Catch and Kill

One of the first witnesses who will take the stand in Manhattan will likely give devastating testimony against Donald Trump.

Photo montage courtesy of The Daily Mail

There’s a key witness against Trump set to testify, perhaps even right after opening statements are done.

Here’s a name that’s easy to remember: David Pecker. Pecker is the former publisher of the National Enquirer. He worked with Trump for years to bury unfavorable stories about the mogul, candidate and ex-president.

The scheme was called “catch and kill,” and it will figure heavily into the criminal proceedings. The whole Stormy Daniels cover up was just one among many messes that Pecker helped silence, sometimes illegally, in cahoots with Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen.

The jury is going to learn some damning things.

First, they’ll learn about the “catch and kill” scheme generally. Pecker had offered to help Trump’s campaign by identifying negative stories and alerting Cohen before the stories were published. Those could be then purchased and their publication avoided.

Second, they’ll hear about how Pecker was directly involved in the Stormy Daniels cover up. Trump has denied that the affair happened and that it was papered over illegally by disguising payments to Daniels as legal expenses to Cohen. So Pecker’s testimony will be key to catching Trump in this lie.

Third, the jury may get to hear, if the judge allows it, testimony about what a scary mob-boss operation this was. There’s evidence of Trump and his henchmen threatening violence upon anyone who posed a threat. But even if the jury doesn’t get to hear this, the public should know about it as we refocus on the allegations in the indictment.

Let’s dive in.

The scheme to buy and bury bad stories

Just Security has put together an excellent timeline of the catch and kill scheme. The close arrangement between Trump and Pecker goes all the way back to 2004, which even predates when Cohen began working for Trump in 2007. 

Back then, Pecker’s company, American Media, Inc., routinely turned away stories and tips about his good friend Donald Trump. During those years, Trump was having affairs while married to Melania. Among these was one with Playboy model Karen McDougal and another with adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, known widely by her screen name, Stormy Daniels. 

Around 2011, when Daniels was considering to go public about her affair with Trump, Cohen threatened to sue the magazine that was about to publish the story, and it never ran. Daniels probably never thought it would come up again.

Then Trump announced a bid for the presidency in 2015, and an infamous meeting occurred in Trump Tower. According to the Wall Street Journal, Pecker was in Trump Tower in August of that year when Trump asked him a fateful question: “What can you do to help my campaign?”

According to the Manhattan DA’s statement of facts and other sources, 

Pecker offered to “help with [Trump’s] campaign, saying that he would act as the ‘eyes and ears’ for the campaign by looking out for negative stories about [Trump] and alerting [Cohen] before the stories were published.” This early warning system was designed to “[assist] the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.” During the meeting, Pecker also committed “to publish negative stories about [Trump’s] competitors for the election.” 

This partnership was not just about cleaning up Trump’s messes. It was also about attacking his political opponents. Citing the book The Fixers and the Washington Post, Just Security notes,

The Enquirer ultimately published, during the primary season alone, “more than sixty stories attacking [Trump’s] opponents, the Clintons most of all, followed by Cruz” (The Fixers, p. 161). National Enquirer executives also allegedly shared pre-publication copies of articles and cover images related to Trump and his political opponents with Cohen throughout the campaign

Here’s an example of how catch and kill operated. In the fall of 2015, Pecker “learned that a former Trump Tower doorman” named Dino Sajudin “was trying to sell information regarding a child that [Trump] had allegedly fathered out of wedlock.” Pecker caused American Media, Inc. to negotiate and sign “an agreement to pay [Sajudin] $30,000 to acquire exclusive rights to the story.” According to a piece by Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker, Pecker later “ordered the A.M.I. reporters to stop investigating” Sajudin’s claims and “the story died.”

The Sajudin catch and kill is also part of the Manhattan DA’s indictment. It tends to show motive and pattern, and it is thus highly relevant to questions like Trump’s intent. 

So is the Karen McDougal story. Trump had a one year long affair in 2006 with McDougal when Melania was home with their newborn. In 2016, a former friend of McDougal’s tweeted about the affair, and McDougal realized she likely wouldn’t be able to keep it secret any longer, because Trump was now the front runner for the GOP nomination. McDougal sought to sell her story to the National Enquirer, owned by Pecker’s AMI. 

Pecker and the then chief content officer of AMI, Dylan Howard, called Cohen to alert him of the story. Under what’s known as a “non-prosecution agreement” that the government entered into with AMI, the company admitted that Howard “began negotiating for the purchase of the story” at “Cohen’s urging and subject to Cohen’s promise that AMI would be reimbursed.” 

According to the DA, Trump “did not want this information to become public because he was concerned about the effect it could have on his candidacy.” In late June of 2016, per The Fixers, Trump called Pecker to ask whether he could bury McDougal’s story. Pecker signed off on a deal to catch and kill it for $150,000, on condition that the Trump Organization would reimburse AMI.

That’s where it gets crimey. AMI paid McDougal’s representative the $150,000 under these terms:

in cooperation, consultation, and concert with, and at the request and suggestion of one or more members or agents of a candidate’s 2016 presidential campaign, to ensure that a woman did not publicize damaging allegations about that candidate before the 2016 presidential election and thereby influence that election.

