Mother Jones illustration; Glenn Francis/Wikimedia; Elizabeth Williams/AP
Donald Trump is on trial in Manhattan facing 34 counts of falsifying business records as part of another crime: conspiring to influence the 2016 election. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg argues that, to squelch negative publicity that might hurt Trump’s 2016 campaign, Trump directed the creation of fake records to hide hush-money payments to women who claimed they’d had extramarital sex with him.
That’s a complicated case to prove. And one in which it does not matter one whit, at least legally, who Trump actually had sex with. All Trump’s lawyers have to argue is that the payoffs, while perhaps unseemly, were legal. And they’re doing that. Yet Trump’s lawyers are also going further, asserting that the former president didn’t have sex with any of the three woman whose possible encounters with him resulted in payoffs for silence.
In one case—a $30,000 payout to a doorman who claimed to know of Trump fathering an out-of-wedlock child—the underlying allegation in fact seems to be false. But it’s striking that Trump’s defense includes denials that he slept with porn star Stormy Daniels (who received $130,000) and Playboy model Karen McDougal ($150,000). That’s because, to exaggerate only a bit, no one believes him.
The ongoing testimony of David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, who helped spearhead the so-called “catch and kill” scheme to buy the rights to stories about Trump’s alleged encounters in order to suppress the claims, drives home that point. Pecker on Thursday indicated that he, former Enquirer editor Dylan Howard, and Trump fixer Michael Cohen all believed McDougal’s account of a year-long sexual affair with Trump.
What’s more, according to Pecker, Trump did nothing at the time to counter that impression. Pecker recounted a June 2016 call with Trump which came while Pecker’s company was in the process of buying the rights to McDougal’s story. Trump, who Pecker said knew of McDougal’s claims and the talks about paying her to stay quiet, remarked that “she is a nice girl,” Pecker recalled. Trump then asked: “What do you think I should do?” Pecker said. Pecker said he suggested paying her. Trump, that is, did not deny McDougal’s claims. Nor, according to Pecker, did Trump dispute her claims in a January 2017 Trump Tower meeting in which he thanked Pecker for “handling” the matter.
Pecker was less involved in a payout made to suppress Daniels’ claim of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, during which she claims to have spanked him with a magazine with his own picture on its cover. But Pecker in his testimony has not mentioned Trump or his team seriously disputing her claims.
Contrast that with the story pushed by the former doorman. Pecker said Cohen angrily disputed the claim in a phone call and conveyed an offer by Trump to take a DNA test proving he was not the child’s father. (Nevertheless Cohen and Pecker arranged to pay the doorman for his silence.)
These exchanges came as Pecker testified that his efforts to bury stories about Trump’s alleged trysts were part of an ongoing scheme to help Trump’s campaign. “We purchased [McDougal’s] story so that it wouldn’t be published by any other organization,” Pecker testified. “We didn’t want the story to embarrass Mr. Trump or embarrass or hurt the campaign.”
Pecker said that he assumed Trump wanted sex stories silenced to help his campaign, not as Trump later claimed, to protect his family, since neither Trump nor Cohen ever mentioned a familial concern but did reference the effect on his candidacy. Pecker also said that he understood that his payouts amounted to illegal campaign contributions.
“I wanted to protect my company,” Pecker said later, explaining why he had lied to journalists in effort to dispute reporting on his payment to McDougal. “I wanted to protect myself, and I wanted also to protect Donald Trump.”
That testimony could prove damning for Trump, helping prosecutors make their case that the phony business records Trump allegedly okayed were part of a plot to influence the election.
Who Trump did or didn’t have sex with matters much less. He is not going to go to prison for adultery. But the dubious denials by Trump’s lawyers, seemingly made at his behest, might matter. While the attorneys can reasonably question the Manhattan DA’s case, they risk undermining their credibility with jurors with unnecessary and unpersuasive denials.
