David Pecker, a former publisher of The National Enquirer, on Tuesday testified about the mutually beneficial relationship between Donald J. Trump and the supermarket tabloid that started decades ago and buoyed Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Mr. Pecker said that the pivotal moment was an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan. “I received a call from Michael Cohen telling me that the boss wanted to see me,” Mr. Pecker said, adding that he did not know the nature of the meeting before he showed up.
Mr. Trump had announced his presidential campaign a few months before in the same place, and Mr. Pecker said he arrived to meet not just Mr. Trump but also Mr. Cohen, his fixer at the time.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen asked him how he could “help the campaign,” according to Mr. Pecker, underscoring prosecutors’ argument that the hush-money payments were made to help Mr. Trump get elected.
An outcome of that Trump Tower meeting were negative headlines attacking Mr. Trump’s rivals and positive stories that promoted him. Prosecutors said that negative coverage included stories about Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio while they were seeking the Republican Party’s nomination.
During the campaign, Mr. Pecker said he worked closely with Mr. Cohen, who would feed him information. Mr. Cohen would call him after Republican debates and ask for negative coverage to be directed at whichever candidate had been most successful onstage.
In turn, The Enquirer would “embellish” the stories, Mr. Pecker said, essentially confessing that it published “fake news” to help Mr. Trump.
Mr. Pecker also said that the tabloid arranged to suppress negative information, especially pertaining to “women selling stories” about Mr. Trump, who Mr. Pecker said was known as “the most eligible bachelor and dated the most beautiful women.”