To the next phase of the Donald Trump trial in
New York City,
of the defense and prosecution have rested their cases and
now all that lies next
is getting the case to the jury.
That could happen next week.
Let's talk about what we've seen so far with my
guest tonight,
legal analyst and attorney Andrew Stoltman.
I played with me tonight here on THE Final Five
for the first time.
Andrew, thank you so much for joining us.
Anytime. Thank you. I want to get your sense right
now because
everybody says this should have happened.
The defense should have tried this.
The prosecution did this wrong.
As things stand right now,
a lot of people have said should Trump should,
should the defense have put him up to testify?
Do you think they did the right thing there?
Well, look, unless you're in the courtroom,
you really don't know what's transpiring.
But but you can kind of read certain tea leaves.
That being said, I, I think Trump's legal team probably
made the right decision by not calling him onto the
stand.
I think if you do that,
you then put Donald Trump in effect and his credibility
on trial,
whereas right now the defense is focusing in exclusively on
Michael Cohen's testimony.
Everybody was talking about, if you look at CNN,
you look at MSNBC bombshell testimony,
they thought that that that Michael Cohen was going to
bring the heat,
that he was going to pound the final nail in
the coffin.
But yet, even though Michael Cohen's not on trial,
everybody's talking about his admissions that he saw from the
Trump Organization.
They're talking about maybe he had congressional aspirations at some
point.
It it seemed, at least from the perspective of many,
what he went in there to do was not what
he ended up doing.
Absolutely. Look, and whether you're a Democrat or a Republican,
I think you have to come off and say
he didn't come off very well.
His credibility was very much an issue in this case.
And you have to give Trump's legal team credit.
They dissected him slowly over multiple days in front of
a jury.
And I think jurors are really going to be hard
pressed to accept much of what he said.
You know, for everybody who looks at this jury pool
in New York and obviously a jury pool that is
90% Democratic. And one would imagine that,
that you would have a,
whether it be a, a,
a biased or tainted jury pool.
Just because of that, that,
that sheer lack of balance
that that, that it doesn't matter what Cohen would have
said that maybe many of them went into this with,
even though they may not say as much,
some sort of predisposed idea of where this was headed.
As you mentioned, we weren't in that that courtroom right
now.
But but for all of the,
the, the, the jockeying and the Monday morning quarterbacking based
on body language and things that were said,
how do you, how do you move forward with this?
I mean, what do we think?
What's going through those jurors minds right now?
Well, that that's, that's a hard one,
You know, because people come into these jury boxes with
the preconceived notions.
I don't think most people,
I don't think there's any question most people in New
York don't particularly care for Donald Trump.
But in the same sense,
I think most people and most jurors can put those
preconceived notions off on the side.
And I think what they're looking at,
number one, is the credibility of witnesses and #2 did
Donald Trump have the necessary criminal intent to commit these
crimes?
The jury instructions coming up later this week or probably
early next week are going to be crucial.
If this jury sits back there and says,
look, we don't think Donald Trump did this stuff in
order to,
you know, in order to basically hide A campaign finance
violation,
but did it more so his wife wouldn't find out
about him having an affair with a porno star.
I think it's game, set match for the prosecution and
I think Donald Trump is going to win.
So we see this and there's so many,
there's so many more maneuverings going on in other trials
right now.
The Georgia case seems to be on a delay.
Fanny Willis got reelected last night or won renomination last
night,
but she was on MSNBC Monday night.
And in many of these cases,
I know this is a different realm than New York.
A lot of the analysis that I've read,
in fact by many, even left-leaning legal analyst is,
is why are you talking about this case?
Why are you talking about all the issues that's facing
your prosecution of a completely different matter when when your
own credibility has been called
called on the carpet? Yeah,
absolutely. And look, I think that's the importance of the
New York case because this is going to be the
only one that goes to jury and goes to trial
this year. The other three cases are going to be
postponed into
2025 S What's going on in Atlanta,
what's going on in the two federal court cases to
Donald Trump is relatively immaterial right now.
He is in effect putting everything on this one case.
And I think most people agree this New York case
is by far the weakest of the four.
And that's what we heard from the get go as
well was Alvin Bragg was one of the first to
bring these these indictments forward.
And and this came out.
I mean, man, it's been more than it's been about
a year
since those since those those documents came down here.
So how long? I mean,
in terms of deliberations, I know again,
it's tough to read those proverbial tea leaves here,
but maybe we see it the,
the case go to the jury on Tuesday or Wednesday,
could take take a couple of days,
could take longer, Absolutely. And and that's really difficult to
prognosticate at this point.
But what I will note is this jury is a
lot different than the typical juries we see in New
York.
You have two lawyers, which is almost unprecedented on a
jury trial.
You have a software engineer,
you have an investment banker.
So you have some really,
really smart people deciding this case.
So they're going to sift through all the evidence,
I would anticipate, match up the elements of the crime,
of the alleged crime to the evidence and then make
their decision.
All right, Andrew Stoltman, following this case,
as well as so many other people in the world,
thank you very much for joining us.
We appreciate it. Anytime. Thank you.
And the final fight is back after this.