Catch that? It was about not letting the story influence the election. And then,

AMI falsely characterized this payment in AMI’s books and records, including in its general ledger. The AMI CEO agreed to the deal after discussing it with both [Trump] and [Cohen], and on the understanding from [Cohen] that [Trump] or the Trump Organization would reimburse AMI.

Sound familiar?

Providing something of benefit to a campaign in excess of the reporting requirements is illegal. So is covering it up to make it seem legal. Pecker did it, and so did the Trump Organization. The details of how they used shell companies and other methods to hide the payments is fascinating, but it’s too long for discussion here. Suffice it to say, there was some sinister and clever legal maneuvering and accounting involved. And they did it not just with Daniels, but with McDougal.

Dark and stormy

Pecker was also at the scene of the crime of the Daniels cover up and can testify about many of the conversations he had with Trump and Cohen about how to bury the story.

The jury will hear that Pecker was directly involved in a flurry of calls to buy off Daniels and then to illegally reimburse Cohen for the payments to her, in violation of election finance laws.

There’s a strong paper trail of texts from Howard to Cohen and to Daniels’s attorney about her story and getting Pecker to sign off on paying off Daniels. There’s evidence of Cohen lobbying Pecker to buy her story and kill it as they had others. They negotiated the payment amount from $250K down to $120K. Howard conveyed this to Pecker, who said they couldn’t pay $120K, but perhaps Cohen could “handle” it.

The goal at this point was to leave AMI out of the payment trail. Here’s a telling exchange, reported in The Fixers:

Howard then texted Pecker “to let him know that Cohen had agreed to handle the story and leave American Media out of it.” He continued: “‘Spoke to MC. All sorted. Now removed. No fingerprints. I’ll recap with you face to face.’” Pecker replied “‘Great work Thx’” 

No. Fingerprints.

Ultimately, Cohen found a way to pay off Daniels in the amount of $130k using his own money and getting reimbursed for it as “legal services.” Again, highly illegal as a big unreported campaign contribution. Cohen held a meeting with Trump to explain the payment, and Trump told him to go back to his CFO, Allen Weisselberg, and “figure it out.”

Importantly, in October of 2016, Trump directed Cohen

to delay making a payment to [Clifford] as long as possible. He instructed [Cohen] that if they could delay the payment until after the election, they could avoid paying altogether, because at that point it would not matter if the story became public

Why does this matter? Because Trump is trying to argue that the reason he paid off Daniels for her silence was to spare his marriage. But he actually didn’t care if Melania knew. After all, if he did, he wouldn’t want the story out at all, ever. What Trump really wanted was to win the election. So he was prepared to stiff Daniels later to keep the payments to her down. 

Classic Trump, but he gave away his best defense in the process.

Mob bosses

One more note. There’s damning evidence of Trump and his henchmen acting like mob bosses by intimidating anyone who didn’t keep their mouth shut about his affairs.

For example, when Pecker informed Trump in 2018 that he wanted to end their long association, probably because the temperature was getting a bit too hot around the catch and kill stories, Cohen stated that Trump said, “Maybe he gets hit by a truck.” 

Lest we dismiss this as just more bravado and locker room talk, a more sinister encounter happened with Stormy Daniels earlier. 

According to Daniels, after she decided to tell her story in 2011 to In Touch magazine, an unknown man came up to her and threatened her. Here was her exchange with Anderson Cooper during a 2018 interview with 60 Minutes:

Stormy Daniels: I was in a parking lot, going to a fitness class with my infant daughter. T— taking, you know, the seats facing backwards in the backseat, diaper bag, you know, gettin' all the stuff out. And a guy walked up on me and said to me, “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.” And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, “That's a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.” And then he was gone.

Anderson Cooper: You took it as a direct threat?

Stormy Daniels: Absolutely.

Stormy Daniels: I was rattled. I remember going into the workout class. And my hands are shaking so much, I was afraid I was gonna— drop her.

Anderson Cooper: Did you ever see that person again?

Stormy Daniels: No. But I— if I did, I would know it right away.

Anderson Cooper:  You’d be able to— you’d be able to recognize that person?

Stormy Daniels: 100%. Even now, all these years later. If he walked in this door right now, I would instantly know.

Anderson Cooper: Did you go to the police?

Stormy Daniels: No.

Anderson Cooper: Why?

Stormy Daniels: Because I was scared.

I don’t know or expect that this is going to come into evidence. It may be too prejudicial to the defendant relative to its probative value, and there’s no evidence that Trump or Cohen actually hired such a person or instructed him to threaten Daniels. Perhaps Cohen could shed light on this. 

But at a minimum, the American public should know what Daniels went through and the kind of people we are dealing with here.

Trump did more than pay “hush money.” He cheated in the election, and powerful people helped him cover it up. Pecker’s testimony could prove highly damaging to Trump out of the gate, and we’ll have to see if Trump can refrain from going off on social media about him. 

It will soon be clear that all fingers of the other co-conspirators are going to be pointing toward Trump. There is no easy way past this mountain of evidence except for the notorious liar himself to claim that everyone else is now lying—Cohen, Daniels, and even his longtime friend, David Pecker. 

Who’s the jury going to believe?