Francisco 2.0

So, we are 2 hours or so into some testimony, from one witness. And it's not going well for Trump. Cross will be interesting, of course, but really, I don't think they will be able to refute much, if anything that Pecker has testifed to already. Is there any wonder why his counsel kept stalling and delaying as much as possible? Imagine, if we ever get a chance, what a federal trial will be like for Trump.

Trump pulls down the lapels of his jacket sharply and walks out, again looking frustrated. To me, he’s looked far angrier yesterday and today than he did during all of last week, during jury selection.

Trump’s lawyers have objected all along to prosecutors couching Trump’s relationship with Pecker and Michael Cohen as a conspiracy — after all, Trump is not facing a conspiracy charge. But Joshua Steinglass, one of the prosecutors, just noted for the first time in court that one of the election statutes the case is based on does in fact have a conspiracy provision. That could prove important later when the jury is instructed on the laws they must consider in reaching a verdict.

Pecker is now being asked about being introduced to Steve Bannon, Trump's top strategist, in October 2016. He recalls Trump saying, “I believe you and Steve would get along really well.” It’s worth recalling that this happened around the same time as the Wikileaks email dump, after a hack of Clinton’s top adviser John Podesta’s account, and the Trump team used that material frequently. We are taking a short break. From our perspective, it seemed as if the jurors needed it. A few looked like they were flagging. We have no lunch break today — usually it’d be about a half hour away — and this is a lot of information to absorb. Jurors often feel a special responsibility to understand what they’re being told, given their role. It can be very tiring, regardless of the subject matter.

Pecker is now being asked about being introduced to Steve Bannon, Trump's top strategist, in October 2016. He recalls Trump saying, “I believe you and Steve would get along really well.” Pecker is being asked about an infamous Enquirer story linking Ted Cruz’s father to the John F. Kennedy assassination. He says it originated with Dylan Howard, The Enquirer's editor. Pecker said that after the Republican debates, Cohen would call him and direct him to focus the negative coverage on whichever candidate had been most successful onstage. It should be pointed out that Pecker’s testimony isn’t just damaging to Trump. He is, in effect, laying waste to his own professional career by going through headline after headline and suggesting he attacked Trump’s rivals to aid Trump.

Pecker is asked about the nature of Cohen’s relationship to the Trump campaign. Pecker says Cohen always said he didn’t work for the campaign, and that he was instead “Mr. Trump’s personal attorney.” But jurors just heard that Cohen was central to feeding the tabloid negative information about campaign opponents. “Michael was physically in every aspect of whatever the campaign was working on,” Pecker says. He adds that because Cohen wasn’t officially employed by the campaign, he may have heard things “informally” or “injected himself into it.” Pecker finally says something mildly helpful to the defense. He says he doesn’t know who Cohen spoke to, and adds that Cohen may have essentially been freelancing, acting of his own volition as he tried to get more involved with the campaign. Now, we are discussing negative headlines attacking three of Trump's Republican opponents in 2016, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, which prosecutors argue illustrate the outcome of the agreement reached during the Trump Tower meeting. Pecker says that Cohen would feed him negative information and that The National Enquirer would “embellish” and add onto it. Trump jumped on the negative coverage of Ted Cruz, especially about his father, in 2016. The campaign promoted it like it had come about organically and Trump was simply responding to it. Trump just leaned in toward the monitor in front of him and squinted to look closer at a collection of headlines from The National Enquirer that praised him. They included: “Donald Trump — Cruzin to victory! Ted endorses Donald” and “Obama’s Half Brother — Cheering on Donald at Debate.”

Pecker asked that the "catch-and-kill" arrangement be kept secret. Steinglass asks him to explain why. Pecker says he was helping the campaign, and didn’t want it to “leak” that his publication was aiding Trump. He wanted it “very confidential,” he says. Steinglass, satisfied, moves on.

