Joining me now to discuss all of this are my
friends Danny Cevallos,
super lawyer, criminal defense attorney and an MSNBC legal analyst,
and Hugo Lowell, political investigations reporter for the Guardian,
who got up just for me to have this conversation
on a Sunday.
Danny, you know what time it is?
I'm talking to a lawyer.
Glasses are off. Let's get right into it.
I want to start going into this week with respect
to Michael Cohen's testimony and his cross examination.
What more do you think the defense has to do
to create the notion of reasonable doubt?
Just continue to cast doubt on Michael Cohen's credibility?
Point out that he's a liar.
Point out that he has a motive.
He has a book literally titled Revenge,
that he's here making things up in order to get
back at his former employer.
And while I don't think that moment that we saw
on Thursday where Todd Blanche confronted Michael Cohen with a
phone call that he originally said was to talk to
Trump about the Stormy Daniels payment.
But now may have been about and this to me
the reason for the actual call.
It totally eclipsed the purpose of the cross examination that
Cohen was actually calling a presidential candidates security detail for
help dealing with a phony phone caller,
a 14 year old phony phone caller.
A lot of folks thought that was a gotcha moment.
I don't think it would dealt A fatal blow to
the prosecution at all.
I think it's something they can easily come back from,
but it is significant and if I'm defense counsel,
I'm absolutely using that in my closing.
But they need to continue to hammer that.
He's a liar. But don't don't overdo it.
Don't keep him on there too long and start boring
the jury because a board jury will punish the lawyer.
That's absolutely correct. I do want to come back to
you about the notice of Closings,
arguments and what we can expect.
But before we do that,
Hugo, I want to turn to you.
You're someone who always has the inside track.
How is Camp Trump feeling about the way the trial
is going and and also
Campaign Trump feeling about the potential impact of a verdict
here one way or the other.
It's really interesting. I think they think actually it's been
going pretty well
even on the first day of Todd Blanchard's cross examination,
which by all accounts I think everyone thought was a
little slow and was meandering.
They thought it was actually a really good day.
And I and I wonder if that's because if you
consume enough Fox News you you kind of buy what
they're selling.
But I think in the main they,
I mean they have to kind of hold hope.
I mean I think they went into this trial knowing
that their best outcome was probably going to be a
mistrial there.
There, no. In most circumstances they go and think he's
going to be acquitted.
And so I think if you set your expectations low
enough to begin with,
then anything that comes after
could be seen as someone.
Do you have any sense as to whether the campaign
has made calculations around
a guilty verdict or mistrial in terms of whether it
changes their approach going forward?
Only insofar as they're looking at polling.
You know, they've done a lot of internal polling
on this trial so far and how it's fluctuated week
in,
week out. They obviously kept their Republican base,
their mega base. I think they were raising something like
a million a day for the first two weeks of
the trial.
That was the numbers they were reporting.
And then that's for the internal polling.
It's interesting again because you have,
you have a split of people who think,
well, if he's convicted of
all felony counts, then maybe I would be dissuaded from
voting from him.
But they're also kind of people who are undecided,
who think, well, if he's if there's a mistrial or
if he's maybe convict on only some counts and others
then that then they might continue to support him.
Danny, let's go back to the courtroom and talk strategy.
Most people don't realize this,
but we know as trial attorneys,
you really don't begin to put together your summation until
you know what has come out during the trial.
You have to have a strategy now that we've seen
pretty much what the evidence is and how things have
played out.
Give me your best themes for both the prosecution and
the defense as we go into what could be the
final week of this trial.
You're asking me to do something that will probably take
3 hours in 30 seconds.
Here we go. First, you can see the transaction from
Cohen to Daniels.
You can't argue that. You can see the fact that
Cohen was repaid by Trump with checks that were signed
by Trump.
You can't argue that. So instead you focus on the
burden beyond a reasonable doubt that the prosecution hasn't met
it.
And you point to Michael Cohen.
You say the prosecution built their case around this convicted
liar,
someone who only wants revenge against Trump,
and we caught him in a lie right in front
of you.
Then you focus on the what I call the empty
chair defense.
Guess who's been notably absent?
Allen Weisselberg. They never called him.
What were they afraid of?
And he his finger. His handwriting is literally and figuratively
all over these exhibits.
You literally saw his handwriting in the exhibits,
in the most compelling exhibits,
with the most powerful evidence of falsification of business records.
Where is he, and what is the prosecution hiding that?
Remember, many of you out there may be be thinking,
I don't know, I thought the prosecution explained that maybe
they did.
That's not the burden of the defense.
They just need to create reasonable doubt in one or
more of those jurors and maybe hopefully get one of
them as an advocate back there in the jury room.
That Weisselberg piece is something that I've been talking about
as well in terms of the defense being able to
use it kind of sort of as a sword and
a shield in terms of their defense and poking a
hole or at least raising the specter of reasonable doubt.
OK, Hugo, This week we saw,
or last week we saw
an army, a Red Army of sycophants,
acolytes and disciples show up and parrot talking points on
behalf of Donald Trump.
What he couldn't say. We saw the House Speaker himself,
Mike Johnson, show up. What can we expect?
Do you think this week in terms of the small
army of Trump loyalists coming out of the woodworks to
show their support,
Is it going to be more or less we're going
to see much of the same.
How's that going to work?
More of the same, I think,
you know, this has become,
well, the surrogates who have come out in support of
Trump in the courtroom has been,
it's been a bit of an interesting play because you
have people who seem to be running for his VP
pick.
You seem to have people allies on Capitol Hill.
The one person you won't see is Melania Trump.
I've been kind of told for weeks that there is
no way that Melania will show up for various reasons.
Don Junior is not showing up because he's hunting and
it's hunting season.
So that's where his priorities are.
But I, you know, I think you can expect to
see his usual,
you know, inner circle people from his inner circle and
his orbit being there through the end of the trial
is obviously going to be a big week and I
think everyone understands
that. Talk to me, Danny,
about is it a concern?
If you are the prosecution,
do you think about whether to raise an issue regarding
the rhetoric that's taking outside of the courtroom at this
point in the trial?
Early on, you have the need to protect the integrity
of the trial,
and so you want to have this gag or to
strictly enforce and keep
things on a short leash?
At this point, if you bring that up and you
try to connect what's being said outside the courtrooms,
Donald Trump, do you run the risk of creating a
distraction that could potentially derail your case?
I think the prosecution decides not to make a big
deal about it.
At the beginning of the case,
they were more than willing to file motions to get
Trump on gag order violations,
but that's because it was Trump.
Here you have this plausible deniability because unless Trump is
passing them notes,
go outside and give a press conference about what a
travesty of justice this is,
You're really not going to get any of those members
of Congress or other politicians on violations of the gag
order because gag orders are always constitutionally suspect and their
enforceability depends on who you're trying to enforce it.
Again, if against, if it's a party or a lawyer,
you're going to have a better chance.
If it's a member of the press or somebody that's
not even involved with the trial,
good luck. That's a long shot.
The prosecution here is just going to keep their head
down.
They're almost there. They're almost to the finish line.
They're going to push out.
I doubt they make any motion to complain about the
spectacle that's going going on outside.
I don't even think they're even really thinking about it.
They're too. When you're on,
you know how it is.
When you're on file trial,
you're focused on your case and your case and that's
it.
All this other stuff probably is just a distraction to
them putting 3 hours of a summation into 30 seconds.
It's not something that most people can do,
but it takes a super lawyer.
And I knew I had one sitting on the panel
today.
Danny Cevallos and Hugo Lowell,
thank you to you both for getting us started today
on Sunday.