Trump at hush money trial wishes Melania 'happy birthday' as Pecker testimony about trysts continues

NEW YORK — Donald Trump wished his wife Melania a happy birthday walking into his hush money trial Friday — a day after former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker said the former president never mentioned worrying about what she thought about his alleged affairs at the heart of the state’s case against him.

“I want to start by wishing my wife Melania a very happy birthday,” Trump said on his way into the courtroom. “It’d be nice to be with her but I’m at a courthouse for a rigged trial.”

Trump initially told reporters he planned to fly to meet his wife in Florida once proceedings wrapped.

Later, he challenged President Biden to participate in a nationally televised debate at the courthouse Friday night, responding to Biden telling Howard Stern during an interview on Sirius XM Radio that he’d be willing to debate Trump.

“I’ll wait around!”

The defense grills Pecker

Pecker, the former CEO of American Media, or AMI, which published the National Enquirer and other supermarket tabloids, finished on the stand Friday after four days of testimony.

In Team Trump’s cross-examination of Pecker, lawyer Emil Bove grilled Pecker about “inconsistencies” in what he testified about earlier this week and told the FBI in 2018 regarding a conversation with Trump in the weeks before his inauguration. The defense challenged Pecker’s testimony that Trump had thanked him for his role.

Pecker, who received immunity in exchange for testifying truthfully, as he did in Michael Cohen’s 2018 case related to the hush money scheme, on Thursday told jurors the president-elect thanked him for handling “the situation” with playboy model Karen McDougal and a Trump Tower doorman.

Trump has been charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a conspiracy to influence the results of the 2016 election. The crimes, prosecutors say, revolve around a reimbursement to Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen for a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

...continued

swipe to next page