Tabloid Publisher Defiant as Trump Lawyer Tries to Shake His Confidence

Lawyers for Donald J. Trump on Friday grilled the former publisher of The National Enquirer, casting doubt on his explanation for why he suppressed salacious stories about the Republican presidential candidate before the 2016 election.

The witness, David Pecker, who has known Mr. Trump for decades, faced a stern cross-examination from one of the former president's defense lawyers, Emil Bove, who pressed Mr. Pecker about two deals he had reached in 2015 and 2016 with people who were seeking to sell stories about Mr. Trump.

Mr. Bove sought to convince the jury of two fundamental points about the stories, which Mr. Pecker bought and then buried: Such arrangements, characterized by prosecutors as "catch and kill," were standard for the publisher, and that Mr. Pecker had previously misled jurors about the details of the transactions.

In one particularly tense moment, Mr. Bove pushed Mr. Pecker to explain a seeming discrepancy between his testimony this week and notes from a 2018 interview with the F.B.I. Mr. Pecker testified that Mr. Trump had thanked him after the election for helping to conceal one such story, but the interview notes did not record Mr. Trump's expression of gratitude.

Mr. Pecker, who ultimately acknowledged the inconsistency, resisted Mr. Bove's implication that there was a contradiction and said he had been honest in his testimony.

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