Last Week in Legal: Pecker Testimony Edition

Busy Week at SCOTUS, the Hush Money case gets it's first witnesses, TikTok vows to sue the government.

Business Fraud Case

In a rare win for Donald Trump, Judge Engoron accepted the bond from Knight Specialty Insurance Company, provided certain conditions were met. The judge ordered that complete control of the brokerage account had to be turned over to the bond company. Also, the company and Trump have to turn in a monthly account statement verifying the amount in the account never falls below $175 million.

This does two things: it allows Trump to start the appeal process and protects his properties from seizure by AG Letitia James.

Indictment 1: The Stormy Daniels Case

Week one of the first criminal trial of a former president is in the books.

The prosecution laid out their case in opening arguments. They claim that Trump, Cohen, and David Pecker from the National Enquirer worked together on a “catch and kill” scheme that would prevent certain stories that might be damaging to Trump and the campaign from coming out. Lawyer Cohen paid Daniels out of his own account, and the Trump Org and Donald paid Cohen back, falsely marking the payments as “legal services.”

The defense said that Trump’s payments for “legal services” totaled $420K, but Cohen only paid Stormy $130K. Trump’s lawyer, Blanche, said that payments for NDAs are not illegal. Then, he attacked Cohen’s credibility and pointed out that Cohen’s whole career now revolves around the destruction of Donald Trump.

Once opening arguments were done, the prosecution called their first witness, former National Enquirer owner David Pecker. Lawfare has a couple of highly detailed, fantastic write-ups of the four days of testimony HERE and HERE.

Now for the the TL;DR —