Pecker at hush money trial says Trump feared trysts would hurt image, but didn't mention Melania

During that meeting, Pecker said Trump explicitly thanked him for paying off McDougal.

“I wanted to thank you for taking care of the (Karen) McDougal situation,” Pecker quoted Trump as saying.

Pecker told the court he felt Trump “was thanking me for buying (their) stories and not publishing them.”

Pecker said he amended AMI’s deal with McDougal after The Wall Street Journal published details of the payoff to her on Nov. 4, 2016 — days before the election — saying she was getting “bombarded” with media interview requests and that he didn’t want her to levy accusations against AMI.

“Mr. Trump got very aggravated when he heard that I’d amended it and he couldn’t understand why,” Pecker testified, later saying he released her from their agreement when she filed suit to exit the contract, which Trump was “very upset” about.

Pecker first admitted to his role in the hush-money scheme when the feds brought campaign finance charges against Cohen in summer 2018, leading to the fixer’s conviction, and cooperated over a period of months in exchange for dodging prosecution. He discussed that case and an agreement made with the Manhattan DA’s office in 2019, which provided him immunity to testify to truthfully in Trump’s case.

The publisher said he hadn’t spoken to Trump since that year. But when asked whether they had fallen out, he said “quite the contrary,” adding that Trump had been his “mentor.”

“I still consider him a friend,” he said.

Prosecutors finished questioning Pecker toward the end of the day’s proceedings, and he spent about an hour on cross examination with Emil Bove. The Trump lawyer pressed him on AMI’s other arrangements with the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, golfer Tiger Woods and actor Mark Wahlberg, which Pecker called “mutually beneficial.” He said it had been “standard practice” to give Trump a heads-up about harmful stories for about 17 years.

Pecker said he never heard the phrase “catch-and-kill” before this investigation.

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