one Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal was telling. Ms. McDougal, the Playmate of the Month for December 1997 and Playmate of the Year in 1998, claimed she had a nine-month romantic relationship with Mr. Trump in the mid-2000s, which he denies. Mr. Pecker also said he “caught and killed” a specious story that a former doorman at Trump Tower, Dino Sajudin, was peddling about an illegitimate child Mr. Trump was rumored to have fathered with his housekeeper. The story, for which the Enquirer paid Mr. Sajudin $30,000, later turned out to be false.   

Through Mr. Pecker’s testimony, Mr. Steinglass wanted to illustrate Mr. Trump’s deep involvement in the catch-and-kill scheme. The prosecution alleges Mr. Trump engaged in this tabloid tactic – to buy a story and, by never publishing it, to kill it – in order to conceal information from voters during the 2016 election, thereby violating election laws. 

At the heart of the case is a hush-money payment Mr. Trump allegedly ordered his former attorney and current nemesis, Michael Cohen, to make to the porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her from publicizing a onetime  sexual encounter she claims she had with Mr. Trump in 2006 at a celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe. Mr. Trump denies the tryst. 

In 2018, Cohen was arrested by federal agents and, after pleading guilty to tax and campaign violations, was sent to prison. During that investigation federal agents also questioned Mr. Pecker. Now the defense attorney tried to imply Mr. Pecker was committing perjury, or at least that he had lied, because according to records, the tabloid publisher never actually told federal investigators that Mr. Trump had thanked him. 

“Was that another mistake?” Mr. Bove asked Mr. Pecker sharply. “Your testimony is inconsistent with what’s written in that report … Do you believe that Mr. Trump said that to you as you are sitting here right now?” 

Mr. Pecker’s answer was barely audible. Though a seemingly minor detail, the sharp and threatening manner in which Mr. Bove was conducting his questioning appeared to wear the witness down. 

Mr. Bove further attempted to normalize the Enquirer’s publication of negative stories about Mr. Trump’s election opponents, another aspect the prosecution had characterized as conspiratorial.

Mr. Bove pointed out that one such Enquirer article, that claimed Ben Carson had left a sponge in a child patient’s brain, had used “information that was already in the public domain.” It’s not unusual for tabloids to recycle reporting from other outlets.

The defense attorney also addressed the purchase of the fake story about the illegitimate child fathered by Mr. Trump, suggesting the Enquirer had bought it not to protect Mr. Trump’s campaign, but because it was tabloid gold. 

“Sajudin threatened to go somewhere else?” Mr. Bove pressed the witness. 

“Yes,” Mr. Pecker answered.

“That is why you paid him $30,000?” Mr. Bove continued. “It would be too great a loss to AMI [the Enquirer’s parent company] to lose the story, if true?”

“Yes,” Mr. Pecker repeated. 

“You could not walk away from that possibility?” Mr. Bove said.

“Yes,” Mr. Pecker answered.

Mr. Bove also got the witness to admit that the phrase catch-and-kill was in fact never used at the infamous August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower, where Cohen, Mr. Pecker and Mr. Trump allegedly devised the plan to use the Enquirer to influence the election. 

But Mr. Steinglass punched back. He proved that Mr. Pecker had only learned the phrase catch-and-kill from the press, which is why he never used the phrase during that meeting. He knew the practice, not the name.   

According to a recent essay in the New York Times Magazine, the phrase “catch and kill” first appeared in the Wall Street Journal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on the Enquirer after an Enquirer editor, Lachlan Carmichael, shared it with Lukas Alpert, a Journal reporter.

Regarding the purchase of the “tabloid gold” lovechild story, Mr. Steinglass argued that if Mr. Pecker had bought it to sell magazines, he would have printed the story regardless if it was true or false. 

Mr. Steinglass continued his re-direct examination of Mr. Pecker after lunch. When the judge asked how much longer he needed, Mr. Steinglass told him his folder was filled with post it notes.

