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The hush money indictment

ideologyhunter said:
Over the weekend, Fat Bastard predicted that today, "ALL HELL WILL BREAK LOOSE!" My prediction: it will be the same small crowd of Trumpies who stood out on the street when he had his mug shot taken. And just imagine: a former President who clearly wishes that street violence would happen. Tucker Carlson was so right: Trump is a demonic force, a destroyer.
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But hell doesn't exist. Thus "all hell" is nothing. And that's what we got. Therefore he's right.
 
A full jury has been picked in Trump criminal trial in New York : NPR - April 19, 2024 4:44 PM ET
Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom earlier in the week, Trump lamented that he is unable to make campaign stops in other states because New York law requires him to be present for his criminal trial, which takes place on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
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He can't stop being a big baby.
From the start of jury selection, 50 of 96 jurors were dismissed when asked if they believed they could be "fair and impartial." They could not. Out of the second batch of 96, 40 were excused.

But that first question has continued to dismiss jurors. On Tuesday, one prospective juror told New York Judge Juan Merchan that after struggling to sleep overnight and thinking about it, she concluded she could not be fair and impartial. She was dismissed.

On Thursday, the third day of jury selection, one selected juror voiced concern that reports in the media may reveal identifying information and her identity potentially being revealed would not allow her to be fair and impartial. She was dismissed after originally being selected.
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Jury selection was quicker than what many people expected, and that was from Judge Merchan dismissing without further questioning any potential jurors who claimed that they could not judge this case fairly.

Opinion: I’ve been a criminal attorney for decades. Here’s what I think about the case against Trump | CNN
With regard to the primary jury panel of 12, I am struck by how many professionals have been seated. It includes two lawyers, a tech worker, a software engineer, finance professionals, a teacher and a salesperson, among others. In my view, that’s a group that’s going to zero in on facts, logic, documents and evidence. That could be very good for Trump because they likely would not be inclined to base their verdict on politics — his or theirs.

It could also work against him, however, since the jurors may turn out to be dispassionate, unemotional and otherwise unpersuaded by defense claims of prosecutorial unfairness, governmental overreaching or witch hunts.
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Trump's lawyers argue 'democracy' in response to 'porn star payoff' allegations. What you missed on Day 5 of his trial. - "The prosecution detailed allegations of a sensational tabloid scheme to “catch and kill” stories that could have proved damaging to Trump."
“This case is about a criminal conspiracy. Trump orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” said Matthew Colangelo, a lawyer with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office. “Then he covered up that criminal scheme by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”

The prosecution detailed allegations of a sensational tabloid scheme to “catch and kill” stories that could prove damaging to Trump, a plan, the DA’s office said, that was elicited with Trump’s blessing and that he was directly implicated in.
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On the other side,
Defending Trump, Blanche attacked the evidence as nearly a decade old, part of an effort to poke holes in the allegations against Trump.

“There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It’s called democracy,” Blanche argued in the defense’s opening statements, calling the use of nondisclosure agreements “perfectly legal.”

Daniels, he said, had tried to “extort” money from Trump — a point that drew an objection from prosecutors — and Cohen, now a disgruntled former employee, was waging a vendetta against his client.

“You will learn, ladies and gentlemen, that Michael Cohen has pled guilty to lying under oath,” Blanche said.

Blanche had painted a picture of the “larger than life” former president, telling jurors how “he’s also a husband, a man, a father.”

“A man just like me,” he said, as Trump watched his defense attorney intently.
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Trump trial to focus on gag order before witness testimony resumes - "Judge Juan Merchan heard arguments on whether Trump violated a gag order with social media posts about two expected witnesses in the hush money trial."
"We are not yet seeking an incarceratory penalty; the defendant seems to be angling for that,” prosecutor Chris Conroy told Judge Juan Merchan at a hearing over whether Trump should be held in contempt over a series of posts on Truth Social that prosecutors argue violated Merchan's gag order. The ruling prohibits Trump from publicly attacking witnesses and jurors, something prosecutors say he's done at least 10 times since the order went into effect.

“The purpose of this hearing is to find out whether the defendant Mr. Trump should be held in contempt for one or all of these violations,” the judge said as the hearing began.

