A newspaper chief was Donald Trump’s “eyes and ears” and killed unfavourable stories about him in the run-up to the 2016 election, a court has heard.

Trump has made history as the first former US president to face a criminal trial.

He stands accused of paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels in an effort to cover up their alleged affair and falsifying business records in order to do so.

David Pecker, the former boss of publisher AMI, took the stand as the first witness in the trial, as he described participating in a “catch and kill” scheme with Trump and Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen to bury unfavourable press coverage during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Manhattan’s criminal court also heard Mr Pecker, who signed a “non-prosecution” agreement with prosecutors after AMI admitted to making hush-money payments, describe his role as being the “eyes and ears” for Trump.

Mr Pecker said he would flag stories to Mr Cohen, who would check if they were true or not. This agreement was never put in writing but Mr Pecker divulged it to Dylan Howard, editor-in-chief of the National Enquirer, one of his publications.

Catch up: how the day unfolded in court

Mr Pecker told the court of a meeting he attended in August 2015 with Trump, Mr Cohen, and Hope Hicks, the communications director for the former president.

‘I would be the eyes and ears’

He said: “At that meeting with Donald Trump, they asked me what can I do to help the campaign.

“I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr Trump, and I would publish negative stories about his opponents.

“I said that I would also be the eyes and ears.”

In particular, Mr Pecker said that he would notify Cohen if he heard any negative stories relating to Trump and alleged relations with any women “because Mr Trump was well known as the most eligible bachelor and dated the most beautiful women”.

He added: “It was clear that, based on my past experience, that when someone was running for public office like this, it is very common for these women to call up magazines like the National Enquirer to try to sell their stories.”

The court heard of one such example where Mr Pecker paid $30,000 (£24,000) to buy a story about Trump allegedly fathering an illegitimate baby with a maid.

Mr Pecker said: “I immediately called Michael Cohen and told him exactly what I was told.

“I gave the name of the housekeeper in the penthouse and asked him to verify it first with the Trump Organisation payroll.”

Buying off negative press

Mr Pecker bought the story but said investigators found the story to be untrue and says Cohen told him it was “absolutely not true”.

He added: “I made the decision to buy the story because it could have been embarrassing to the campaign and Mr Trump.”

Hanging over today’s proceedings were allegations that Trump violated a gag order in social media posts and on his campaign website.

The gag order restricted Trump’s public speech on jurors, potential witnesses and some others involved in the case.

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Prosecutors asked the judge to fine Trump $10,000 (£8,000) for ten online posts they say violated the order, but the judge hadn’t made a decision by the end of the day’s proceedings.

Political opponents targeted

However, alongside protecting Trump’s image, the court heard that Mr Pecker allegedly targeted his political opponents.

He said: “I would run a Hillary Clinton story as being the enabler to a womaniser.”

The prosecution asked: “Did you believe it helped Trump’s campaign?”

Mr Pecker told the court it was mutually beneficial because it led to newspaper sales and benefited Trump’s campaign.

The court was told that Mr Pecker’s publisher would also run stories about Trump’s Republican opponents “based on the success of some of the candidates”.

He added: “I would receive a call from Michael Cohen, and he would direct me and direct Dylan Howard which candidate and which direction we should go.”

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National Enquirer headlines

Some headlines published by the Enquirer included:

• Bungling Surgeon Ben Carson Left Sponge in Patient’s Brain!

• Ted Cruz Shamed by Porn Star

• Boozin’ Ted Cruz Fixin’ To Lose

• Shocking Claims: Pervy Ted Cruz Caught Cheating – With 5 Secret Mistresses

• Anonymous Threat! Hackers Threaten Ted Cruz with Alleged Prostitution

• Donald Trump Blasts Ted Cruz’s Dad for Photo with JFK Assassin

Also amid today’s proceedings, it emerged that Mr Pecker was one of the first people to encourage Trump to run for president.

In early 2015, Mr Pecker says he told Trump that 80% of the readership of the National Enquirer wanted him to run for president.

He received an invitation to the announcement that Trump would run, made in June 2015, which the court heard read: “No one deserves to be there more than you.”

More than 100 students and staff were arrested at New York University (NYU) last night as protests around the Israel-Hamas war reached a boiling point.

Recent days have seen an escalation of long-running largely pro-Palestinian protests in some of the country’s most prestigious educational establishments.

Protesters at NYU, Columbia and Yale have made various demands of their universities, including that they end their relationships with universities in Israel, take stronger action over the war and divest from military weapons manufacturers who have links to Israel.

It has led to growing tensions on campus which have become hotbeds for protest, as some Jewish students have said they have been left fearing for their safety.

Mass demonstrations have swept US universities since the 7 October attacks by Hamas, and Israel’s response which is reported to have killed over 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

Protests reached boiling point on Monday night as universities took action and police were called in.

At NYU, officers moved on the crowds shortly after they set the demonstration a 4pm deadline to disperse, and claimed that protesters were joined by people “whom we believe were not affiliated with NYU”.

Several tents had been set up in the plaza where many were protesting in. A group of pro-Israel counter-protesters had also been in the plaza Monday afternoon.

Eyewitness:
Protests encapsulate moment of febrile divisiveness where nuance is too often lost

On Monday evening, a line of university staff members linked arms in front of the protesters to protect them from police before they were arrested and taken away themselves.

As demonstrators tussled with officers they chanted: “We will not stop, we will not rest. Disclose. Divest.”

Police appeared to use mace on protesters, with one student saying it was used “liberally”.

