Francisco 2.0

We don’t often notice the jurors looking directly at the former president: They look at the prosecutor, the witness, the floor, the ceiling, their notes. But they really seem to try to avoid, for the most part, looking straight at Trump. David Pecker is now describing a conversation he had with Trump more than a year after he was elected president, prompted by Karen McDougal having given a television interview. “I thought you had — we had — an agreement with Karen McDougal that she can’t give any interviews or be on any television shows,” Pecker recalls Trump saying then. When Pecker explained that he had amended the agreement, he says, “Mr. Trump got very aggravated.” To emphasize, again, Pecker is saying that the president of the United States continued to monitor McDougal’s movements while in office. Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor, is guiding David Pecker through testimony about a dinner that Trump invited Pecker and his wife to at the White House. Pecker’s wife didn’t want to go, so The National Enquirer's top editor, Dylan Howard, and others. The dinner, prosecutors establish, was in July 2017. By then, Trump was under investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller after firing the F.B.I. director, James Comey, amid the investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russians. Trump was slumped in his chair at the beginning of Pecker’s afternoon testimony. He muttered to his lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, after Pecker detailed a conversation he had with Trump at the White House. He says Trump asked “how Karen is doing.” Prosecutors showed a photo of Trump and Pecker walking together on the White House grounds. Pecker says they were discussing Karen McDougal at that moment. This was a real wow moment for me. The photo was taken from behind, the two men were clearly deep in conversation. Now Pecker tells us that the conversation was, at least in part, about Karen McDougal. “How is Karen doing,” Pecker says Trump asked him. She is doing well, he says he responded. “She is quiet.”

Lunch break over: We’re back for the afternoon session, and David Pecker will return to the stand. Trump is back in the courtroom, with his coterie of lawyers and aides. Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s legal adviser who was indicted yesterday in Arizona, is in the courtroom. Epshteyn is aggressively using his cell phone, which is barred in court. The court officers who patrol journalists doing the same don’t seem to notice as they walk by the aisle.

I've noticed a trend in the past few years with companies (roofers or other home repairs, specificially) where they don't have a cross or a fish next to their name, but they drive a lifted, wrapped F250 with the name of their business and use the terms "veteran owned" or something similar. I'm not suggesting for a moment that they are shady, but...if you have to emphasize that you are a veteran in your advertising, well...you aren't much different to me than someone emphasizing their religion in their advertising.

NY, Continued: Seemingly important question here, as prosecutors ask David Pecker whether Trump was concerned about his wife or family finding out about his alleged affairs when he was campaigning for office. Pecker responds no. This suggests that Trump’s worries were electoral, not personal. We are breaking for lunch. Back at 2:15 pm. Pecker said that during that meeting, Trump referred to McDougal as “our girl” when discussing her. One of Trump's hallmarks, as he became president, was his tendency to treat all aspects of his world as flat and the same. He did not differentiate between the F.B.I. director and the head of a supermarket tabloid in terms of their obligations to him. In front of Comey, the head of the F.B.I., Trump thanked Pecker for purchasing the stories — and committing at least one crime in the process, as Pecker well knew. This is a wild, wild scene we are hearing about. Pecker has just given us a very detailed description of Jared Kushner walking him into Trump Tower, and then into Trump’s office, shortly before Trump's inauguration as president. In the office were four noteworthy people: James Comey, Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus and Mike Pompeo. Three were Republicans who would go on to work in the Trump administration, while the fourth, Comey, would eventually become one of Trump’s chief adversaries. Into that tableau walks Pecker, to be asked about Karen McDougal by the president-elect.

