that is our show for tonight. a special edition of donald trump witness to history starts right now. after 22 witnesses and 16 days of testimony, donald trump has become the first-ever american president to be convicted of a crime. this trial will go down in history, but without cameras in the courtroom, americans never got to see the evidence for themselves. they did not get to see trump's isa close and his mouth go slack while he sat slumped at the defense table. they did not get to hear stormy daniels' salacious testimony firsthand. they do not get to watch the judge cleared the courtroom seemingly in anger as he butted heads with a truculent witness. instead, americans had to rely on word from the few reporters who were in the room. >> reporter: that was something. >> donald trump was crying from the oval office. even todd lynch said he was writing checks from the white house. >> in terms of the vibe in the room, what you have heard about it being kind of a courtroom is real. >> reporter: i was in the courtroom. his eyes have been closed for most of the morning. >> one simple word, guilty, repeated over and over. something we have never seen before. >> tonight, we welcome you to this special msnbc event, prosecuting donald trump, witness to history. over this next hour, andrew weissmann and i will lead you through what you missed inside that courtroom, not the line by line details of witness testimony but with the help of our msnbc and nbc colleagues, we will tell you what it was really like to sit just behind donald trump is the details of the case spelled out. will tell you what it felt like in the room when witnesses took the stand just a few feet away from the performer president. the unscripted, unpredictable moments where the former president seem to be nodding off for muttering curse words, what people said to each other in line for the bathroom after that riveting, controversial testimony from stormy daniels. from andrew weissmann and some of our best legal minds, we will hear what they saw inside the courtroom that the nonlawyers like the rest of us might have missed. let's start things off with our first impressions from inside the manhattan criminal courthouse. >> it is a surreal moment to go into that courtroom for the first time, and see a former president of the united states who is simultaneously the world's greatest clown. those two things at the same time, as a criminal defendant, just spins things in your head like nothing else can, and the weirdness of that alone is your first hour in the courtroom. in that first hour it is hard to take in anything other than the weirdness of donald trump. >> anticipating going into the courtroom, i was actually excited to do it. first of all, because i feel like as someone who has written a trump book and who has been covering this man from the beginning of his presidential campaign on, this kind of felt like a crescendo moment for him, and for the country, and it is the only trial he's going to face, so it definitely felt like a big moment and something i did want to witness for myself. >> having worked on the molar investigation and we could not charge the sitting president and donald trump. that was a deep department of justice rule. now, in a full-fledged criminal case, it was kind of remarkable. >> i thought there would be a lot of people there, a lot of pro-trump people in particular, and the really want, and then found other producers and camera operators and everything and just got in line and stood in line for a long time. i will say, the thing i learned was, it is not what you are wearing that makes a difference. it is what you are wearing on your feet, because where you are going to get cold is through the soles of your dress shoes. you idiot, why didn't you wear sneakers. >> people don't understand it's not like you walk up to the courthouse and whisk you in. you line up outside across the street from center street because they anticipate a number of people showing up, so you have three different lines. it is almost like flying on an airline where they put you in a group of different people. >> there are two courtrooms, they look identical. the only difference is the judge and jury aren't in the overflow. >> the overflow room holds over -- other members of the media and members of the public and it has a very large monitor in front of it that shows directly councils table so you have the prosecution on one side, the defense on the other, but you very clearly see donald trump. >> it was like a spark compared to the courtroom. you can go to the restroom whenever you want to. and there is this absence of tension in the overflow room that i did not know i was feeling in the courtroom until he was not in the courtroom, and it is almost like you know, you're standing in this very difficult wind all day and then the wind stops. it is that kind of very different sensation in what seems to be the same place. >> the day before senator tommy turberville of alabama had gone to the trial and said it was the most depressing building he had ever been in, heap scorn on it, and i was -- i take that man statements with a grain of salt, but it was perfectly nice. it was a good, highly functioning municipal building. it kind of struck me how much a certain class of americans are used to very elite spaces and they are not used to public spaces. municipal spaces, bureaucratic spaces, particularly if you're poor, you have to spend a lot of time in those kinds of spaces. elite people, people of power and money, they tend to be in grandeur. >> donald trump in that setting when he is walking past you, you know, he walks in and out to see him for the first time and this is the first time i've ever seen him in person, he was less than expected. >> the first time i was in the courtroom, donald trump was very surprised to see me, because it had been mostly reporters, very few anchor tapes showing up there, and donald trump has hated me longer than anyone who was going to walk into that courtroom. he was once very fond of stormy daniels and you know, very fond of michael: but in 2011 when donald