The former publisher of the National Enquirer admitted in court this week that the outlet under his leadership “created” a false story about Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) father during the 2016 presidential election.
David Pecker made the remarks on Tuesday while testifying at former President Donald Trump’s trial in Manhattan criminal court when asked by prosecutors about the origin of the story.
The tabloid ran a story in April 2016 where it fabricated a photograph of Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, with Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated President John F. Kennedy, that the publication claimed was taken three months prior to the November 1963 shooting.
NBC News reported that Pecker said that the publication’s then-editor-in-chief and “research department got involved” and “faked the photo that was the foundation for the story.”
“We mashed the photos and the different picture with Lee Harvey Oswald,” Pecker said. “And mashed the two together. And that’s how that story was prepared — created I would say.”
Pecker said that former Trump fixer Michael Cohen would orchestrate planting negative stories in the publication to help Trump.
“Michael Cohen would call me and say, ‘We would like you to run a negative article on a certain’ — let’s say for argument sake — on Ted Cruz then he — Michael Cohen — would send me information about Ted Cruz or Ben Carson or Marco Rubio, and that was the basis of our story and then we would embellish it from there,” he said.
Cohen pled guilty in 2018 to several charges in federal court, including campaign finance violations related to the payment to Daniels. Additionally, Cohen confessed that he had lied to Congress about an alleged Trump real estate deal in Moscow.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP
Pecker said that he told the EIC that “we’re going to try to help the campaign, and to do that, I want to keep this as quiet as possible.”