And from DC: The oral argument lasted nearly three hours, as the justices tangled with a lawyer for the former president and a Justice Department lawyer. A majority of the justices appeared skeptical of the idea of sweeping presidential immunity. However, several of them suggested an interest in drawing out what actions may be immune and what may not — a move that could delay the former president’s trial if the Supreme Court asks a lower court to revisit the issues. Many of the justices seemed to be considering the idea that presidents should enjoy some form of protection against criminal prosecution. The devil however will be in the details: How should that protection extend? And that question will have profound relevance not only for future presidents, but much more immediately for Donald Trump. The court could decide to draw those rules itself in a broad way for history. Or it could send this case back to a lower court to set the rules of what form immunity could take. If the case is sent back for further proceedings, it could have a dramatic effect on the timing of Trump’s trial, pushing it well past the election in November. Looking back, one of the main points of discussion turned on the question of which situation would be worse: a world in which presidents, shorn of any legal protections against prosecution, were ceaselessly pursued in the courts by their rivals in a never-ending cycle of political retribution, or allowing presidents to be unbounded by criminal law and permitted to do whatever they wanted with impunity. Sauer, Trump’s attorney, declines to offer a rebuttal. The argument is over. If the court finds that there is some immunity for official actions, one of the most important questions will be whether prosecutors can still present evidence to the jury of Trump’s official actions (like pressuring the Justice Department and Vice President Mike Pence to do certain things) as evidence that helps illuminate Trump’s knowledge and intent for his private acts as a candidate. Dreeben says the jury needs to understand the whole “integrated conspiracy” but prosecutors would accept a jury instruction in which the judge would say they cannot impose liability for the official actions but may consider them as evidence of his knowledge and intent for the other actions. That’s how courts handle protected speech that is evidence to a larger conspiracy, he notes. Justice Barrett picks up the question of timing again. She suggests that if prosecutors want to take Trump quickly to trial, they could simply drop those parts of the indictment that seem to be his official acts as president and proceed with only those parts of the indictment that reflect Trump’s private actions taken as a candidate for office. Dreeben is not wild about that idea. Dreeben suggests that allegations in the “private acts bucket,” as Justice Jackson just called it, would include things like the scheme to create fake electors and the way in which Trump fomented a mob of his supporters to violently attack the Capitol on Jan. 6. Justice Barrett seems to signal that she is less likely to find that presidents have blanket immunity for their official acts. When Dreeben says the system needs to balance the effective functioning of the presidency and accountability for a former president under the rule of law, and the existing system does that pretty well or maybe needs a few ancillary rules but that is different from the “radical proposal” put forward by Trump’s legal team, she says: “I agree.” Dreeben, in a balancing act that seems to acknowledge that the court is looking for some form of criminal immunity for presidents, says he is trying to do two things at once, neither of them easy. He wants to design a system to find some rules that preserve the “effective functioning of the presidency” but that still allows for “accountability” if presidents violated the law. Kavanaugh asks Dreeben about Obama’s drone strike that killed an American citizen suspected of terrorism, Anwar al-Awlaki, which Trump’s lawyer invoked in his opening. Dreeben notes that the Office of Legal Counsel analyzed the question and found that the murder statute did not apply to presidents when they were acting under public authority, so authorizing the strike was lawful. This is the way the system can function, he said — the Justice Department analyzes laws carefully and with established principles. Justice Kavanaugh signals that he is likely to find that presidents must have immunity for their official actions. He talks about how the threat of prosecution by independent counsels (under a law that lapsed in 1999) hampered Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton, and says a 1984 ruling upholding that structure as constitutional was one of the Supreme Court’s biggest mistakes. (Notably, Kavanaugh was a prosecutor on the staff of independent counsel Ken Starr during his investigation into President Bill Clinton, before becoming a White House lawyer under President George W. Bush.) Dreeben tries to push back on Kavanaugh’s argument by saying that even after Watergate, even after all of the independent counsel investigations mentioned above, the legal system has survived without “having gone off on a runaway train” of actual criminal prosecutions against former presidents. We are now over the two-hour mark of the Supreme Court’s arguments in the Trump immunity case. The Justice Department lawyer has continued to face skeptical questions from many of the court’s conservatives, several of whom appear particularly focused on how to draw the line between a president’s core powers and non-core powers. In other words, what actions by a president might be shielded from prosecution and what would not. The questioning suggests that some of the justices may favor a ruling that could lead to more lower-court proceedings, perhaps delaying the trial.