“His disobedience of the order is willful, it’s intentional,” Conroy told the judge of Trump. "He knows what he's not allowed to do and he does it anyway."

...
The DA's office is seeking the maximum $1,000 fine for each of the 10 posts it says violated the order, along with an order that Trump remove the posts from his social media platform. It also wants Merchan to warn Trump any future violations risk not just additional fines but also as long as 30 days in jail.
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Former National Enquirer boss reveals sleazy tactics the tabloid used to protect Donald Trump and smear his rivals | CNN Business
Donald Trump and his allies like to complain at length about imagined “collusion” between the Democratic Party and the media. But on Tuesday, former National Enquirer boss David Pecker lifted the curtain on the actual media collusion that took place in the 2016 election.

...
“I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr. Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents,” Pecker said under oath at Trump’s historic hush-money trial in New York. “I said I would be your eyes and ears because I know that the Trump Organization has a very small staff.”
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Some of what he did:
Pecker spoke at length about how he worked with former Trump attorney Michael Cohen to “catch and kill” stories that could have damaged the then-candidate, such as former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s allegations of an affair, which the Enquirer paid $130,000 to bury. Pecker said that at the outset of the campaign he believed “there would be a lot of women who would come out to try to sell their stories” about Trump because he was “well known as the most eligible bachelor.”

To that end, Pecker said he served as Trump’s eyes and ears, alerting the then-candidate’s camp to potentially embarrassing stories that hovered on the horizon. In fact, Pecker was so determined to protect Trump that he even purchased a story from Manhattan doorman Dino Sajudin, despite believing it to be bogus. That story, which the Enquirer paid $30,000 for, alleged Trump had fathered an illegitimate child, prompting the tabloid to deploy a team of reporters to chase down the truth. While Pecker eventually determined the story was false, his publication paid five figures for the story anyway.
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National Enquirer made up the story about Ted Cruz’s father and Lee Harvey Oswald, former publisher says – NBC 7 San Diego
David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, testified at Donald Trump's trial Tuesday that the tabloid completely manufactured a negative story in 2016 about the father of Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, who was then Trump's rival for the GOP presidential nomination.

The paper had published a photo allegedly showing Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz, with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963, not long before Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

... Pecker indicated that they faked the photo that was the foundation for the story.

“We mashed the photos and the different picture with Lee Harvey Oswald. And mashed the two together. And that’s how that story was prepared — created I would say," Pecker said on the witness stand.
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What does Ted Cruz think?
When asked for his response Tuesday, Cruz told NBC News he's “not interested in revisiting ancient history.”

...
When the story about Cruz's dad was published, the senator told reporters that Trump was a "pathological liar" after he promoted the story.

“He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies," he said. "He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everyone else of lying.”
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TC called DT a pathological liar before he became a Trumpie.
 
David Pecker: Michael Cohen used to ask tabloid to run negative articles on Trump’s political opponents | PBS NewsHour
The court was shown examples of the resulting headlines relating to Carson, a surgeon who ran against Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary and later became his secretary of housing.

“Bungling surgeon Ben Carson left sponge in patient’s brain” reads one article relaying allegations from a former patient.
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Trump hush money trial: Tabloid publisher David Pecker testifies | AP News
and
David Pecker, Former National Enquirer Publisher, Details How He Helped Trump - The New York Times

Tabloid Boss David Pecker Dishes on Killing Trump Love Child Rumor
One of the negative headlines shown to jurors read, “BUNGLING SURGEON BEN CARSON LEFT SPONGE IN PATIENT’S BRAIN!”

Another read, “SHOCKING CLAIMS: PERVY TED CRUZ CAUGHT CHEATING—WITH 5 SECRET MISTRESSES!”

Yet another read, “‘FAMILY MAN’ MARCO RUBIO’S LOVE CHILD STUNNER!”
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lpetrich said:
Former National Enquirer boss reveals sleazy tactics the tabloid used to protect Donald Trump and smear his rivals | CNN Business
Donald Trump and his allies like to complain at length about imagined “collusion” between the Democratic Party and the media. But on Tuesday, former National Enquirer boss David Pecker lifted the curtain on the actual media collusion that took place in the 2016 election.

