Why is David Pecker a crucial witness in Donald Trump’s trial? The publisher’s National Enquirer ‘catch and kill’ tactics helped Harvey Weinstein and Arnold Schwarzenegger – but not Jeff Bezos …

May 2 , 2024

AMI’s David Pecker (second from right) hosts Playboy’s 50th anniversary celebration in 2010, in New York City. Photo: Getty Images for American Media Inc.

The ex-publisher of National Enquirer, Pecker testified to his 2016 involvement in paying US$150,000 for the rights to Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story of her alleged affair with Trump

The US tabloid also ‘caught and killed’ stories to protect Harvey Weinstein and Arnold Schwarzenegger – but found itself in hot water in 2019 after going up against billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos

He was an ambitious executive who, with a group of investors in 1999, bought American Media Inc. (AMI) – the publisher of tabloid newspaper the National Enquirer, among other titles. But while printing lurid celebrity revelations, David Pecker simultaneously shielded his friends from scrutiny by publishing positive stories about them and negative ones about their opponents, as well as operating a “catch and kill” scheme.

Now, Pecker is back in headlines as the first witness in former president Donald Trump’s current criminal trial, which opened on April 22 in New York. The trial concerns alleged hush-money payments totalling US$130,000 made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

The New York Times once called Pecker “the keeper of Donald Trump’s secrets”. But the Enquirer protected other powerful men too – including Harvey Weinstein and Arnold Schwarzenegger – and threatened to expose Jeff Bezos’ extramarital affair with his now-fiancée Lauren Sánchez.

Read on to find out what went down.

How did David Pecker and Donald Trump meet?

A courtroom sketch of David Pecker (right) testifying in April during the criminal trial, in New York, of former US president Donald Trump, on charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016. Photo: Reuters

Pecker and Trump met in the late 1980s at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, per Fox 59. Testifying in court, Pecker described a “great, mutually beneficial relationship” with the former president, saying, “[Trump] helped me throughout my career.”

Speaking last month on the CNN chat show Anderson Cooper 360°, Jeffrey Toobin, the network’s chief legal analyst, said, “The relationship between Pecker and Trump was one of hero worship … Pecker revered Trump.” Toobin went on to mention how Trump and Pecker launched a vanity magazine in 1997, Trump Style, that “would be there with the Gideons Bible” when you checked into a Trump hotel.

What is “catch and kill”?

Playboy model Karen McDougal in 2010. She told CNN that Donald Trump tried to pay her after they had sex, which she said she refused, and that the two had a months-long affair. Photo: AFP