And I'm back. From NY: We have our first mention of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser. Pecker says he was walking outside Trump Tower when Kushner “tapped me on the shoulder.” Pecker adds that Kushner said: “I’ll get you upstairs.” David Pecker is now describing a post-election meeting he had with Michael Cohen at Trump Tower. Pecker said Cohen told him he had not been reimbursed for his payment to Stormy Daniels. Cohen, who also wanted to be paid a bonus for the year, asked Pecker “if I would talk to the boss on his behalf.” David Pecker has at least three times described Michael Cohen as warning him that “the boss” — meaning Trump — would be “angry” if Pecker didn’t do whatever was being asked of him in that moment. Prosecutors, who have focused on Trump’s tendency to intimidate people in asking for a gag order, know what they’re drawing out here. “I wanted to protect my company, I wanted to protect myself and I wanted also to protect Donald Trump. ” David Pecker, former publisher of The National Enquirer Pecker reiterates the importance of keeping Karen McDougal’s story quiet, in a striking comment that relates directly to the prosecution’s argument that he conspired with Trump to help him get elected. Prosecutors showed jurors this article, which I co-authored while at The Wall Street Journal. It revealed The National Enquirer’s $150,000 payment to Karen McDougal. It was published four days before the 2016 election and first introduced the term “catch and kill.” Pecker, before a tense and focused courtroom, is recounting Trump calling him three days before election day, after the Journal article was published. He was “very upset, saying how could this happen, I thought you had this under control, either you or one of your people have leaked the story,” Pecker says. The call ended with no goodbye from Trump. David Pecker, Michael Cohen and others frequently contacted each other on an app called Signal. For those who don’t know it, it’s a free encrypted messaging service that goes to great lengths to keep electronic communications private. As the testimony about Stormy Daniels picks up speed, Trump is growing more animated. He has motioned to both of the lawyers sitting next to him, adjusted his shoulders and crossed his arms over his chest. The jury seems largely rapt as the Daniels tale starts to unspool. I did notice one yawn, however, from a juror as we slide towards lunchtime. As Pecker testifies about conversations he and Michael Cohen had about Stormy Daniels, he keeps his eyes glued to the exhibit and to the prosecutors. I have not seen him glance over at Trump once. He takes a big sip of water and continues to answer questions. Joshua Steinglass has seemed at ease during this direct examination of David Pecker. He is the most recent addition to this prosecution team but he is a veteran prosecutor at the Manhattan district attorney’s office. He previously led the effort to convict the Trump Organization in 2022 and also secured a conviction against two Proud Boy extremists for a violent brawl in 2019. David Pecker says he didn’t want The National Enquirer associated with a porn star, meaning Stormy Daniels, because one of the tabloid's biggest distributors was Walmart, where a lot of families shop. David Pecker says that he refused to pay $120,000 for Stormy Daniels's story, noting his previous payments to a doorman shopping an apparently false story about a child fathered by Trump and to Karen McDougal, who said she had an affair with him. “I am not a bank,” Pecker said, explaining his decision. Since the Stormy Daniels story would never have been published, Pecker’s assertion that it would have offended its readers doesn’t make sense — unless he was focused on building a case for plausible deniability were anyone to suggest the payment was an illegal campaign finance violation. Pecker is explaining why he and The National Enquirer wanted nothing to do with paying Daniels for her story: “After paying out the doorman, after paying out Karen McDougal, we’re not paying out any more monies,” he told Michael Cohen. And he says he suggested to Cohen “that you should buy this story and you should take it off the market.” He added to Cohen: “If you don’t and it gets out, I believe the boss is going to be very angry with you.”

Back to NYC, and I'm going to go fetch some lunch: Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor, just brought up Hope Hicks, Trump’s former communications aide, asking about an email chain that was forwarded to her the day after the Access Hollywood tape came out. Steinglass also asks Pecker if he’s ever known Trump to use email. The answer was no (although Trump has, in the last 18 months or so, started texting with people for the first time). A lot of key characters are being introduced right now, including Stormy Daniels, a.k.a. Stephanie Clifford, whom Pecker identifies as a porn star. Joshua Steinglass, the prosecutor, asks Pecker: “How do you know of her?” Then he laughs and says he’ll ask the question in a different way. He takes a slightly safer approach, and Pecker begins to describe how his employees came to be in contact with Daniels. David Pecker describes an urgent call from The National Enquirer's editor, Dylan Howard, in October 2016, in which he was informed that Stormy Daniels was shopping a story of a sexual affair with Trump for $120,000.

And in DC: The Supreme Court’s relatively new process (coming out of Covid) of letting each justice ask questions at the end in order of seniority has an interesting consequence, as seen here. Dreeben kept wanting to say these things about government legal memos and to go into the details about the actions Trump is accused of taking, but the Republican-appointed justices kept cutting him off. It’s the turn of Kagan, a Democratic appointee, to ask any final questions she wants, and she is letting him talk on and on.

Back in NYC: The jurors are still on break but the lawyers have been arguing for some time about a complex legal matter involving hearsay in certain exhibits. We’re not going to get into the weeds of the issue — the defense appears to have succeeded in not allowing in text messages about Trump's election between Dylan Howard, who was the editor of The National Enquirer in 2016, and a family member. But Juan Merchan, the judge, also continues to endorse — out of earshot of the jury — the prosecution’s interpretation of Pecker’s arrangement with Trump and Michael Cohen as a conspiracy. Pecker has just returned to the stand, and prosecutors and defense lawyers have made clear he’ll still be there tomorrow. With David Pecker back on the stand, we are turning to the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape. The tape, which Pecker is describing, featured an outtake of Trump on that show from the 2000s, boasting about grabbing women’s genitals. Pecker describes it as “very embarrassing, very damaging” to the campaign. It was released on Oct. 7, 2016. The jurors are mostly maintaining poker faces, but they look incredibly focused. Trump muttered something out loud when Pecker offered this analysis.

