Rebecca Shabad is a politics reporter for NBC News based in Washington.
David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, testified at Donald Trump's trial Tuesday that the tabloid completely manufactured a negative story in 2016 about the father of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who was then Trump's rival for the GOP presidential nomination.
Pecker explained that it was Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer, that would orchestrate the planting of these stories. Pecker said Cohen would call and say they'd like his publication to run an article on a certain candidate, adding that Cohen would then send him a piece about Cruz, for example, and the National Enquirer 'would embellish it from there.' Pecker suggested that Trump was directly involved in the process, too.
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