It remains striking how calm Pecker is. The testimony he’s offering is really, really bad for a very, very powerful man who is sitting in this courtroom. Pecker seems unfazed. It’s fascinating watching Pecker talk directly to the jurors. Some, but not all, are watching him. Pecker repeats that “writing positive stories about Mr. Trump and covering the election, and writing negative stories about his opponents” helped them both, increasing tabloid newsstand sales while benefitting the Trump campaign. Steinglass then makes him clarify that suppressing negative news about Trump only benefitted the candidate, not the tabloid. Pecker agrees. Asked about Trump’s reaction to the stories, Pecker says, “he was pleased.” He says that Michael Cohen was also pleased about “the way I was going to handle these issues.” Recall that Blanche, in his opening statement, tried to convince the jury that Trump’s relationship with Pecker was par for the course in the world of journalism. But a naked appeal by a political candidate to a magazine publisher “to help the campaign” is not normal. Pecker suggests that since these stories were popular, there was a “mutual benefit” to running them — it would help Trump’s campaign, he says, and “it would also help me.” Earlier, we noted that Pecker and Trump had a symbiotic relationship, scratching each other’s back. Pecker just testified that the arrangement continued during the campaign.

Pecker is asked if Bill and Hillary Clinton’s names came up in the meeting. Pecker says that when you run a magazine, you have to choose the topic of the week. Coverage of Hillary Clinton running for president that described Bill Clinton as “a womanizer” was a big seller, he says. “I was running the Hillary Clinton stories, I was running Hillary as an enabler for Bill Clinton, with respect to all the womanizing.” As expected, Pecker is describing himself as the agent of “catch-and-kill” schemes in which he or others would help Cohen suppress negative information about Trump, specifically negative information pertaining to “women selling stories.” Pecker is, in essence, confessing to promoting “fake news” on behalf of Donald Trump. Pecker says he had expected “there would be a lot of women who would come out to try to sell their stories” about Trump, because he was known as “the most eligible bachelor and dated the most beautiful women.” (Trump married his current wife, Melania, in 2005.) The jurors are being shown their first exhibit, an email sent to Pecker inviting him to Trump's campaign announcement at Trump Tower. They are paying close attention. Steinglass is now drilling down on the key meeting in what prosecutors say was a conspiracy — an August 2015 gathering between Trump, Cohen and Pecker. “I received a call from Michael Cohen telling me that the boss wanted to see me,” Pecker says. Pecker says he didn’t know the purpose of the meeting before he arrived. When he got there, he says, Cohen and Trump asked him what he and his magazines could do “to help the campaign,” a quote that will be key to prosecutors' argument that the hush money payments were made to help Trump win the election.

You can see Steinglass, the prosecutor, gently leading the jury step-by-step into the bizarre world of Trump’s relationship with Pecker’s supermarket tabloid empire. This line of questioning will soon get to the heart of the issue: the “catch-and-kill” operations that Pecker launched to aid Trump’s political ambitions. Pecker says that Trump was “viewed as the boss.” Prosecutors are using him to establish two things: that Trump was a “micro-manager,” particuarly with money, and that he often delegated point people for others to deal with. Pecker says that his was Michael Cohen.

Note: I gotta say; all this shit about Trump being frugal is just fucking hilarious. .. Steinglass asks Pecker about Hope Hicks, another intermediary for Trump. He is slowly weaving Pecker into Trump’s world, through his connections with people who will come up again at this trial. Because he is the first witness, this serves as an introduction to the fuller cast of characters, whose names the jury may already be familiar with. Trump has been watching Pecker’s testimony but appears to perk up when certain people are mentioned, like Hicks, his former spokeswoman, or Ivanka Trump, his older daughter. Overall, Pecker’s affect as a witness is calm, understated, almost grandfatherly. If he holds up this way under cross-examination, that could help him bolster his credibility with the jury. Pecker is now describing what he calls his first meeting with Michael Cohen, in 2007. He says Trump introduced them at his office, and that he was told to route all communications to Trump through Cohen. “He was very cautious and very frugal,” Pecker says of Trump’s approach to money. Any testimony from Pecker that establishes Trump’s track record of keeping a close eye on his own finances — “almost a micromanager,” in Pecker’s words — will help the prosecution prove its core accusation: that the former president falsified records to cover up a sex scandal.