A part of this exchange between Justice Alito and the Justice Department's lawyer, Dreeben, gets at a pressure point in American-style democracy and the rule of law. One of the safeguards against illegitimate prosecutions of ex-presidents, Dreeben says, is that if the Justice Department has advised the president that doing something would be lawful, the department could not later turn around and prosecute the now-former president for relying on that advice and doing that thing. Alito points out that this creates an incentive for presidents to appoint attorneys general who will just tell them that anything they want to do would be legal. Indeed — that is a critique of the Office of Legal Counsel system, in which politically appointed lawyers decide what the law means for the executive branch. An example: During the George W. Bush administration, memos about post-9/11 surveillance and torture were written by a politically appointed lawyer with idiosyncratically broad views of a president’s supposed power, as commander in chief, to authorize violations of surveillance and torture laws. The Justice Department later withdrew those memos as espousing a false view of the law, but held that officials who had taken action based on those memos could not be charged with crimes. Justice Alito suggests that there is a risk to our stable democracy if presidents who lose close elections would not be allowed to retire in peace but could face prosecution. He has essentially flipped the situation under consideration upside down: that Trump is being prosecuted for having used fraud to remain in power after losing a close election. Much of the discussion this morning has swirled around the question of whether, without immunity, presidents will be hounded by their rivals with malicious charges after leaving office. Alito and other conservatives on the court seem concerned that the Trump prosecutions will open the door to endless attacks against future presidents.

Justice Jackson presses Trump’s lawyer about why presidents, uniquely among the numerous government officials who make life and death consequential decisions, can’t be constrained by the risk of prosecution if they commit a crime. She fears that future leaders would be "emboldened." If immunity is taken off the table wouldn’t presidents be emboldened to commit crimes, Justice Jackson asks. “I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is of turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminality,” she says. “If the potential for criminal liability is taken off the table, wouldn’t there be significant risk that future presidents would be emboldened to commit crimes with abandon while they are in office?” Jackson asks, adding: “Once we say ‘no criminal liability, Mr. President. You can do whatever you want,’ I’m worried we would have a worse problem than the problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he’s in office.” Justice Jackson steps in to question the assumption that presidents should be immune even for their official actions. Why, she asks, should a president not have to follow the law while doing his or her job? Sauer responds that a president is required to follow the law but what is the remedy if there’s a crime committed? Should the president be sent to prison for a bad decision, he asks. Justice Barrett asks why presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for official acts unless convicted at impeachment — Trump’s theory — when other officials subject to impeachment, like Supreme Court justices, are not. Trump's lawyer, Sauer, invokes the view of the former solicitor general Robert Bork, when he was helping Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal in 1973. Here is the brief Sauer was referencing. By my count, there are now at least two justices — Gorsuch and Kavanaugh — who have expressed interest in holding further proceedings to determine whether the allegations in the indictment are presidential acts or private acts. Even holding proceedings would be a victory for Trump because they could easily take months to complete and all but ensure there would be no trial until after the election. Justice Kavanaugh is asking about the “clear statement rule.” The idea is that if a criminal law is going to apply to an official act by a president, rather than just applying to ordinary people, Congress would have to clearly state in the statute that lawmakers meant for it to apply to the president’s official acts. Sauer deflects on the answer about whether a president can pardon himself, saying that the central concern is actually whether a president will be able to make bold decisions as the country’s leader without worrying about whether his political opponents may come after him. Out of left field, Justice Gorsuch asks whether presidents can pardon themselves as a way to prevent successor administrations from prosecuting them. Here is an article exploring whether presidents can pardon themselves, something none has ever purported to do so there is no court precedent about whether it can be done. Justice Kagan is pushing Sauer to take a position on whether a president ordering the military to stage a coup to keep him in power could be considered an official act. Sauer clearly does not want to answer question, saying it depends on circumstance. Kagan seemed displeased by the exchange with Sauer saying there is no presidential immunity in the Constitution and the framers could have put one in if they had wanted to. “Wasn’t the whole point that the president wasn’t a monarch and the president wasn’t above the law?” she asked. Sauer, Trump’s lawyer, is falling back on their theory that ex-presidents can be prosecuted for official acts if they were first convicted by the Senate at an impeachment trial. Lower courts have found implausible the notion that there is a link between the political impeachment process and criminal law. Notably, at Trump’s second impeachment trial, when he was no longer president, his lawyers urged the Senate to find that he was not subject to conviction because he was no longer in office. Many of the Republican senators who voted to acquit him cited that as their reason. Justice Kagan points out that a former president who left office before impeachment would thereby be immune for, say, having ordered the military to stage a coup. The issue of timing now emerges squarely. Justice Sotomayor suggests that the question of what is an official act and what is a private act could be argued at trial in front of a jury. If the court ends up deciding in that way, it could mean that the election interference case goes to trial before the election in November. Justices Alito and Justice Sotomayor are getting at an important issue: If the Supreme Court says there can be no criminal liability for official actions (e.g. Trump talking to the Justice Department), could prosecutors still introduce evidence of the official actions at the trial? Those actions, Sotomayor points out, are still relevant for inferring what Trump’s mental state was for his private actions. Sauer, Trump’s lawyer, wants prosecutors banned from even bringing up official actions to a jury. If you’re just joining in, the justices have been hearing from Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, in the first part of the oral argument. The justices, both liberal and conservative, have focused much of their questioning around whether a president can face criminal prosecution for private actions taken while in office, as well as how to draw the distinction between private and official acts.

