Prosecutors called two recent witnesses within the New York hush money trial of former President Donald Trump on Friday afternoon.
The first was Trump's longtime personal secretary, Rhona Graff. Considered by many to be the previous president's most influential guardian during his years on the Trump Organization, Graff said Friday that she not works for Trump but that her lawyers are paid by the Trump Organization.
Graff confirmed that Trump had saved contact information for 2 women at the middle of the hush money case: former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, an adult film star.
After Graff, prosecutors called a banker, Gary Farro, who was a senior executive at First Republic Bank in 2016 when the hush-money payment that’s crucial to the Trump indictment was made.
Farro described how former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen worked with him to transfer $130,000 to a First Republic checking account, money that Cohen later paid to Daniels through her lawyer to purchase her silence.
Graff and Farro's statements got here after defense attorneys spent the morning cross-examining former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker. The cross got here after three days wherein Pecker gave damning testimony for the prosecution.
Pecker's cross-examination
Among Trump lawyer Emil Bove's inquiries to Pecker was whether it was common practice for the National Enquirer, the tabloid magazine Pecker once edited, to have relationships with outside sources similar to Trump and his then-lawyer Michael Cohen. Pecker said it was.
Pecker also appeared to substantiate that for years the National Enquirer often only rebroadcast old critical news, including top stories about former President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton, who ran for president against Trump in 2016.
Pecker was later pressed about his relationship with Cohen, apparently in an try to suggest to Boves that the 2 were closer than previously known.
Bove said Cohen wanted Pecker to attempt to get him a job at an organization called iPayments in 2016 and that he also sought help getting a job with businessman Mark Cuban.
Pecker confirmed that Cohen asked him to send paparazzi to a gathering between the Trump lawyer and the Cuban. He didn’t say whether he actually sent the photographers.
The hush money agreement between Pecker's publishing company, American Media, and McDougal also got here into focus during testimony on Friday. Bove tried to portray the financial agreement as being designed primarily to spice up McDougal's media profession.
Prosecutors and Pecker have described all of it week as an try to bury McDougal's story about her alleged affair with Trump since the story could have damaged Trump's presidential campaign.
Pecker admitted that American Media published dozens of articles under McDougal's name, and he told her that the worth of the services portion of their agreement was price “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Pecker's statement was also the most recent example showing how close the media executive was to Trump throughout the campaign and within the early days of his presidency.
Pecker discussed a gathering between Trump and Cohen in August 2015 at Trump Tower in New York. The statement later led to a different meeting on January 6, 2017, which Pecker attended at Trump Tower, where he saw Reince Priebus and Mike Pompeo sitting with Trump. Priebus and Pompeo later became White House chief of staff and secretary of state, respectively, within the Trump administration.
As Trump entered the courtroom Friday morning, he said he thought Thursday's trial went “very well.”
He also complained in regards to the coldness of the courtroom, claiming it was as a consequence of conflicts of interest on the a part of the judge. He called the proceedings “a rigged process.” Trump has repeatedly made the identical accusations on social media.
Pecker's earlier statement
Pecker testified earlier this week in regards to the “catch and kill” plan he devised with Trump and Cohen to purchase the rights to negative tabloid stories about Trump throughout the 2016 presidential campaign and never publish them, essentially killed.
Pecker described how his publisher paid a former Trump Tower bouncer $30,000 for a story he didn't imagine was true, and one other $150,000 to McDougal for the rights to her story about an alleged affair Pecker reported said it was true.
Pecker also explained that after purchasing the primary two stories and never receiving a refund from Trump, he was unwilling to pay a further $130,000 to purchase the silence of Daniels, who claimed she had a President had a sexual encounter with Trump decade before his candidacy.
Pecker sat just just a few feet from Trump as he spoke, and the 2 men occasionally glanced at one another. Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records as a part of a scheme to hide restitution payments he eventually made to Cohen after his lawyer and private fixer paid the $130,000 to purchase Daniels' silence.
Pecker also testified that he suspected the corporate's payments for the bouncer's silence and McDougal's story could constitute campaign finance violations because they were essentially undeclared donations to support Trump's presidential campaign.
He consulted a campaign finance attorney in regards to the matter, but publisher AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, later received a Federal Election Commission inquiry in regards to the payments.
The company eventually admitted to a campaign finance violation and paid greater than a high quality in 2021 $180,000 entered into an arbitration agreement with the FEC to resolve the matter.
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