Pecker's Last Stand!
Episode four of 'Days of Our Lies.'
Friday, while the courthouse air conditioning waged warfare against Donald J. Trump’s personal Vietnam of beef farts, David Jay Pecker finished on the stand, followed by two other ghosts from Trumpmas past: his long-serving secretary Rhona Graff, and Gary Farro, a banker who opened Michael Cohen’s hushy shushy home equity account.
Over the last four days of court, Pecker’s been ‘splaining to the 18 souls sentenced to jury duty about how he, Fixer Mikey C, and Don The Boss CONSPIRACIED to FAKE NEWS ELECTION FRAUD in a jerk-circle-a-roo. Pecker was going to shush sexy-lady tattletales by buying rights to Don’s adulterering stories, Don was going to buy those rights from Pecker (plus also some mysterious boxes the Enquirer had, full of Trump-related whatever), and then, by the holy ghost of Eddie Mannix, the secrets would stay secret until after the election. Which they did!
But Pecker got nelly about his part of the deal once his lawyer told him that it was all some not quite legal campaign finance violating he had going on, and probably the Federal Election Commission was going to come sniffing around. So Pecker ate the $150k he’d already paid to Karen McDougal via her scuzzo lawyer Keith Davidson, and said hell to the no when Cohen came at him a third time right before the election, wanting him to make it rain so Don could buy exclusive rights to Stormy Daniels: One Night In Tahoe.
The FEC DID come around, sending Pecker a letter that goosed his taint good. But Mikey C told him not to worry about those busybodies, because The Boss Don had “Jeff Sessions in his pocket,” like a baby kangaroo!
But whaddaya know, it was a lie, the Boss had no such thing, and AMI was forced to admit that the Karen payment broke campaign finance law.
Friday morning started off before court with The Boss beclowning himself with lies and complaints, as usual. Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of his lies.
But Trump did have some MAGA company in the peanut gallery, for once — two members of his indictment club! Lending good vibes were Waltine Nauta, the Diet Coke and nuclear secrets valet of Florida, plus fake-elector co-conspirator Boris Epshteyn, newly indicted in Arizona. Now Trump is Boris’s Unindicted-Co-Conspirator Number One in Arizona, just like he was for future witness Michael Cohen back in 2018 in New York, aw. Little criminal cases grow up so fast!
Speaking of family, Don had some touching words for the wife before he sat down for the day:
“I want to start by wishing my wife Melania a very happy birthday, it would be nice to be with her but I'm in the courthouse for a rigged trial. It's a rigged trial, terrible, but we’re doing very well in this rigged trial, and everybody knows it. So we have another day of court in a freezing courthouse. It’s very cold in there, on purpose I believe. They don’t seem to be able to get the temperature up. It shouldn’t be that complicated. But we have a freezing courthouse and that’s fine, that’s just fine [unintelligible garble]. It’s a rigged trial, thank you very much.”
Guess Melanie isn’t answering his calls! She’s been too busy taking orders for a $245 necklace that looks like a bouquet of scrotums, and is focusing on her own self-care.
With that, the man who cheated on her at least twice returned to the courtroom to hunker and glower next to the law team his donors have already paid at least nearly $6 million bucks for.
Judge Merchan started out by doing Trump a solid and moving his gag-order contempt hearing to next Thursday (why?) and then it was time for more Pecker pressing courtesy of lawyer Emil Bove, who even more than Stephen Miller bears an uncanny resemblance to the Weekly World News’s bat boy. (Now there’s a kid who really should’ve sued AMI!)
Bove (pronounced Bo-vay), spent his day trying to poke holes in Pecker’s testimony in a weak-sauce way. Wasn’t all this just normal publishing stuff? Is violating campaign finance laws really a campaign finance violation? Maybe you just admitted to a crime because you were in a hurry to end the investigation? Were the crimes really all that crimey? Maybe you gave Karen that column because she was already famous?
Bove got Pecker to agree that some Trump-enemy Enquirer stories were “recycled” and a few were possibly even true, like the one about Ben Carson leaving a sponge in a patient’s brain. Carson was sued for malpractice and settled at least six times, and never denied the sponge story! Bove also got Pecker to admit that McDougal’s attorney Keith Davidson was a backstabby bitch who was giving info about his client to AMI, so maybe the conspiracy was just those sleazy scamps Davidson and Michael Cohen doing things “on the side”?