Hey, the Times is also doing a narrative about the Supreme Court hearing: Alito suggests there are not enough legal safeguards in place to protect presidents against malicious prosecution if they don’t have some form of immunity. He tells Dreeben that the grand jury process isn’t much of a protection because prosecutors, as the saying goes, can indict a ham sandwich. When Dreeben tries to argue that prosecutors sometimes don’t indict people who don’t deserve it, Alito dismissively says, “Every once in a while there’s an eclipse too.” If you are just joining in, the justices are questioning the Justice Department lawyer, Michael Dreeben, about the government’s argument that former President Trump is not absolutely immune from prosecution on charges that he plotted to subvert the 2020 election. Dreeben has faced skeptical questions from several of the conservative justices, including both Justices Alito and Kavanaugh, who have suggested that the fraud conspiracy statute being used against the former president is vague. That statute is central to the government’s case against Trump. Justice Alito now joins Justice Kavanaugh in suggesting that the fraud conspiracy statute is very vague and broadly drawn. That is bad news for the indictment brought against Trump by Jack Smith, the special counsel. The scope and viability of this fraud statute, which is absolutely central to the Trump indictment, wasn’t on the menu of issues seemingly at play in this hearing. Kavanaugh and Alito appear to have gone out of their way to question its use in the Trump case. Justice Sotomayor points out that under the Trump team’s theory that a criminal statute has to clearly state that it applies to the presidency for it to cover a president’s official actions, there would essentially be no accountability at all. Because only a tiny handful of laws mention the president, that means a president could act contrary to them without violating them. As a result, the Senate could not even impeach a president for violating criminal statutes, she says — because he would not be violating those laws if they don’t apply to the president. Dreeben is under heavy fire from the court’s conservatives. Justice Gorsuch is questioning Drebeen directly on whether another key charge against Trump — an obstruction statute — should apply to Trump’s alleged disruption of the certification of the election. The court held a hearing earlier this month on whether that obstruction law should be applied to members of the pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. Trump was never mentioned in that hearing. But now the use of the obstruction law against Trump has come up. Dreeben says there are some core constitutional functions of a presidency — he cites the pardon power, the power to recognize foreign nations, the power to veto legislation, the power to make appointments — that Congress cannot regulate and so criminal statutes cannot be applied to such actions. Justice Gorsuch declares that is essentially immunity for some official acts. Justice Kavanaugh just dropped a bit of bombshell, saying that the main fraud conspiracy statute Trump has been charged with in this case — 18 U.S.C. 371 — is written so vaguely that an aggressive prosecutor could use it against future presidents in a very broad way. Dreeben argues that the Constitution has explicit textual immunity for legislative acts by members of Congress (the Speech and Debate clause) because there had been an historical example of legislators being harassed and prevented from doing their jobs. The framers of the Constitution did not put anything like that in for presidents, he argues, because they had a very different concern — after rebelling against the British king, one of their chief concerns was the risk of presidential misconduct. Overall, several justices — maybe a majority — apear to have suggested through their questions that presidents should indeed enjoy some level of immunity from criminal prosecution. The questions seem to be how to decide what actions are protected from criminal charges and whether the allegations in Trump’s indictment in particular would qualify for immunity. Justice Thomas cites “Operation Mongoose” in asking why no ex-presidents have been charged in the past. That is an odd example. President John F. Kennedy ordered Operation Mongoose — a covert operation in Cuba. Of course, Kennedy never had an opportunity to be an ex-president. An exchange with Sauer a few minutes ago and now Dreeben’s opening statement gets at a central question: is the fact that no ex-president was charged with a crime before Trump evidence that presidents have always been understood to be immune, or is it evidence that there are layers of protection against abusive or politicized prosecutions of ex-presidents who did not really commit crimes like Trump allegedly did? Michael Dreeben, speaking for the government, lays out his bottom line. Executive immunity would license a president to commit “bribery, treason sedition, murder” and, as in Trump’s case “conspiring to use fraud to overturn the results of an election and perpetuate himself in power.” “The framers knew too well the dangers of a king who could do no wrong,” Dreeben says.

