Looks like Donald Trump’s “Pecker” problem is ultimately what took him down in this trial
By the time David Pecker was finished testifying as the opening witness in Donald Trump’s criminal trial, I wrote that the trial was basically over in terms of the verdict. Pecker’s testimony confirmed Trump’s guilt all on its own. Worse for Trump, Pecker’s testimony pre-corroborated the key details that other witnesses like Michael Cohen were going to testify about. Worst of all for Trump, the jury could see that Pecker had no axe to grind against his longtime friend Trump, and that Pecker was simply testifying out of legal duty..
Now the jury is requesting a read back portions of Pecker’s testimony. Unless there’s some context missing, this seemingly tells us all that we need to know. Pecker was the one who truly nailed Trump, and now the jury wants to go back and hear it again. That’s a really good sign for the prosecution.
It’s also a good sign for the prosecution that, even though the jury has made five requests across the span of two notes, none of the requests have anything to do with the points that the defense raised. The jurors apparently aren’t interested in looking back at the testimony that Cohen gave about his phone call to Trump, for instance. The defense tried to poke holes in that part of Cohen’s testimony. The jury doesn’t appear to see anything worth going back and scrutinizing.
But the real upshot is that David Pecker’s testimony appears to have sealed the deal back when this trial was first getting underway a month ago. In that sense, Pecker’s original non-prosecution agreement from 2018, which helped force his full cooperation in this trial, may have foretold Trump’s conviction in this trial all the way back then.