...
“I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr. Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents,” Pecker said under oath at Trump’s historic hush-money trial in New York. “I said I would be your eyes and ears because I know that the Trump Organization has a very small staff.”
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Some of what he did:
Pecker spoke at length about how he worked with former Trump attorney Michael Cohen to “catch and kill” stories that could have damaged the then-candidate, such as former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s allegations of an affair, which the Enquirer paid $130,000 to bury. Pecker said that at the outset of the campaign he believed “there would be a lot of women who would come out to try to sell their stories” about Trump because he was “well known as the most eligible bachelor.”

To that end, Pecker said he served as Trump’s eyes and ears, alerting the then-candidate’s camp to potentially embarrassing stories that hovered on the horizon. In fact, Pecker was so determined to protect Trump that he even purchased a story from Manhattan doorman Dino Sajudin, despite believing it to be bogus. That story, which the Enquirer paid $30,000 for, alleged Trump had fathered an illegitimate child, prompting the tabloid to deploy a team of reporters to chase down the truth. While Pecker eventually determined the story was false, his publication paid five figures for the story anyway.
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Shouldn't the costs of those protection operations by Pecker et al be considered campaign contributions?
 
ZiprHead said:
lpetrich said:
Former National Enquirer boss reveals sleazy tactics the tabloid used to protect Donald Trump and smear his rivals | CNN Business
Donald Trump and his allies like to complain at length about imagined “collusion” between the Democratic Party and the media. But on Tuesday, former National Enquirer boss David Pecker lifted the curtain on the actual media collusion that took place in the 2016 election.

...
“I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr. Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents,” Pecker said under oath at Trump’s historic hush-money trial in New York. “I said I would be your eyes and ears because I know that the Trump Organization has a very small staff.”
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Some of what he did:
Pecker spoke at length about how he worked with former Trump attorney Michael Cohen to “catch and kill” stories that could have damaged the then-candidate, such as former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s allegations of an affair, which the Enquirer paid $130,000 to bury. Pecker said that at the outset of the campaign he believed “there would be a lot of women who would come out to try to sell their stories” about Trump because he was “well known as the most eligible bachelor.”

To that end, Pecker said he served as Trump’s eyes and ears, alerting the then-candidate’s camp to potentially embarrassing stories that hovered on the horizon. In fact, Pecker was so determined to protect Trump that he even purchased a story from Manhattan doorman Dino Sajudin, despite believing it to be bogus. That story, which the Enquirer paid $30,000 for, alleged Trump had fathered an illegitimate child, prompting the tabloid to deploy a team of reporters to chase down the truth. While Pecker eventually determined the story was false, his publication paid five figures for the story anyway.
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Shouldn't the costs of those protection operations by Pecker et al be considered campaign contributions?
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That isn't the point. The point is that Trump wanted stuff hidden... for electoral (and maybe prenup?) reasons. This is establishing Trump's pattern of behavior and why it isn't viable that Trump just wanted to pay Daniels to be quiet over nothing. You can't tell someone to bury a story... that doesn't exist.
 
Ex-tabloid boss confirms National Enquirer recycled stories from other publications
Defense attorney Emil Bove is questioning ex-publisher David Pecker about the National Enquirer's practice of publishing stories based on other news organizations' reporting, as he continues a line of questioning around the tabloid's coverage of Trump's political foes.

"The National Enquirer was recycling information from other publications because it was cost-efficient and made business sense?" Bove asks. "Yes," Pecker testifies.

Bove notes that the tabloid's work included cultivating a network of sources. "But that's not what was happening" with these articles, he says.

"Yes," Pecker says.
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Trump hush money trial: Tabloid publisher David Pecker continues testimony | AP News
then
David Pecker's testimony at Trump's hush money trial offers astonishing insight into the National Enquirer | AP News
Even by National Enquirer standards, testimony by its former publisher David Pecker at Donald Trump’s hush money trial this week has revealed an astonishing level of corruption at America’s best-known tabloid and may one day be seen as the moment it effectively died.