This has been a strong morning for the prosecution, and we haven’t even gotten to the hush-money deal with Stormy Daniels yet. But the defense may begin cross-examining Pecker today, and it’s hard to assess how well one side is doing until you see the other side. Listening to David Pecker’s testimony, you can’t help but wonder how many other powerful politicians and public figures he cut secret deals with as publisher of The National Enquirer to kill incredibly newsworthy stories. We heard of just two, so far. Trump and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Or another.

Joshua Steinglass, the prosecutor, wraps up his questioning about Karen McDougal by asking David Pecker about a contentious exchange with Michael Cohen, in which Pecker got concerned about the potentially unlawful implications of the deal. Cohen was upset with him and screamed: “The boss is going to be very angry at you.” But Pecker — thoroughly anxious at this point — stood firm. “The deal is off,” Pecker recalls telling him then. Pecker concludes by saying that he was never paid for the McDougal deal and we begin a 20-minute break.

Daniel Rotstein, the man David Pecker used in an ultimately failed effort to secretly obtain reimbursement for the Karen McDougal deal, was his own fixer of sorts. Pecker had long used him to deliver the news that employees would be fired, to the point that Rotstein became known at Pecker’s company as “Dr. Death.” David Pecker is describing Michael Cohen’s creation of a shell company, Resolution Consultants, to reimburse Pecker for his payoff to Karen McDougal. Cohen, who was then Trump's fixer, would later set up a similarly named company, Essential Consultants, to pay off Stormy Daniels. We are pretty far into the weeds of disguised monetary transactions related to the McDougal deal. But most of the jurors, perhaps refreshed after their Wednesday off, are still paying close attention, turning their heads from the prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, to the witness, Pecker, and back again.

David Pecker is now describing Trump’s interest in obtaining boxes of material regarding Karen McDougal, saying that Trump was worried about what would happen if Pecker got “hit by a bus” or his company was sold. Trump “did not want someone else to potentially publish those stories.” David Pecker now testifies that he was expecting to be paid back for the $150,000 he sent to Karen McDougal. This is a very important bridge to the third and final hush-money deal. Because Pecker had such a hard time getting Trump to reimburse him, he was later unwilling to buy a third story, Stormy Daniels’s story of having had sex with Trump (which Trump denies). Thus, Michael Cohen bought her story instead, leading us straight to the criminal charges at issue in this trial. There’s a sidebar right now, the lawyers speaking privately with the judge during another crucial moment. This case is spread through time and hush-money deals in a highly unusual way. We still haven’t reached the payment from which the criminal charges themselves ultimately stem. But Pecker’s testimony about the McDougal deal is important for the prosecution’s argument about Trump’s intent: They argue that he was seeking to win the election through illegal means and the specifics of the McDougal deal help to bolster that argument.

We are in a nitty-gritty, nuts-and-bolts part of the prosecution’s case, as they introduce invoices and vouchers showing the payments to Karen McDougal. Joshua Steinglass, the prosecutor, is walking David Pecker through a pretty extensive set of exchanges with Michael Cohen and then transactions to create a payment voucher for McDougal’s lawyer. There’s a sense of anxiety around all that was taking place to try to justify this payment internally and placate Trump’s team. Steinglass gets louder as he drills into a critical element of the prosecution’s case: that these payments to McDougal were made to influence the election. Trial lawyers often do this sort of thing, heightening their performance with a change in tone or a big gesture to command the jury’s attention. Earlier, Pecker had a hard time recalling what a text message referred to, in what seemed like it could be an ominous sign for the prosecution. But he’s sounded steadily more confident here, identifying exhibits that corroborate his story about McDougal. Pecker admits straightforwardly, when asked, that he didn’t “want this story to embarrass Mr. Trump or embarrass or hurt the campaign.” This is the crescendo of his story about McDougal, and hugely powerful testimony for the prosecution. The testimony is leading into a clear story about knowingly violating campaign finance laws.

“This is a very, very large purchase,” David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, says of paying $150,000 to Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who was alleging an affair with Trump.

