During former President Donald Trump‘s criminal trial in Manhattan, where he faces 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business documents to cover up payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 presidential election, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified that he had practiced “catch and kill” tactics to protect Trump.
Pecker told the court that he had a joint call with Trump’s White House Communications Director Hope Hicks and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders (now Governor of Arkansas and a potential VP candidate for Trump’s 2024 campaign) about Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story about having an affair with Trump — after Trump had been elected. According to Pecker, both Hicks and Sanders told him it was “a good idea” to extend his contract with McDougal.
[NOTE: Hicks is also expected to testify as a witness for the prosecution.]
Olivia Nuzzi, the Washington correspondent for New York magazine, reports that “Sarah Huckabee Sanders has not yet responded to a request for comment about David Pecker’s testimony that she was involved, in her capacity as a White House official, in the hush money cover up, but Stephanie Grisham confirms that Sanders initiated discussions about the story ‘all the time.’”
Sarah Huckabee Sanders was a public official paid by taxpayers yet she was actively involved in the hush money scheme, according to testimony by the ex-publisher of the National Enquirer. https://t.co/gtbvF6BYah
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) April 25, 2024
[Note: Grisham was White House press secretary, too, before becoming Press Secretary for First Lady Melania Trump, and then Chief of Staff for the First Lady. She resigned on the evening of January 6, 2021, after the storming of the United States Capitol.]
Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti responded to Nuzzi’s report by writing: “Sarah Huckabee Sanders was a public official paid by taxpayers yet she was actively involved in the hush money scheme, according to testimony by the ex-publisher of the National Enquirer.”
In 2018, while White House Press Secretary, Huckabee Sanders said the President “did nothing wrong” when asked about hush money payments allegedly made to Daniels and McDougal, the two women who claimed to have affairs with Trump prior to the 2016 presidential election.