Pecker is describing a symbiotic relationship between Trump and The National Enquirer centered in part around “The Apprentice.” Pecker says that Trump would tip him off first as to who was going to be fired — “or eliminated,” as Pecker puts it — from the show, and The Enquirer would write about it. Trump’s history of tipping off the New York City tabloids about his own life was legendary well before The Apprentice. Prosecutors are working to situate Pecker in Trump’s orbit before the jury. He’s not coming across as a combative witness, but, on the contrary, as a longtime fan, friend and ally of Trump. If he testifies, as we expect, about a series of hush money deals they arranged together, this gentle impression will help make him all the more credible. If anything, Pecker is appearing like the kind of person who the Trump campaign, in another context, would ask to serve a validator for Trump’s past successes.

Steinglass is now asking about “The Apprentice,” which Pecker calls “an instant success.” Pecker says that he’s had “a great relationship with Mr. Trump over the years,” and that he launched a magazine with him called Trump Style. When he proposed the magazine, Pecker says, Trump’s biggest question was, “Who’s going to pay for it?” Pecker never did say who paid for it. Pecker is being asked to point to and identify Trump, who he says he’s known since the late 1980s. They met at Mar-a-Lago, he says. Pecker specifically says he was introduced to him through Nick Ribis, then a casinos executive for Trump and, until the early 2000s, one of his long-serving lawyers. As Pecker identified the former president, Trump lifted his head and smiled tightly.

It does not appear as if we will get a ruling from the judge right now on whether or not Trump will be held in contempt and fined. David Pecker has entered the courtroom in a dark grey suit and made his way to the witness stand. Trumps shifted in his chair as Pecker passed.

Justice Merchan has repeatedly pushed Todd Blanche to clarify his arguments, only to have Blanche deny that he is saying what he seems to be saying. Trump is very lucky that the jurors are not here for this. Merchan is really dressing down Blanche right now. “You’ve presented nothing,” Merchan just said to Blanche, who has been presenting his argument for some 20 minutes. It's devastating for Blanche. Trump is growing more animated as Justice Merchan pushes back on Blanche. On several occasions while the judge was speaking, the former president sharply turned to his other lawyers at the defense table and whispered to them. Justice Merchan is now pushing Todd Blanche to do a forensic accounting of how reposts happen in Trump’s world. “It’s not passive,” the judge finally says. What’s interesting here is the throughline between Blanche’s argument that there is distance between Trump and his own reposts and the prosecution's argument against Trump, which is that he repeatedly used others — Michael Cohen, The National Enquirer — to do his dirty work. This line of questioning is highlighting a longtime Twitter catchphrase -- that "retweets do not equal endorsements." When you are a former president sitting on trial, it would seem your reposts do carry more weight, particularly in light of this court’s gag order. Todd Blanche says Trump is entitled to complain about “two systems of justice.” “There’s two systems of justice in this courtroom? That’s what you’re saying?” Justice Merchan says. There’s a real similarity between the opening statements we saw yesterday and the arguments about the alleged gag order violations today: Again, prosecutors have an overarching narrative, saying that Trump willfully violated their order. Blanche is responding to the allegations one by one, and the judge, for now, isn’t having it. Justice Merchan is basically taking on, one by one, Trump's favored social media strategies. One is constantly claiming something was “just found.” In this particular case, the subject was Stormy Daniels’ early 2018 statement denying having had a sexual encounter with Trump, which she has since disavowed. “LOOK WHAT WAS JUST FOUND!” Trump said in an April 10 Truth Social post. “I need to know what is true,” Justice Merchan says. The judge loses patience with Todd Blanche, Trump's lawyer. “I’m asking the questions, OK,” he says. “Im going to decide whether your client is in contempt or not, so please don’t turn it around.” Blanche says in a higher-pitched voice that the prosecutors got as much time as they want. Justice Merchan makes a distinction, saying the prosecutors were answering his questions. During the scold, Trump turned to another one of his lawyers, Emil Bove, and whispered a comment. We’ll try to decode Todd Blanche’s attacks further, though they are confusing even in the room. He says that a post from Michael Avenatti, which caused Trump to launch into an attack on Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen, was a political argument, about speech not in the case but on social media and in interviews. Thus, Blanche is saying, Trump’s response is not in fact an attack on witnesses but a continuation of that political discussion. This is a hard pill for Justice Merchan to swallow, clearly. The legal and political strategies by the Trump team have been intertwined since the first indictment. And Blanche’s argument brings that into stark relief. It’s fascinating to see a lawyer for Trump try to separate out politics from legal proceedings. The Trump era, of course, has been marked by the opposite sort of context collapse: With Trump, everything is politics. That’s why this argument may not work.

