The truth finally comes out…
The ex-publisher of the National Enquirer reportedly confessed that under his direction, the publication deliberately fabricated a false narrative about the father of Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) during the 2016 presidential campaign.
During his testimony at former President Donald Trump's trial in Manhattan criminal court this week, David Pecker admitted to tampering with the photo.
“We mashed the photos and the different picture with Lee Harvey Oswald. And mashed the two together. And that's how that story was prepared — created I would say.” Pecker said.
In April 2016, the newspaper published a story in which it created a false photograph showing Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz, alongside Lee Harvey Oswald, the killer of President John F. Kennedy.
Lee Harvey Oswald (front left) stands next to a man the National Enquirer claims is Rafael Cruz.
The publication falsely claimed that the photo was taken three months before the November 1963 assassination.
Pecker said that former Trump fixer Michael Cohen would orchestrate planting negative stories in the publication to boost the Trump campaign.
“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.
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.”
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