(THREAD) I’m a Trump biographer and presidential historian who’s also a NYT-bestselling journalist covering the criminal trial of Donald Trump on 34 felonies in New York. This thread explains why I’m warning people to be careful about assuming David Pecker’s testimony is true.
1/ For the full PROOF report, see below. The first two sections are free, the remainder free with the trial offer at the link. The report title: “What Longtime Trump Associate Pecker Doesn’t Want to Discuss Involves a Plot to Steal the 2016 Election.” 🔗: sethabramson.substack.com/p/what-longtim…
2/ I’ll start with the CNN summary below. It covers the part of the Pecker testimony today involving topics neither Pecker *nor Trump* want the public to properly understand. The Pecker testimony on Stormy Daniels is actually much *less* charged, because Pecker was less involved.
3/ Almost every fact in that CNN summary is not accurate. That is not the fault of CNN; it is an issue with what Pecker is testifying about and the questions he is being asked (and the lack of follow-up to them).
4/ First, *no*, Pecker did *not* “negotiate to buy the [McDougal] story for $150,000 five months before the election.” Pecker *heard* about the story in June 2016, but he did not *negotiate* to *pay* for it until August 2016—an absolutely critical distinction, as we will see.
5/ By the time Pecker *heard* about the McDougal story in June 2016 and sent a staffer to investigate it, he had already paid $30,000—three times his usual maximum for stories he planned to *publish* and make *money* off—to Dino Sajudin for the “housekeeper story” from the 1980s.