Todd Blanche, who had a rocky morning in court in front of Justice Merchan, is now sitting third-chair, amiably chatting with Trump, smiling and laughing a bit, twirling a pen in his right hand. Given Justice Merchan’s disbelief at Todd Blanche’s argument that some of Trump's posts did not violate the gag order because they were reposts, it's worth remembering that Blanche pressed a prospective juror last week about social media posts that were critical of Trump. The prospective juror explained that the posts were actually reposts. “Did you watch this before you posted it?” Justice Merchan asked, before excusing the prospective juror. While court was on a break, Trump complained about the gag order on Truth Social. In an all-caps post, he accused Justice Merchan of taking away his “right to free speech” and claimed that he was “not allowed to defend myself.” Trump is already dealing directly with the repercussions of that hearing and negative views of his lawyer’s performance during it. While coming back into the courtroom, reporters referred back to the judge's comment, asking him whether he thought his lawyer, Todd Blanche, had any credibility and whether he was happy with his performance. Trump didn’t respond, but waved at the reporters. We will now reorient, with that dramatic hearing behind us, unless the judge rules on the gag order very quickly from the bench. Soon, the jury will reenter and David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer, will resume his testimony, which began yesterday. Prosecutors just re-entered the courtroom. Several of them were smiling and at least one was chuckling at something a colleague said. Little dispute that the hearing went well for them. This hearing, ostensibly about violations of a gag order, doubled as a complete onslaught on the Trump ethos. Justice Merchan clarified that politics infused everything that the former president does and insisted on hearing good faith arguments, and the truth, wherever possible. We knew this was going to be a big moment; it was even more revealing than expected. Trump leaves the courtroom, scanning the rows of reporters. He again looks frustrated, as he did yesterday when he left. Todd Blanche also appeared frustrated after his argument concluded. Trump immediately beckoned him over and they whispered to each other, before Trump snatched a piece of paper that was in front of him on the defense table. Blanche then rubbed his face. Trump has always treated his own words as if they’re a completely disposable commodity. That is not how it works in a courtroom. We thought we were taking a break after a very fiery hearing. Merchan will not give a decision right away. But now the prosecutor, Christopher Conroy, is responding briefly. Justice Merchan wants to conclude the hearing, but Todd Blanche wants to continue arguing. “This gag order,” he says. “We are trying to comply with it.” As Blanche insists Trump is trying to follow with the rules, Merchan interrupts him. “You’re losing all credibility with the court,” he says. This is going to be a long trial. Blanche is in jeopardy of ruining his relationship with Merchan at a very early stage of the game. Merchan, now calmer, is all but pleading with Blanche to make a more substantive argument to back up the idea that reposts should not be subject to the gag order. “I hate to keep coming back to this, but you’re not offering me anything to support your argument,” the judge says. Justice Merchan notes that on his post about Jesse Watters's statements, Trump did not quote the Fox News commentator directly. “Your client manipulated what was said and put it in quotes,” Merchan says. Blanche agrees that it was not a true repost, but argues that it's still not clear that it violated the gag order.

Blanche is trying to get his client out of hot water by seeking to reframe Trump’s statements about Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels as responses to “a barrage of political attacks.” Merchan says that he doesn’t want to get into “interpreting and reading between the lines” of Trump’s posts as Blanche continues to push the point that Trump’s attacks are political, and not specifically related to the case, despite being about likely witnesses.