Pecker’s last few minutes of testimony were really key. He said that his company had disguised the hush money payment to Karen McDougal as a deal for services she would perform for American Media. This is hugely important for the prosecution’s case: They have to show that the conspiracy that they accuse Trump of participating in to win the 2016 election was conducted through “unlawful means.” Pecker just indicated that it was. The jury may never catch this complicated point, but it’s enormously important for the legal viability of the case. The jurors are carefully looking at screens on which the evidence — the contract, text exchanges — is being displayed. Despite David Pecker’s assertions that he structured the deal with Karen McDougal to avoid violating campaign finance law, his company later admitted doing just that in its 2018 non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors. David Pecker is asked if The National Enquirer had any intention to publish Karen McDougal’s story, which it bought for $150,000. Pecker is blunt: “No, we did not.” This is catch and kill in a microcosm.

The deal went above and beyond for McDougal and included the hiring of ghostwriters to pen her stories. Pecker says that the contract was intended to stipulate that McDougal would perform “services” for A.M.I., that there was a basis for the $150,000 she was receiving. David Pecker is now detailing the agreement American Media Inc., The National Enquirer's parent company, struck with Karen McDougal. The contract guaranteed she would be put on two magazine covers and that the company would have the right to publish fitness columns by her. It’s worth noting how bizarre this set-up was. It wasn’t just buying her story — it was also giving her work within the A.M.I. empire. David Pecker is an interesting witness on the stand: he’s openly admitting to his involvement in a catch-and-kill scheme and he’s doing so quite candidly. He has also developed a rapport with the prosecutor conducting the direct examination, Joshua Steinglass. The optics of it are also fascinating as these salacious details are coming from a graying, petite man in his early 70’s.

It’s really interesting to hear Schwarzenegger and Trump linked through Pecker: the two Republican politicians share a lot, including their place in the celebrity hierarchy and their successful campaigns. This also speaks to the media environment in which Trump thrived, one in which name-brand recognition and Hollywood charisma had become more and more important, no matter the industry. David Pecker just talked about Arnold Schwarzenegger for a long time, coming off as meandering as he described doing catch-and-kill deals for Schwarzenegger once he entered politics. But Joshua Steinglass, the prosecutor, then helped him link those deals to the matter at hand, asking: “Did you come to appreciate the legalities surrounding such an arrangement with a political candidate?” Pecker says he did. I remember when The Los Angeles Times published its story about Schwarzenegger. It was seismic, and very damaging to him David Pecker is now describing a 2002 conversation with Arnold Schwarzenegger where he asked Pecker not to run negative stories about him before his run for governor of California. He was ultimately elected and served from 2003-2011. Pecker says that women did come forward about relationships that they had with Schwarzenegger and he did not publish stories on them. One that Pecker passed on ended up in The Los Angeles Times, he says. For context, July 2016 was when Trump was becoming the presidential nominee after a hard-fought G.O.P. primary. This was one of the few memorable stumbles in Pecker’s testimony thus far. It may not end up mattering, but it’s not ideal for the prosecution that the former publisher didn’t go where they were expecting with that question. We are now looking at an exchange between Dylan Howard and David Pecker, The Enquirer's editor and publisher, from July 2016, right around the time the deal to buy Karen McDougal's story took place. A message from Howard says “spoke to MC” (Michael Cohen) “about that other issue.” If Pecker had said the exchange referred to McDougal, it could have helped his credibility here. But he says he doesn't recall what Howard was referring to. Joshua Steinglass, the prosecutor, is now seeking to clarify.

Hey, I’m back (sort of). Still at the meeting, but my portion is over. So, out came the iPad and here we are: David Pecker testifies that once negotiations had taken place with Karen McDougal, Pecker again asked Michael Cohen who would pay for her story. Cohen — who Pecker said just minutes ago had earlier promised that Trump would take care of it — this time said, “You should pay.” Pecker was reluctant, having already purchased another story on Trump’s behalf, but Cohen again pledged that Pecker would eventually be made whole by Trump. In addition to $150,000 for her lifetime rights, Pecker says that McDougal had a number of other requests, including being able to write for celebrity magazines, appearing on the cover of health and fitness magazines, and starting her own fitness clothing line and beauty product line. She also wanted to work as a red-carpet anchor. Side note: He's not in the courtroom, but traveling with Trump to the courthouse today for the first time during this trial was Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s legal strategist who was indicted in Arizona yesterday in connection with the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. David Pecker is now attesting to a key point prosecutors made in their opening statement, that Trump was famously frugal. He testifies that he knew that Michael Cohen “didn’t have any authorization to disperse any funds from” the Trump Organization. Even when the two went for lunch, Pecker says, Pecker always paid. Joshua Steinglass, the prosecutor, is now asking David Pecker, the former National Enquirer publisher, about a call he had with Trump about Karen McDougal. The call came after Dylan Howard interviewed her and the three-way call with Michael Cohen, and the jurors have heard about it already. But Steinglass is reminding them that it happened, and reemphasizing that Trump himself was personally involved, this time with more details. These chronological leaps would not work in a written story, but they’re almost like a “previously on” tag here at trial. Pecker is testifying about a conversation he had with Trump where Trump described Karen McDougal as “a nice girl.” Pecker said this conversation made him believe that Trump “knew who she was.” Trump is stone-faced as Pecker talks about this conversation. Pecker is now describing a follow-up conversation with Michael Cohen in which he asked Cohen who would pay for McDougal’s story of having had an affair with Trump. This was a central concern for Pecker. Cohen reassured him, telling him, “The boss will take care of it.” A recurring theme is the concern over who would pay for these Trump-related efforts.

