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Dylan Stableford
Donald Trump’s hush money trial resumed Friday in Manhattan criminal court, where former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker — the first witness called by the prosecution — faced cross-examination by the defense.
Judge Juan Merchan continues to weigh whether the former president violated a gag order by attacking other witnesses on social media.
Pecker testified about his effort to “catch and kill” stories of Trump’s alleged extramarital affairs with adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal weeks before the 2016 presidential election.
Trump is facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal the $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels, who is among the witnesses expected to testify in the trial, which will last between five and six weeks.
Follow our live blog below for the latest updates from inside and outside the courtroom.
Before the break, Trump attorney Emil Bove was questioning Pecker about his testimony regarding a Jan. 6, 2017, meeting Pecker attended at Trump Tower with the then president-elect and numerous officials, including FBI Director James Comey.
On Thursday, Pecker testified that at the meeting Trump thanked him for paying to silence a Trump Tower doorman who claimed Trump had fathered a love child. But according to notes from a 2018 FBI interview with Pecker, he told agents that Trump had not thanked him at the Jan. 6 meeting.
Pecker initially suggested that the FBI's notes were wrong, but later during Bove's cross-examination acknowledged that he may have, in fact, told them Trump had not thanked him.
"Something about the question mark after 'old and quite weird' is taking me out."
During an event in Florida, the former president urged attendees to vote and said that if reelected, they "won’t have to do it anymore"
After all the political tumult of the last month, Thursday’s latest New York Times/Siena College poll is full of findings unlike any we’ve seen this cycle, with one exception: who leads the presidential race. The poll found Donald Trump ahead of Kamala Harris by 1 percentage point, 48% to 47%, among likely voters. Other than the name of the Democratic candidate, “Trump +1” is a result that could have been from any other Times/Siena poll before President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate. Sign up for
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