Todd Blanche, one of Trump's lawyers, is responding for the defense. He says Trump knows what the gag order allows him to do, and there was “no willful violation” of it. He again argues, as he did in his opening statement, that there's nothing to see here. Blanche is arguing that nothing can be seen devoid of political context when it comes to Trump. Conroy says prosecutors will not seek jail for now, even though Trump seems to be “angling” for that. While Trump has made a show of daring prosecutors to jail him, there are few Trump advisers who think Trump actually wants to or would welcome the reality of being put in a prison cell. New York state’s criminal contempt law permits a $1,000 fine and jail time of up to 30 days for each violation of the gag order. And Conroy is asking the judge to warn Trump that he could face custody. Conroy now focuses on Trump’s defense that “reposts” aren’t his own words. Trump has used a version of this defense politically as well since 2016. Conroy says that Trump “is doing nothing less than knowingly and willingly, that is intentionally, breaching the crystal clear, unequivocal lines set by this court.”

Throwing a "MAGA" into a post doesn’t make it political, Conroy says, dismissing the idea that Trump's comments fall under the category of protected political speech. It may make it more ominous, Conroy adds. Conroy is talking about Trump’s seeking to use politics as a defense, saying it “makes no sense,” eviscerating the clear language and meaning of the gag order. “There’s no indication that his claim that he’s responding to attacks is anything more than an after-the-fact justification,” Conroy says.

Eh, we all know what each of us is doing. I guess the only real mystery is if we are doing it in our underwear or not. I actually have to leave the office for an hour or so around 9:15, and I'm not sure my AI bot is capable of scraping this off of the NYTimes and re-posting here for the viewing pleasure of everyone, but I'll see what I can do. And with that: Conroy says that Trump “violates the order when he posts about known witnesses or reasonably forseeable witnesses,” and “violates the order when he posts about a juror or prospective juror.” And finally, Conroy says Trump violated the gag order when on Truth Social, he quoted the Fox News commentator Jesse Watters denigrating prospective jurors as "undercover liberal activists.” Prosecutors have flagged this as the most serious of the violations and Conroy does so again, calling it “very troubling.” Conroy points to the timing of the post, last Wednesday evening. The next morning, Juror #2 came into court and asked to be excused. This upset Justice Merchan. He complimented the juror after excusing her, saying she would have done a good job.

Conroy is now describing five more examples, all versions of the same post, in which Trump shared a New York Post article about Michael Cohen and quoted its headline: “A serial perjurer will try to prove an old misdemeanor against Trump in an embarrassment for the New York legal system.” Trump is looking ahead in the judge’s direction as Conroy ticks through these violations. As social media posts of his are read into the record, his face twitches slightly.

Conroy, reminding Justice Merchan of the procedural history here, notes that a second order came after Trump “ratcheted up attacks on family members.” That impersonal language hides something the judge knows well: Those attacks were made on his own family members, including his daughter. Conroy is ticking through Trump's alleged gag order violations, including one in which he thanked Stormy Daniels’s disgraced lawyer, Michael Avenatti, for criticizing Michael Cohen. Conroy also describes how Trump called Cohen and Daniels “sleazebags.”

I have more work to do today, but here's some updates from his contempt hearing: One thing striking listening to Chris Conroy, one of the prosecutors, as he calls for Justice Merchan to do something that could make Trump stop, is how evocative it is of the lawyer Roberta Kaplan’s closing arguments in Trump's defamation trial, where she asked the jury how much money it would take to get Trump to stop defaming E. Jean Carroll. A prosecutor, Chris Conroy, begins to detail his team’s argument on the gag order. He says each of the 10 Trump posts in question violated the order, and that eight of them were on Truth Social. Two were on his official campaign website. Conroy says that these violations pose a very real “threat” to the proceedings, having an “undertow” effect on witnesses and making them afraid. The witnesses, he says, “rightly fear being subject to similar vitriol.” As expected, Conroy says Trump's attacks on Michael Cohen in the hallway outside the courtroom yesterday again violated the order. So that’s 11 violations prosecutors say he commited. The prosecutors have returned. Trump, who was isolated and alone at the defense table, in what is becoming a familiar image at this trial, has also been rejoined by his lawyers. The judge is back on the bench and says that two matters are now in the record. It appears that the two matters were the two separate attempts that prosecutors have made to see Trump held in contempt of court. They say he’s violated the gag order 10 times. The judge is in and we are underway. The lawyers and the judge left the courtroom almost immediately after the session began. We do not know why.