Donald Trump is getting destroyed in this trial by two surprising witnesses
If you were to guess heading into Donald Trump’s criminal trial which witnesses would end up putting the biggest dent in him, you’d probably say Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels. And by the time those two finish testifying, that could well end up being the case. But in the meantime, two other surprising witnesses are dismantling Trump already.
The first is David Pecker, who was expected by outside observers to merely corroborate Cohen’s upcoming testimony in advance. Instead Pecker spent Tuesday confessing that he and Trump conspired to rig the 2016 election from start to finish by running strategically timed fake stories about everyone from Ted Cruz to Hillary Clinton. This testimony alone establishes that when Trump cooked his own books, it was with the intent of covering up a larger crime, and it puts Trump on track for conviction. But that’s only the half of it.
The second witness who’s destroying Trump right now is Karen McDougal, who hasn’t even taken the stand yet. McDougal has kept a very low public profile of late, but she had a far lengthier affair with Trump than Stormy Daniels did. Pecker is testifying today about how the National Enquirer bought McDougal’s story with no intention of running it, specifically to keep news of the affair from hurting Trump during the 2016 election.
So not only did Trump and Pecker criminally conspire to use fake news to rig the 2016 election, they also conspired to bury real news stories. When Karen McDougal takes the stand, she’ll no doubt corroborate everything that Pecker is saying.
We’re looking at a scenario where the testimony of Pecker and McDougal alone will be more than enough to convince the jury to convict Donald Trump on these thirty-four felony charges. By the time Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels take the stand later, prosecutors will just be piling on. But their testimony will be crucial, because while Trump will be convicted, this kind of piling on could be what lands Trump a prison sentence in this trial instead of lesser punishment.
