In a surprising turn on Thursday, witness David Pecker — testifying at former President Donald Trump’s ongoing criminal trial in New York City — said that he’d been in touch with a pair of officials in Trump’s presidential administration about financial arrangements that temporarily silenced a woman who allegedly had an affair with Trump.
Specifically, Pecker — whose career links him with the tabloid the National Enquirer — named Hope Hicks and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, both of whom served in the Trump administration in communication roles. Sanders, who became press secretary on Trump’s presidential team, is now governor of Arkansas, a post her father previously held.
“Umm. David Pecker testifies that he had a joint call with Hope Hicks and Sarah Huckabee Sanders — taxpayer funded WH officials, at the time — about whether Karen McDougal’s contract should be extended,” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins wrote Thursday on X, the social site formerly known as Twitter. “”Both of them said that they thought it was a good idea,” Pecker said.” The deal involved the purchasing of rights to McDougal’s account.
It appears that Pecker’s testimony may have revealed the allegations to the public for the first time. Collins’ post was receiving a lot of attention on social media from prominent political voices, and it was presumably set for de facto sourcing later via New York courts’ recently announced release of Trump trial transcripts.
The underlying case against Trump — in which he is the only defendant — accuses him of a series of felony offenses of falsifying business records in connection to alleged ambitions of impacting the 2016 presidential race in a manner favorable to Trump. The specific records related to repayments for the source of hush money that was provided to a different woman, Stormy Daniels, who also allegedly had an affair with the ex-president.
Some of Pecker’s other testimony directly ensnared Trump in alleged discussions around the arrangement with McDougal, which could establish a trend. Pecker spoke of a meeting at Trump Tower in early 2017 — meaning it came after Trump’s 2016 election win — in which the then-incoming White House occupant was inquiring about McDougal’s situation.
