By Karen Freifeld
NEW YORK (Reuters) -A grand jury is hearing evidence in New York over former President Donald Trump’s role in hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
A grand jury could lay the groundwork for possible criminal charges against the former president by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified before the grand jury, one source told Reuters. Pecker was seen entering the lower Manhattan building where the grand jury is empaneled, according to the New York Times, which first reported on the grand jury on Monday. Pecker could not immediately be reached for comment.
The publisher had offered to help Trump by buying rights to unflattering stories and never publishing them.
The moves are an indication that the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is closer to a decision on whether to charge Trump.
Bragg’s office declined to comment on the Times report.
Daniels said she had a sexual liaison with Trump and received $130,000 before the 2016 presidential election in exchange for not discussing her encounter with Trump, who denies it happened and in 2018 told reporters he knew nothing about a payment to Daniels.
Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to three years in prison in federal court in New York for orchestrating hush payments to Daniels and another woman, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said she had a months-long affair with Trump before he took office.
McDougal has said she sold her story for $150,000 to American Media Inc (AMI), but it was never published. The incident involved a practice known as “catch and kill” to prevent a potentially damaging article from being published.
Pecker, AMI’s former chief executive officer and a longtime friend of Trump and Cohen, told prosecutors of their hush-money deals with McDougal and Daniels before the 2016 U.S. election won by Trump, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2018.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
