Trump was about 70 blocks south of Trump Tower on Thursday, sitting in a Manhattan courtroom as former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker described his efforts to get Trump elected in the first place . According to his testimony, Pecker met with Trump and his lawyer Michael Cohen in August 2015 and promised to help Trump’s presidential bid. This commitment ultimately led Pecker’s company to purchase several stories of Trump’s alleged indiscretions so that they would not be made public until after the election.
Pecker said Thursday that he visited Trump Tower after the election. At one point, he met Cohen, with whom he worked on secret payments, including one Cohen paid out of his own pocket to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Cohen enlisted Pecker’s help in convincing Trump to repay him; that repayment is at the heart of the criminal case in Manhattan.
During his return visit on January 6, 2017, Pecker said Trump was already in meetings – with FBI Director James B. Comey and several advisers for his presidential transition.
Comey was there, in part, because the Obama administration’s national intelligence agency was about to release a public version of a report detailing Russian efforts to interfere in the presidential election. Trump has railed against the notion that Russia has bolstered his candidacy since news of the interference effort surfaced shortly after his victory, making the meeting with Comey — in which he planned to inform Trump of the findings – difficult.
Pecker told the Manhattan jury that Trump introduced him to Comey and the others, joking about how much information Pecker had. After the others left, Pecker said, Trump asked about Karen McDougal, a Playboy model whose story about an alleged affair with Trump had been bought and buried by the National Enquirer. Pecker said Trump thanked him for his help during the campaign.
In itself, this is just an interesting coincidence: Pecker should have gone to Trump Tower and discussed efforts to bury stories of alleged affairs with the president-elect. But it becomes more interesting when you consider the other topic Comey discussed during his audience with Trump.
The FBI had been informed months earlier of a dossier of reports alleging that the Trump campaign was collaborating in the Russian interference effort. Among the allegations in the filing was one that became known as the “salacious” rumor: that Trump had hired sex workers during his visit to Moscow several years earlier and that they had engaged in unusual activities in his presence. This allegation has never been substantiated and does not appear to be true, but Comey knew that several media outlets had the information. BuzzFeed published the dossier a few days later.
After Trump fired Comey in what he reportedly described to a Russian diplomat as an attempt to relieve pressure from the ongoing Russia investigation, notes written by Comey commemorating his meetings with Trump were made public. In one, Comey described the January 6, 2017 meeting at Trump Tower.
Comey wrote that he requested to meet with Trump privately, after which he described the contents of the dossier, including the “salacious” rumor.
“He interjected: “There were no prostitutes; there were never any prostitutes,” Comey wrote in the memo dated January 7, 2017. “He then said something about him being the type of guy who didn’t need to go there and laughed (which I understood to be communication). that he didn’t need to pay for sex).
The two men discussed why no media outlet had reported the allegations, with Comey explaining that CNN (which he claimed had a copy) “would get killed for directly reporting the source report.”
“He then began talking about all the women who had falsely accused him of grabbing or touching them (with particular mention of a ‘stripper’ who said he grabbed her),” Comey wrote in the note, “and gave me the impression that he was defending himself to me.
Following the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump was recorded talking about kissing or groping women, several women came forward publicly to claim that Trump did just that to them. However, none were “strippers”. One former stripper who claimed to have had an encounter with Trump, albeit consensual, was Stormy Daniels — the one whose story Cohen paid $130,000 to cover up.
Remember Pecker was there or maybe he was scheduled to arrive. Pecker who, unlike CNN, had no qualms about publishing unverified allegations, as he testified. Pecker could have published the contents of the dossier on the cover of the magazine if it wasn’t about Trump.
Comey’s memo ends with Trump saying he looks forward to their collaboration. It was short-lived; Comey was fired four months later. The veil of secrecy over the payments made by Pecker and Cohen lasted much longer. They were revealed in detail in 2018.
At Trump Tower on January 6, 2017, however, these threads of scandal crossed, if only briefly.
washingtonpost
