Donald Trump is set to retake the stand in New
York tomorrow as his defense team's final witness in the
$250 million civil fraud trial.
This time his legal team will be questioning him about
allegations he fraudulently inflated his assets,
even though his own attorney advised him against appearing.
Don't forget though, he's going on on Monday with the
judges gag order still in place,
so he can't speak about certain things.
He has to be so careful.
That is so unconstitutional in my opinion.
We have First Amendment rights,
we have rights as attorneys,
6th Amendment rights, and those are all being violated.
And he still wants to take the stand.
Even though my advice is at this point,
you should never take the stand with a gag order.
But he is so firmly against what is happening in
this court.
Joining me now, NBC News Justice reporter Ryan Riley.
He is author of Sedition Hunters,
How January 6 Broke the Justice System,
and Harry Littman, former US Attorney and host of the
Talking Feds podcast right out of the gate.
Harry, just want to ask you,
the fact that Donald Trump is going to be on
the stand,
does that mean a gag order remains in place And
if they're looking for him to tell the truth about
something,
shouldn't be able to speak in whatever parlance he wants
to.
The short answer is yes.
If it gets to that kind of troubled waters that
that,
you know, they will talk it over.
But that's the least of his worries here.
First of all, let me just put a marker in.
He says he's testifying. He may well,
but we'll see if he changes his mind because wait,
wait, wait. You mean you mean he might not show
up?
Well, he might not take the stand because there's little
for him to gain.
Remember, this is a judge trial.
The judge is going to decide against him and he
will,
as his son did, give this sort of rosy infomercial
for the public and that would be the reason he
would testify.
But it means he'll have to face cross examination and
it won't be like last time when the AG
on direct let him just go on and on.
They, They call cross examination the greatest
legal tool ever invented for the discovery of truth.
And they can ask, and they're ready to ask very
pointed questions.
Mr. Trump, you knew this wasn't
30,000 feet. You knew it was 10,
yes or no. Boom, boom,
boom. And the judge will enforce that,
right. So he doesn't stand much to gain on his
direct testimony and does stand to lose on the cross.
So we'll see what happens.
So if he takes the stand,
Ryan, I mean, no, the expectation that he is.
But if he does, we all remember the first time
he was called to the stand by the prosecution got
pretty intense.
Do you expect tomorrow's testimony to be any different?
Probably at first. You get those sort of softer questions,
of course, from his own defense team and painting that,
you know, rosy picture that Harry was talking about.
I think, you know, that's what we could probably expect
on on the direct.
But, you know, when it does get
to that cross is when things are going to get
a little bit hairier.
And it really, you know,
doesn't make a lot of sense for him too,
as his his lawyer there even said,
sort of want to get on the stand,
except for the reasons that he wants to sort of
make this into a public spectacle and make this part
of his ongoing campaign.
He also needs, you know,
some practice theoretically because he's got so many trials coming
up ahead of him,
although he's got a lot a risk.
So it's a pretty expensive practice to be
using this, this, this civil trial as a as a
practice ahead of these other ones.
But you know, I would expect his lawyers would be
even more strongly try to convince him not to take
the stand in these other criminal cases as they head
in because we're headed into a really big year for
Donald Trump.
You know, it's less than three months that we have
this trial on schedule here in DC,
the judge Chuck in trial involving election interference.
So you know this is a long schedule He's got
ahead of him.
Yeah, 100%. And we know that he was in court
Ryan on Thursday and he was watching the testimony the
defense star accounting witness Eli Bartov who revealed that he
was paid nearly $900,000 in part by Trump's political action
committee.
This was of course for his expertise.
But Ryan, what are we learning about these payments
The. I mean, yeah, the sorry the payments for
for the expert witness. I mean almost 900 grand and
again part of it done by his PAC
paid for yeah that is I mean really extraordinary and
it sort of shows more broadly at how Donald Trump's
you know world is interact is all sort of interconnected
here. You know he is the brand and he is
the main name behind this and you know he controls
all of these these various entities and we've seen that
you know him controlling that in the criminal investigations as
well.
He's been paying for all of these attorneys for for
key witnesses and you know it's only when witnesses are
are all sort of off of the books or when
he's off of their payroll that sometimes
they become more valuable on in the in the Jack
Smith investigation as well.
So you know it's a really tangled web of
of a lot of payments that are happening all over
the place for Donald Trump here and him being,
you know, the main man behind all of this.
Yeah, 100%. So Harry, you have the accounting expert
bringing up that bill by working
650 hours on this case.
Does that seem a little extravagant and could this affect
his testimony in the eyes of Judge and Goran?
Yeah. So 100% Alex, It's completely admissible to go to
his bias and it's I would say,
20 times what you would expect an expert of this
sort to receive.
And the and Angeron is entitled to take that huge
payday for him into account.
In evaluating his testimony.
Ryan, you mentioned this. He's also under a gag order
in the DC election subversion case.
This happened after an appeals court Friday largely upheld a
lower court ruling,
but you know, narrowed it just a bit.
What are the remaining restrictions on the former president?
So what he is not he.
What he's allowed to do is go after Jack Smith.
That's the big sort of headline.
I think after this, he can take a go after
Jack Smith as well as much as he wants.
But there are still these limitations on place.
And I think the, the appeals court went through a
real,
really thorough sort of review of the way that Donald
Trump has weaponized this public attention before.
And all of the, you know,
cascading consequences that that has for individuals who sort of
get swept up into this.
You know, we saw that in this trial to begin
with.
In fact, the civil trial has been used as an
example for the for the special counsel's office of what
Donald Trump has the power to do and how they're
going to try to protect their own investigations.
So Donald Trump still is gagged from
you really making these more direct attacks on,
you know, on staffers on
the court staff here in DC,
for example, as well as going more individually after some
of the individual prosecutors involved.
So, I mean they are worried about the consequences that
this could have because of course we have seen time
and time again when Donald Trump sets his sights on
someone that his supporters are willing to do a lot
to go after them.
So there was a big gala last night where Donald
Trump appeared and spoke,
and sitting at the table with him was his attorney,
Lena Haba, in a red dress.
You'll see her there. Borsch Epstein,
Trump's in House legal counsel,
but Harry does their frequent appearances at political events.
Does that blur the line between the law and politics?
Yes, in a way. But he was actually trying to
toe the line in a way that you might find
encouraging overall because in addition to what Ryan said about,
you know, open season on Jack Smith,
they narrowed it in one other way.
They said, hey, look, we're worried about witnesses here.
You cannot attack them in terms of their testimony qual
witnesses.
You can attack them sort of generally in the political
sphere.
You can, you can go after Mike Pence and you
can go after Bill Barr,
just not call them a liar or disparage their testimony.
So when he got up yesterday and called Trump,
excuse me, Barr a coward,
I think that was very much on the advice of
counsel.
Here's what you can do.
Here's what you can't do,
and I and it showed,
I think, consciousness of the DC Circuit order.
And to me it was exactly what they were letting
him
get away with. And anything he can get away with,
he certainly will. We know that.