The prosecutor was able to correct the lie Mr. Bove had tried to uncover: that Mr. Pecker had not told FBI agents that Mr. Trump had thanked him for burying negative stories.

Mr. Steinglass quoted from an FBI record, in which Mr. Pecker explained to an agent how Mr. Trump had indeed thanked him “for handling” Ms. McDougal’s affair allegations and the doorman’s rumor. 

Mr. Pecker was also able to confirm that he told a federal grand jury Mr. Trump had been “very grateful and these stories could have been very, very damaging.”

When Mr. Bove returned to re-cross examine the tired and exhausted witness, he asked Mr. Pecker if the Playboy Playmate, Ms. McDougal, was a “legitimate celebrity” 

“There was real value to her brand, correct?” Mr. Bove asked, trying to establish, as he had done earlier, another reason that the Enquirer paid her $150,000 besides burying the story. 

Mr. Pecker answered, “I wouldn’t say there was value to her brand to a media company.” 

Mr. Pecker had previously testified that the $150,000 deal with Ms. McDougal was ostensibly for her to write a fitness column and share her story about the removal of her breast implants, which had traumatized her. Neither project made it into print.

It is unclear how the jury perceived Mr. Pecker’s testimony, which ended up lasting four days, starting on Monday afternoon and ending around 3 pm on Friday. 

The prosecution then called Rhona Graff, the longtime secretary for Mr. Trump at the Trump Organization, where she began to work in 1987, staying until 2012. Ms. Graff was questioned by the head of the district attorney’s investigations division, Susan Hoffinger. 

Ms. Graff, who was called Mr. Trump’s gatekeeper, said that working for Mr. Trump, “I never had the same day twice. It was a very stimulating, exciting, fascinating place to be.”  

As his secretary, one of her responsibilities was keeping Mr. Trump’s calendar and his lists of contacts. Ms. Graff confirmed that Mr. Trump did indeed have the contacts of the two women who alleged they had sexual affairs with him, Ms. McDougal and Ms. Daniels (legal name Stephanie Clifford), whose phone number was noted under “Stormy”. Ms. Graff also confirmed that she saw Ms. Clifford at Trump Tower. But during cross examination, Ms. Necheles suggested that Ms. Clifford’s visit was probably related to her wish to appear on Mr. Trump’s hit NBC TV show, “The Apprentice”.

After Ms. Graff left the witness stand, she passed Mr. Trump’s defense table on her way to exit the courtroom. Mr. Trump seemed to reach out to her with his hand. During her testimony, she told the jury that the Trump Organization was paying for her legal bills. 

With about an hour left, the prosecution called their third witness, Gary Farro, who now works at Flagstar Bank as a private client adviser, and was the senior managing director at First Republic Bank, when Cohen arranged the $130,000 hush-money payment to Ms. Daniels. Mr. Farro was on the witness stand complying with a subpoena. 

Mr. Farro told the jury that Cohen was handed to him as a client, because he was able to “handle individuals who might be a little challenging,” though Mr. Farro didn’t find Cohen to be “that difficult.” 

After walking the jury through various bank policies, prosecutor Rebecca Mangold showed a document that proved Cohen had opened a limited liability company called Essential Consultants L.L.C., which he had titled a real estate consulting company. It was though this company that Cohen paid Ms. Clifford the alleged hush money.

Mr. Trump exited the courthouse without speaking to reporters. He did not respond to a shouted question about Ms. Clifford being at Trump Tower.  

In the morning, Mr, Trump had taken extra time to address reporters, “I want to start by wishing my wife Melania a very happy birthday. It’d be nice to be with her but I’m at a courthouse for a rigged trial.” Ms. Trump turned 54 today. Mr. Trump added that, “We have another day in court, a freezing courthouse. It’s very cold in there for one purpose, I believe. They don’t seem to be able to get the temperature up. It shouldn’t be that complicated. We have a freezing courthouse, and that’s fine – it’s just fine. Let us keep handing it out. It’s a rigged trial.” 

Mr. Farro will return to the witness stand when court resumes on Tuesday.