Programming note: I have a directors meeting from 9-10 am, so I will be out of pocket. But I'll catch things up. In the meantime, they have started in NYC: Michael Cohen, David Pecker and Dylan Howard, the National Enquirer editor who interviewed McDougal, had a phone conversation after the interview. Howard said that McDougal was claiming to have had an affair with Trump. Cohen denied the affair had taken place immediately, but then said that he would look into it. Eventually, he said that a member of the group should try to buy the story. Pecker, explaining why McDougal said she didn’t want her story told, said, “She said she didn’t want to be the next Monica Lewinsky.” David Pecker says that allegations about women and Trump were always met by this response from Michael Cohen, Trump’s then-fixer: “It’s not true.” Pecker resumes testifying about Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who said that she had a sexual relationship with Trump. Prosecutors had saved the specifics of McDougal’s story for today. It’s an attention-catching way to start and the jurors are listening closely in these opening moments. David Pecker enters, looking as calm and unfazed by the spotlight as ever. Today he is wearing a dark suit, a pink shirt and a dark orange tie. (note: orange and pink?) He will resume his testimony as soon as the jurors enter. The 12 jurors and six alternates are seated and Pecker’s testimony continues. They’re now describing Trump's comments at an event this morning as another violation. Trump was asked by reporters about David Pecker’s testimony, and Trump called Pecker “a nice guy.” Prosecutors say it was a message to Pecker and others: be “nice,” or get attacked. As the prosecutor, Christopher Conroy, lays out the violations, Trump whispers to his lawyer Todd Blanche and frowns. After they speak, Blanche rubs his face several times. Prosecutors are submitting what they say are an additional four times Trump has violated the gag order, including an attack on Michael Cohen while speaking to reporters gathered in the hallway outside the courtroom. Those reporters are there so that Trump, who claims he’s denied his constitutional right to speak to them, can do so. Another violation prosecutors mention is an interview in which Trump referred to the jury as "95 percent Democrats." “He’s doing what the order tells him not to do,” Christopher Conroy, a prosecutor, about Trump’s alleged additional violations of the gag order. Trump enters the courtroom, with an array of lawyers and aides. Juan M. Merchan, the judge in the case, has taken his seat, and we are beginning for the day. The line for members of the public to get into the trial this morning was the longest I have seen. There were easily several dozen people in it. It was a mixed bag of people, but heavy on retirees. A lot of people were talking about the details of the case, like sports fans waiting to get into a big game.

Casually reading this thread. I upgraded the den, but I did it with the least amount of planning, fuss, whatnot. We use an Apple TV and stream everything (Netflix, Youtube TV, Disney) Replaced the 70" Sharp we have had since 2012 with a 85" Sony X90L. Room is 23 x 14 (my recliner, when leaned back, is about 13 from the set). Put bias lighting behind the set, which improved things visually, especially at night. For audio, I had a Pioneer receiver and a modest 2.1 setup with a sub, but wife complained in the past about the size of the speakers, etc. Plus, you had to do the remote juggling (yeah, I could have purchased a Harmony, but I digress). So.... Out went the existing setup, and I replaced it all with Sonos. Arc for the soundbar, a pair of Subs and a pair of Era 300's (with stands) for the rears. Incredibly easy setup, and it just works. Judging from Reddit and whatnot people have issues getting Sonos equipment to work properly, but all of that seems directed back at your existing home network and wifi setup. If it's deficient, Sonos equipment will suffer. I did add a Sony UPB-X700 Ultra HD blu ray player, because reasons. Bought the Ultra HD version of Oppenheimer and it looks/sounds glorious. Wife happy, although it took her a bit to get used to the rear surrounds. For a week or so, she would always think something was happening in the kitchen.