A spokesperson for the NYPD confirmed that 120 people were taken into custody – 116 of whom were released with summonses for trespass, giving them a future date to appear before a judge or magistrate.

The remaining four were issued with desk appearance tickets for more serious offences – meaning they are required to appear at a criminal court on a future date.

NYPD deputy commissioner Kaz Daughtry said the university had requested for police to come to the campus, adding: “Our officers responded to the location without delay and dispersed the crowd – making numerous arrests, as necessary.”

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At Yale University in Connecticut, protests were reported to have grown to “include several hundred people – Yale undergraduates, graduate and professional students, and people with no Yale affiliation”, according to a statement from the university.

It added that the Yale Police Department issued summonses for 47 students.

Last week, more than 100 students at Columbia University in New York were arrested after the administration called to report the students as a danger to campus.

NYPD chief of patrol John Chell told the student newspaper there were no reports of violence or injuries and that the students were “peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever.”

Robert Kraft, a major donor to Columbia who is Jewish and the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, has threatened to pull his money from the university, saying: “I am not comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken.”

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Pro-Palestinian protests have also been set up at the University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt.

The NYPD, NYU and Columbia have all been approached for comment.

In the fog of a time which feels deeply discombobulating for so many groups of people, it’s vital to see and hear what’s going on up close.

It’s a fearful time for many. Positions are entrenched, views are polarised and emotions are very high.

And in that environment, issues can be conflated, judgements can be rash and deeply complex issues can be condensed to their simplest, most digestible form.

There are a multitude of prisms through which people see things. Nuance is too often lost.

Columbia University on New York City’s upper west side is one of America’s most prestigious institutions.

It’s one of a number of Ivy League schools where protests against Israel’s war in Gaza have become a national issue confounding the police and splintering the politicians.

Those who look for nuance end up tied in knots as they seek balance.

“I condemn the antisemitic protests…” President Biden said in his latest comments on the growing movement, adding: “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians, and their, how they’re being…”

He failed to finish his sentence. There is an election coming. Being unequivocal, either way, isn’t an option.

From a surface level, some have concluded that all the student protesters are antisemitic terrorist sympathisers and/or all the vocal counter-protesters are genocide-condoning colonialist monsters. Of course neither is true.

What I saw from my albeit limited, allotted time on the Columbia campus was a spectrum.

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There was the young Lebanese-American woman who wouldn’t bring herself to condemn Hamas. There was the young American man who just wanted “the genocide to end”.

There was the British professor of Middle Eastern history who sought to provide the context of a conflict stretching back so many years. And there were Jewish students whose message for Israel was “not in my name”.

The thrust of their demands was for the university to cut all links with Israel and to divest financially.

At a time when definitions are condensed, their views would, by some but not all, be interpreted as antisemitic or, in the case of the Jewish students, self-hating.

One Jewish-American politician, Bruce Blakeman, speaking on the street outside the campus, declared angrily: “They are traitors.”

Alongside him was actor and comedian Michael Rapaport who described the campus encampment protesters as: “bullies, cowards, and pathetic lowlife scumbags”.

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University president warns of ‘clear and present’ danger

It is a deeply depressing statement of fact that some Jewish students and professors do not feel safe on their own campuses.

Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School, wrote on X: “Earlier today, Columbia University refused to let me onto campus. Why? Because they cannot protect my safety as a Jewish professor. This is 1938.”

We are at another moment of febrile divisiveness and division where extremes are amplified and fear is visceral.

Slogans are interpreted as genocidal and they are compounded by the violent threats of a minority.

What was my campus takeaway, as an observer with no alliances but also no visual identifier – a kippah or a keffiyeh – to attract the potential ire of one side or the other?

Well, the prevailing vibe within my snapshot of the campus spectrum, which by definition has its extremes, was one of tolerance, with a call for an end to all killing and to occupation.

It did not chime with the way the university president had framed the situation just days ago: “A clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the university.”

President Minouche Shafik, who is British-American-Egyptian and a member of the UK House of Lords, chose to call in the police last week to tackle the growing protest movement.

She had, the Associated Press reported, “focused her message on fighting antisemitism rather than protecting free speech”.

The thorny line between free speech and hate speech is a judgment so often left to the police.

It’s important to note that the police chief overseeing the Columbia arrests last week later said: “The students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”

Yet, in this febrile and condensed moment, they can be all of those things and, to the beholder, be antisemitic too.

At the heart of all this is the challenge of how to moderate the conversation; how to keep it moderate, when that now seems to be so open to interpretation.

As I write, news is emerging of more arrests, this time at another of the city’s universities, NYU. It is prompting angry reactions.

“NYU’s administration tonight joined the shameful list of US universities that called the police to arrest their own students and faculty for protesting against an ongoing genocide”, NYU professor Mohamad Bazzi posted on X.

Clara Weiss, the National Secretary of IYSSE, a student social equality movement wrote: “The Biden admin and the Democratic admin of NY and NYC have all backed a state crackdown but protests against the #Gazagenocide continue to grow and expand.”

I asked NYPD Deputy Commissioner Michael Gerber to characterise the challenge.

“It’s a great and important question,” he said.

“Determining when something goes from protected speech to unprotected speech can be very context specific; can require a lot of nuance. And you’re right, you have to make calls on a daily basis, making judgment calls. We’re doing it to the very best of our ability. [The] stakes are high, there’s no question about that.”

It is, then, a balance between respecting free speech and restricting it.

It’s about finding the right tools to allow for a sober, objective deciphering of the red line which lies between free speech and hate speech.