Bove fussed that the FBI’s report did not say anything about Trump expressing gratitude to Pecker at the name-droppy January 2017 thank-you get-together dinner with James Comey, Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus, and Mike Pompeo in attendance. But Pecker’s grand jury testimony DID say that Trump thanked him, so gotcha!
And this exchange literally happened:
TRUMP LAWYER BOVE: You claim Michael Cohen told you [not to be worried about a letter from the FEC because] Trump has Jeff Sessions in his pocket, but you were still concerned, right?
PECKER: I was.
BOVE: Because President Trump did not have Jeff Sessions in his pocket, correct? Based on your experience Michael Cohen was prone to exaggeration? You could not trust anything he said?
WHY, JEFF SESSIONS COULD NOT LITERALLY FIT IN A POCKET, COULD HE? How could we forget about that little old Confederate monument?
And maybe this is a gotcha?
BOVE: You found that the boxes in Florida were worthless, that there is no secret trove of documents about Donald Trump at the National Enquirer?
PECKER: Right. The boxes were worthless.
Hmm, more beautiful Trump boxes! Just what compromising artifacts from the pre-digital world did The Boss and his fixer think were in them? Inquiring minds want to know! But like JonBenet’s true killer, we almost surely never will.
Then Bove down, Steinglass back up! He re-emphasized the whole “conspiracy to commit a campaign violation” thing that Pecker had admitted to over and over. He pointed out how weird it was for AMI contracts to have forever “life rights” with million-dollar “damages” gags attached, and how very unusual it was for a news source to share stories with a political candidate to vet and approve.
After the 10th hour of Pecker on the stand, Trump leaned back with his eyes closed, possibly dreaming of one night in Tahoe, or a world where he’d kept his drawers on, or gotten the girls to sign NDAs in a timely way, and was golfing or taking an afternoon nap in a bed instead.
Pecker’s time concluded with Bove asking him whether he believes Donald Trump cares about people. Because isn’t that what all of this is really about?
“I do,” Pecker said, probably with tears in his eyes. As he left the stand, Trump perked back up and they exchanged smiles.
Peeeeeeoppple who need people are the luck-i-est peeeeooppple in the world!
Next up, surprise, it was his former assistant Rhona Graff! Thanks to Team Trump blabbing everything to trolls, now all of the witnesses will be surprises! And hello, might we someday learn how Trump mailed those porny peener payments from the actual White House?
Graff testified that in April 2017 she got an email in from Madeleine Westerhout, Trump's executive assistant at the White House, asking for a FedEx label, and Trump’s lawyer asked Graff if it was for sending checks to the White House.
“I don’t know why she requested it,” Graff said. But maybe some witness is gonna tell us one day soon!
Graff also confirmed that Karen and Stormy were in Trump’s contacts, and there was “chatter” around the office about Stormy being on “The Apprentice.” Rhona saw Stormy at Trump Tower, and knew she was a porn star. That was all, Graff left the stand, and Trump actually stood up and went as if to shake her hand. Guess The Boss was pleased!
Next up (yes, still going!) one Gary Farro of First Republic bank and Michael Cohen’s former banker, who brought to the jury’s 18 wearying eyeballs and earholes the tale and receipts of Cohen. Farro set up for Cohen one LLC that he didn’t fund (timelining up with that Karen money for Pecker), then 13 days later Cohen closed that account and wanted Ferro to open a new LLC (the Stormy Daniels one), which he funded with his $130k home equity line of credit.
Under "business narrative," Cohen wrote that he was opening the account for a “real estate consulting company to collect fees for consulting work on real estate deals.” And he checked "No" on a form asking if the entity is "associated with political fundraising/Political Action Committee (PAC)."
In the words of John Eastman, what’s more “1 more relatively minor violation” of election law?
And with that, Merchan called it a week.
If you just can’t get enough, trial transcripts are available here.
They’re off Monday for some reason, so see you next Tuesday!
PREVIOUSLY!
This is an A+ breakdown and I love it. Very, very well-done.
“I want to start by wishing my wife Melania a very happy birthday, it would be nice to be with her but I'm in the courthouse for a rigged trial." is the greatest crybaby liar thing I've ever read.
Very OT. Had a good opening for my photo art show. A lot of people liked them and sold two on opening night. YAY
https://substack.com/@hoovervilles/note/c-54959784?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2lsb5b