Donald Trump LIVE: Tabloid mogul David Pecker's testimony in hush money trial continues

After prosecutors’s lead witness painted a tawdry portrait of “catch and kill” tabloid schemes, defence lawyers in Donald Trump’s hush money trial are poised Friday to dig into an account of the former publisher of the National Enquirer and his efforts to protect Trump from negative stories during the 2016 election.

David Pecker will return to the witness stand for the fourth day as defence attorneys try to poke holes in the testimony of the former National Enquirer publisher, who has described helping bury embarrassing stories Trump feared could hurt his campaign.

It will cap a consequential week in the criminal cases the former president is facing as he vies to reclaim the White House in November.

At the same time, jurors listened to testimony in Manhattan, the Supreme Court on Thursday signalled it was likely to reject Trump’s sweeping claims that he is immune from prosecution in his 2020 election interference case in Washington.

But the conservative-majority high court seemed inclined to limit when former presidents could be prosecuted — a ruling that could benefit Trump by delaying that trial, potentially until after the November election.

In New York — the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial — the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments meant to stifle negative stories from surfacing in the final days of the 2016 campaign.

Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to illegally influence the 2016 race through a practice known in the tabloid industry as “catch-and-kill” — catching a potentially damaging story by buying the rights to it and then killing it through agreements that prevent the paid person from telling the story to anyone else.

Trump denies any wrongdoing and says the cases against him are a politically motivated witchhunt.

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