Former tabloid publisher David Pecker is back on the witness stand Thursday at Donald Trump's New York criminal trial. He is to answer more questions about how he bought the story of a Playboy model who claimed to have had a monthslong relationship with the future president and then killed it to protect Trump politically.
As the trial recessed on Tuesday, Pecker had begun testifying about a $150,000 payment he made to Karen McDougal, the magazine's 1998 Playmate of the Year. The prosecutor had yet to ask him how the deal came about just before Trump's 2016 election and his role in agreeing to the payment. Trump has denied the affair.
In the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president, Trump is accused of falsifying business records to hide another payment, $130,000 in hush money to porn film actress Stormy Daniels, to keep her quiet ahead of the election about her claim of a one-night tryst with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has also denied her account.
While Pecker's testimony continues, Trump is facing another key legal issue on Thursday. One of his lawyers will be arguing in Washington at the U.S. Supreme Court that Trump should be immune from prosecution for actions he took as president to try to upend his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden.
Trump's criminal indictment in Washington accusing him of illegally plotting to overturn the 2020 result to stay in power is on hold while the immunity issue is decided. In all, Trump is facing 88 counts in four indictments, all of which he has denied.
Trump asked New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to call off Thursday's trial session so he could attend the Supreme Court hearing, but Merchan refused.
Merchan could rule Thursday on a demand by prosecutors that Trump be held in contempt of court and fined for violating Merchan's gag order on 10 occasions.
The gag order bars Trump from attacking any of the witnesses, prosecutors, jurors, or court staff, and it was later expanded to include some of their relatives. But the order left Trump free to attack two key figures in the case, Merchan and the New York prosecutor who brought the case, Alvin Bragg, which Trump has frequently done.
The New York hush money trial might be the only one that occurs before Trump — the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee — again faces Biden, a Democrat, in the November 5 election.
