Trump trial second week concludes with testimony from former secretary and
Former US President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom at Manhattan criminal court in New York, US, on Friday, April 26, 2024.
Jeenah Moon | Via Reuters
This is a developing story and will be updated throughout the day.
Prosecutors called two new witnesses Friday afternoon in former President Donald Trump‘s New York criminal hush money trial.
The first was Trump’s longtime personal secretary Rhona Graff. Considered by many to be the most influential gatekeeper of the former president during his years at the Trump Organization, Graff said Friday that she no longer works for Trump but that her attorneys were being paid by the Trump Organization.
Graff confirmed that Trump had saved contact information for two women at the heart 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 managing director at First Republic Bank in 2016, when the hush money payment that is key to the charge against Trump was made.
Farro described how former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen worked with him to get $130,000 into a First Republic bank account, money that Cohen later paid to Daniels through her attorney to buy her silence.
Graff and Farro’s testimonies came after defense attorneys spent the morning cross-examining former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker. The cross came after three days during which Pecker gave damning testimony for the prosecution.
Pecker’s cross-examination
Among the questions from Trump attorney Emil Bove to Pecker were whether it was standard practice for the National Enquirer, the tabloid magazine Pecker once published, to have relationships with outside sources like Trump and his then-attorney Michael Cohen. Pecker said it was.
Pecker also seemed to confirm that the National Enquirer for years would often just recirculate old critical news stories, including hit pieces on former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Clinton, who ran for president in 2016 against Trump.
Pecker later got pushed on his relationship with Cohen, in an apparent effort by Bove to suggest that the two were closer than previously known.
Bove said Cohen wanted Pecker in 2016 to try to get him a job at a company called iPayments, and that he was also looking for help to get a position working with businessman Mark Cuban.
Pecker confirmed that Cohen asked him to send paparazzi to a meeting between the Trump lawyer and Cuban. He did not say whether he actually sent the photographers.
The hush-money agreement between Pecker’s publishing company, American Media, and McDougal also came into focus during the Friday testimony. Bove tried to portray the financial agreement as largely focused on boosting McDougal’s media career.
Prosecutors and Pecker have described it all week as an attempt to bury McDougal’s story about her alleged affair with Trump because the story could have hurt Trump’s presidential campaign.
Pecker admitted that American Media ran…
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