Donald Trump’s lawyers seek to discredit evidence of prosecution’s lead witness

Former US president Donald Trump appears at Manhattan Criminal Court before his trial in New York.

Donald Trump’s defence team in his hush money case has sought to undermine the evidence of the prosecution’s lead witness and his account that a tabloid’s practice of helping to bury embarrassing stories about Trump was part of a scheme to aid the Republican’s 2016 campaign.

David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, returned to the witness box for a fourth day as defence lawyers tried to poke holes in his evidence about his tabloid’s efforts to protect his old friend from potentially damaging stories using a catch-and-kill scheme.