Trump trial live updates: Latest news coverage on hush money case

Bove: “Because in fairness it’s hard to remember the dates of these things even when they happened a couple of months ago, right?”

Trump is the most alert he’s been all day. Chin up, staring at Pecker, jerking his head.

Bove keeps trying to suggest prosecutors prepped him for testimony and has been instructed to say what he’s saying today.

“What I said under oath was the truth,” Pecker says. “That’s all I planned on doing today.”

Bove’s line of questioning about Pecker not giving an exact date for the Trump Tower meeting in August 2015 suggests that he is trying to cast to the jury that his testimony is unreliable. He notes that Trump wasn’t even in New York City in the first week of August because he was preparing for a debate.

“You changed your testimony this week on this issue,” Bove says.

Steinglass keeps trying to object.

“Why did you change your testimony?” Bove says.

Pecker wasn’t sure what the date was, just that it was in the middle of August.

“I don’t mean to put you on the spot,” Bove says. “Even when you’re doing your best … it’s hard to remember what people said almost 10 years ago, correct? … You fill in some details to keep them in sequence, and to make them sound logical?”

Pecker can only say yes. Bove will certainly be using this against him to make the rest of his testimony look wholly unreliable.

Trump is slouching with his right arm slung over his chair.

Bove gets Pecker to admit that he bought a story about Tiger Woods in order to use it for leverage to get him to appear in AMI titles.

Trump has put his arm back down. Now he’s crossing his arms and squinting and jerking his head to get a look at Pecker on the witness stand.

We’re hearing about Pecker’s deals to suppress other stories about Rahm Emanuel and Mark Wahlberg.

Bove is asking many yes or no questions. Pecker hasn’t said much other than “yes”.

Pecker agrees with Bove that he had never heard of a “catch-and-kill” scheme until after this case.

Bove’s questions all typically end with a “right?” or something to that effect, prompting Pecker to say some version of “yes”. It gives Bove a lot of control of the narrative to the jury.

For example, here’s Bove coming back to the Arnold Schwarzenneger scenario from 2002:

In that period, you were trying to expand AMI’s holding in the fitness business? Yes.

A huge deal, right? worth about $365m? You wanted this to go through very much? Yes to all.

You needed Arnold’s blessing, correct? Yes.

You met him in person and you reached an agreement? Yes, we did.

As cross-examination by Mr Trump’s defence team begins, Pecker agrees that AMI would publish half of the stories they purchased.

“Your ability as an executive and leader at AMI to control the release of the story was standard operating procedure between 1999 and 2020,” Bove says.

“AMI has used hundreds of thousands of source agreements in the way we just talked about.”

Sounds like we’re winding down with Pecker.

Steinglass asks him if he has any bad feelings about Trump.

“On the contrary,” he said. “I felt that Donald Trump was my mentor. He helped me throughout my career.”

He mentions an incident in Boca Raton in the wake of 9/11 when one of his editors inhaled anthrax and died.

“The first person who called me if I needed help was Donald Trump,” Pecker said. “I have no ill will at all. Even though we haven’t spoken, I still consider him a friend.”

Both sets of attorneys approach the bench and speak with Judge Merchan.

Pecker is reading his agreement with the DA’s office to speak on 25 October 2019 to discuss his meetings with Trump and Cohen and his transactions with McDougal, Cohen, and Daniels.

He’s also reading the part of the agreement about the “materially false or incomplete information” that could compromise his immunity.