“It just has zero credibility,” said Lachlan Cartwright, executive editor of the Enquirer from 2014 to 2017. “Whatever sort of credibility it had was totally damaged by what happened in court this week.”
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Then on how the National Enquirer rose to prominence.
However its stories danced on the edge of credulity, the Enquirer was a cultural fixture, in large part because of genius marketing. As many Americans moved to the suburbs in the 1960s, the tabloid staked its place on racks at supermarket checkout lines, where people could see headlines about UFO abductions or medical miracles while waiting for their milk and bread to be bagged.
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It certainly wasn't due to quality of journalism.
Celebrity news was a staple, and the Enquirer paid sources around Hollywood to learn what the stars’ publicists wouldn’t say. It may have been true. It may have had just a whiff of truth. It was rarely boring.
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On one occasion, the NE paid a source to secretly take a picture of Elvis Presley in his coffin. That picture was on the next NE issue's front page, and that issue sold 6.9 million copies.
For all the ridicule the tabloid received from “serious” journalists, Enquirer reporters hustled and broke some genuine news. A memorable picture of the married Sen. Gary Hart enjoying a tropical holiday alongside a woman he was involved with destroyed a presidential candidacy and brought politicians into the Enquirer’s celebrity world. The tab was considered for a Pulitzer Prize after revealing a sex scandal involving U.S. Sen. John Edwards in the early 2000s.
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Yes, true stories sometimes make it into the NE.

Donald Trump often appeared in it in the 1990's, and when David Pecker bought it, DT said to him “Congratulations — you bought a great magazine.”
 
NE catch-and-kill is older than Trump's candidacy. The NE did that to a story about Arnold Schwarzenegger having a love affair with actress Gigi Goyette, for instance.
Throughout the campaign, National Enquirer headlines made no secret who the tabloid was backing: “Donald Trump: The Man Behind the Legend,” read one. “Donald Trump: Healthiest Individual Ever Elected,” was another.

The Trump-boosting covers baffled Steve Coz, a former top Enquirer editor, when he saw them at his neighborhood supermarket in Florida. “That is so foreign to anybody who worked at the National Enquirer,” Coz said in the documentary.
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Because it would normally be running scandalous stories about him, with its usual disregard for truthfulness.
Meanwhile, Bill and Hillary Clinton were frequent targets of unflattering stories; Pecker called that a double win, since it helped Trump and anti-Clinton stories were popular with Enquirer readers.
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Lachlan Cartwright found this curious gap in the NE's coverage very odd.
Ben Carson was described as a “bungling surgeon and ”brain butcher.” Marco Rubio headlines referenced a “love child” and “cocaine connection.” Ted Cruz supposedly was having five secret affairs and his father was alleged to have a connection with JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

Cartwright remembers wondering with friends at the time about what was going on, only to be told that “you’re sounding like a conspiracy theorist.”

The stories were wild, nothing truthful about them. But thousands of voters saw them, and when the rumors hit the mainstream media, the opponents — particularly an angry Cruz — were forced to address them.

“This is the ground zero of fake news,” said Cartwright, now a correspondent for The Hollywood Reporter.
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Gross scandals about every prominent candidate but Donald Trump - that was a red flag to him.

The NE isn't what it used to be, with lots of competition for celebrity gossip and the like.
“It’s really a shadow of its former self,” Cartwright said. “David Pecker’s legacy will be that he totally destroyed that tabloid.”
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At Trump trial, Pecker says he killed story of affair even though it cost him | Reuters
Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified on Friday at Donald Trump's criminal trial that he suppressed a story about an alleged affair to help Trump's 2016 presidential bid, even though it would have boosted sales of his tabloid.

Testifying for a third day, Pecker, 72, agreed with a prosecutor who asked whether it would have been "National Enquirer gold" to publish the story of former Playboy model Karen McDougal's claim that she had an affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007.

But Pecker said he opted not to run the story after paying McDougal for it, because it would have hurt the Republican Trump's chances of winning the election over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

"You killed the story because it helped the candidate, Donald Trump?" prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked him.

Pecker said yes.
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He was such a Trumpie that he was willing to sacrifice some of his paper's potential income to boost his favorite candidate.
 
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