In a Manhattan courtroom last week, David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer, shed new light on the Trump team’s haphazard approach to an essential campaign function: opposition research.
In August 2015, Pecker met with Michael Cohen and Donald Trump. At that meeting, held in Trump Tower, a deal was struck. Pecker agreed to publish positive stories about Trump in the National Enquirer. In addition, ABC’s Max Zahn reported:
Cohen also agreed to provide opposition research to Pecker for negative stories on Trump’s opponents, Pecker said.
According to Pecker, most elements of their agreement -- including running positive stories about Trump and negative stories about his opponents -- were "mutually beneficial" to Trump and Pecker.
"It would help his campaign, but it would also help me," Pecker said.
Prosecutors questioned Pecker about that August 2015 meeting in detail. Their goal, CNN correspondent Phil Mattingly explained, was to show a pattern of payments “to help Donald Trump and to hurt his rivals in the campaign.”
It's clearly what they're getting at, as explicit as it could possibly be, that not only did they make very clear that negative stories about opponents would be written; positive stories about the former president, then the candidate, would be written as well, and that the former president was quite pleased when he would see negative stories about Hillary Clinton.
I was especially interested in Pecker’s conversations with Cohen during the GOP primary. Pecker testified that Cohen supplied him with opposition research on Trump’s primary opponents:
Michael Cohen would call me and say - he would say, we would like for you to run a negative article on, let’s say, for argument sake, on Ted Cruz. Then he would send me information about Ted Cruz or about Ben Carson or about Marco Rubio. That was the basis of our story, and then we would embellish it from there.
Why Cruz, Carson and Rubio? As Pecker explained, Cohen would call him after the GOP primary debates. If one of Trump’s rivals had a good night, Cohen would contact Pecker and suggest a line of attack.
After the Republican debates, and based on the success of the other candidates, I would receive a call from Michael Cohen and he would direct me and direct Dylan Howard on which candidate and which direction we should go. That’s how the process happened.
By way of illustration, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass introduced three exhibits. The first, Exhibit 153 A, included this National Enquirer headline from late 2015, when Ben Carson was surging in the polls: BUNGLING SURGEON BEN CARSON LEFT SPONGE IN PATIENT’S BRAIN!
Exhibit 153 B included a list of headlines about Ted Cruz, including TED CRUZ SHAMED BY PORN STAR (the actual story was about Cruz’s campaign “having to pull an advertisement after learning one of the actors had worked in adult films,” the Guardian’s Jonathan Yerushalmy reported), TED CRUZ SEX SCANDAL, FIVE SECRET MISTRESSES and the unforgettable DONALD TRUMP BLASTS TED CRUZ’S DAD FOR PHOTO WITH JFK ASSASSIN.
On the witness stand, Pecker explained how his team expanded upon the information Cohen provided about the Ted Cruz’s father, Cuban-American evangelical preacher Rafael Cruz:
Dylan Howard had the Research Department take a look at Ted Cruz’s father’s photos, and we matched the photos in every different picture with that of Lee Harvey Oswald, and we matched the two together. That’s how that story was prepared and created, I should say.
Put another way, as NBC News reported, the National Enquirer “completely manufactured” the story.
(When asked for a comment about this, Sen. Cruz told NBC News he's “not interested in revisiting ancient history.”)
Exhibit 153 C was a list of headlines about Marco Rubio, none of which ended up in the transcript, but most likely included the phrases LOVE CHILD and COCAINE CONNECTION.
Pleased
Pecker needed no prodding to publish negative stories about Hillary Clinton during the general election.
Q What about Bill and Hillary Clinton, did their names come up during this meeting?
A Yes.
Q Can you explain how?
A As I mentioned above, my having the National Enquirer, which is a weekly magazine, and you focus on the cover of the magazine and who - and who and what is the story that is the topic of the week… and Bill Clinton’s womanizing was the biggest sales I had for the National Enquirer and the other tabloids, that’s the other things that the readers wanted to read about and that’s what I would sell weekly. So I was running the Hillary Clinton stories. I was running Hillary as an enabler for Bill Clinton, with respect to all the womanizing. And I was - it was easy for me to say that I’m going to continue running those types of stories for the National Enquirer.
“How if at all, did Mr. Trump react to your suggestion that you would continue to do that?” the prosecutor asked. Pecker replied, “He was pleased.”
The National Enquirer put former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on its cover at least 35 times, according to a report by Heather Timmons for Quartz. Among the headlines: HILLARY FAILED SECRET FBI LIE DETECTOR! and HILLARY: 6 MONTHS TO LIVE!
Meow
Salon’s Simon Maloy described Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign as “a ramshackle, bag-of-cats enterprise.” Jared Kushner confirmed the dysfunction, dismissing allegations the campaign colluded with the Russian government. “They thought we colluded, but we couldn’t even collude with our local offices,” he reportedly told a group of congressional interns a few months after Trump moved into the White House. NBC News reported at the time:
There is no communications team to deal with the hundreds of media outlets covering the race, no rapid response director to quickly rebut attacks and launch new ones, and a limited cast of surrogates who lack a cohesive message.
On June 2, 2016, Hillary Clinton excoriated Trump’s “dangerously incoherent” foreign policy view. Her staff dutifully circulated “a meticulously prepared list of citations for every quote she mentioned in her speech.” Conservative radio commentator Hugh Hewitt expressed hope Trump would fire back forcefully, but the candidate responded by mocking Clinton’s use of a teleprompter.
The election outcome notwithstanding, the contrast between the well-oiled Clinton machine and the Cohen-Pecker oppo research pipeline is jarring.
Pecker’s testimony is more evidence the 2016 Trump campaign was indeed a “bag of cats.”
With apologies to the feline community.
Opposition Research in the News…
Maryland congressman David Trone, on track to run the most expensive political campaign in state history, has opened the “oppo vault” on his Democratic opponent, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks.
American Bridge alumnus Eddie Vale is among the top-tier Democratic talent behind the American Sunlight Project, a new group formed to combat disinformation. The effort plans to “produce investigative reports on the backgrounds and financing of groups conducting disinformation campaigns,” the New York Times reports.