A porn star, a convicted liar, and the publisher of the National Enquirer walk into a courtroom.
It sounds like the beginning of a joke. It’s not. Except that it is.
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David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer, testified against Donald Trump at the former president’s Manhattan trial this week. His appearance seems a self-inflicted error for the prosecution given that for many, the publication he once led conjures up trash journalism (for others, it conjures $2.69 from their pockets in the checkout line). Even if someone launched Filthy Liar magazine, it seems doubtful it could dethrone the National Enquirer as the publication most synonymous in the public imagination with fabrication.
This seems an injustice because the National Enquirer often prints not lies but just very inconvenient truths for famous people caught by their cameras or (often paid) sources in bad spots. Another tabloid certainly deserves the title for profiting off tall tales. Unfortunately for the prosecution, their witness also published the Weekly World News. While known for a Chiroptera–Homo sapiens amalgamation naturally called “Bat Boy,” Pecker’s publication occasionally delved into politics. Headlines included: “Dick Cheney Is a Robot,” “Space Alien Tells All in Shocking New Book: My Steamy Nights with Hillary in UFO Love Nest,” and “Elvis Is Alive—and Running for President.”
Convicted perjurer and fraudster Michael Cohen ranks somewhere above Pecker in terms of believability. He admittedly lied to Congress and to courts, so the trial represents a trifecta of sorts in the opportunity bear false witness (or not) about one who formerly presided over the third branch of government.
“So, sir, you lied at the time — you lied more than once in federal court, correct?” Trump lawyer Alina Habba asked Michael Cohen in the civil trial concerning loans and property valuation. He replied, “Correct.” While Judge Arthur Engoron conceded that Cohen was “significantly compromised,” he concluded, “This factfinder does not believe that pleading guilty to perjury means that you can never tell the truth.”
The most credible of the outré witnesses boasts numerous awards, including “Favorite Breasts.”
Stormy Daniels’ skin-flick CV includes Da Vagina Code, Missionary Impossible, Frosty the Snow Ho, Breast Kept Secrets, and, of course, the unforgettable Say Aloha to My A-Hola. If jurors in the hush-money case can get past the fact that she accepted the money but did not stay hush, then surely her movie Hard Cock Café (maybe they serve only wild poultry there) arises as an obstacle to her credibility.
That a woman sells her body does not necessarily mean she sells her testimony. It does seem that juries, even in Manhattan, find accountants and Episcopalian ministers more credible as witnesses than they do strippers with 353 credits on the Internet Adult Film Database.
Their privileged relationships to the defendant appear more telling of their character than their checkered backgrounds. Your lawyer, your lover, and a journalist engaging in off-the-record conversations generally keep confidences. When they do not, they say more about themselves than the person whose privacy they violated. Given that they violated one trust, they implicitly tell juries of their capability of duplicity.
Who puts any stock into these too-wild-for-fiction caricatures of discredited witnesses?
District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who insisted to Manhattan voters about Donald Trump that “we have to hold him accountable” and repeatedly boasted during his election campaign of suing him more than 100 times; the case’s prosecutor, Matthew Colangelo, who worked for the Biden administration in the Justice Department before strangely moving to Bragg’s office; and the judge, Juan Merchan, who donated small amounts to Joe Biden and Stop Republicans in 2020 amid his daughter raising upward of $93 million for Democrats largely running on anti-Trump campaigns.
This convoluted local case, predicated on Trump violating federal laws with which the Justice Department never charged him let alone successfully prosecuted him, is a joke. A porn star, a convicted liar, and the publisher of the National Enquirer walking into a courtroom tell you as much.