trump started talking about [ inaudible ] birth certificate, i said he was lying about it and i called him a liar and donald trump had never been called a liar before in his life. when he was leaving that day, he just did the stupidest thing he could possibly do. he looked right at me in this grand way that everyone in the courtroom could see, and he was trying to do a face that would be tough guy and scary and threatening and full of hate, but he's a terrible actor, so it came out as just an insanely twisted face that meant nothing but madness, and i loved it. >> if there were cameras in the court, people all over america in all 50 states would be calling in sick to work in order to stay home and watch this thing. i mean, it is so compelling in person. and, the drama of this particular criminal case against trump is both lurid and cogent and full of amazing characters and has just enough surprised to make every witness kind of a cliffhanger. you can't -- like i don't know if trump is falling asleep or if he's just resting his eyes, but it's not boring. it's riveting. >> riveting is the perfect word to describe what it was like inside donald trump's trial. every trial is dramatic. that's why we all get addicted to tv shows like law and order, but this is real life, and it is no exception, but it is one thing to hear the news about it , or to read the transcript, but tonight we are going to continue to learn from people who were inside the courtroom day in and day out, waking up at the crack of dawn to wait in line to get one of the few seats available to the public and press at 100 center street here in manhattan, so tonight i am joined by a very special legal panel who also spent many hours in the manhattan criminal courthouse. please welcome nbc senior legal correspondent and attorney, laura jarrett. msnbc host, legal contributor and former criminal trial attorney, katie fang, and msnbc legal correspondent and former big law litigator, lisa rubin. they are here with us for the whole hour along with msnbc host giving us their impressions from inside the courthouse. lisa, obviously some of these witnesses got a ton of attention. they may not have been the most important witnesses but stormy daniels, michael cohen and maybe the most surprising witness, which was the defendants last witness, bob costello. i thought that was a huge bomb. but what was your impression of how they did that people might not get from just reading accounts and hearing from us about what was technically said? what was the demeanor and tone people would get? >> i think the most important part about the witness you can't get from reading the transcripts is the entrance and the exit, because all of the witnesses were brought in through a side door to the courtroom instead of the traditional backdoor where you walk through the gallery, you walked through the center well then walked to the witness stand. here, each and every witness, hostile to donald trump or friendly, had to walk by his first row of surrogates on their way into the courtroom, flanked by courtroom security officers and their counsel then followed thereafter. in some cases, trump really wanted to have an interaction with them, as with rona graff, his former executive assistant. michael cohen looked like he wanted to vault over the courtroom doors so that he could avoid being proximate to donald trump so i thought that entrance and exit was really fascinating to watch. >> katie, as someone who has spent so many years as a criminal prosecutor, was of people have talked about how there should've been cameras in the courtroom, or at least audio, and let's leave that aside for a moment. how do you think, if there had been cameras, that might have affected witnesses, the lawyers on either side, or even the defendant, donald trump, if this happened? >> i think it would have increased the intensity of the experience for everyone involved, especially the witnesses. you have to ask yourself whether or not donald trump himself would have reacted even more visibly than he did. maybe he would not have acted or looked like he was asleep if he knew there was a camera trained on him but when it comes to the witnesses themselves, if they knew, just like we've seen in other trials, that they would be on the witness stand, i think it would've amplified the performances we saw from some of the witnesses. i think you are more hyperaware and the jurors would've been aware, even if you never saw their identities. i know that they know it's important, but when you're in the courtroom, it's a small space. it's not some cavernous federal courtroom. it is a small state courtroom and some people are within very close proximity, within feet of each other and so you know also it's not just the people in the courtroom that are watching or the overflow room. it's america and the world. i think that amplifies the intensity. >> excellent point. i was really surprised by how close the witness stand was to the jury, really close and actually, the witness stand from donald trump was much further, so that was something i think you don't get from not being there. >> we have much more of our supersmart legal panel who are inside the courtroom coming up, but first, it was some of the most shocking testimony of the trial, when stormy daniels took the stand all while apparently, unbeknownst to us, wearing a bulletproof vest. after the break, our team takes us inside the courtroom, inside the elevators and parking lots where reporters tried to process what they had just heard. you are watching prosecuting donald trump, witness to history. >> many of the journalists in the room were looking at each other thinking my gosh, i cannot believe this is happening. and by the way, how am i going to communicate this on television? te this 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we could all unsubscribe and switch to xfinity. their connection is unreal. and we could all un-experience this whole session. okay, that's uncalled for. welcome back to to prosecuting donald trump, witness to history, the reporting of the first ever criminal trial of the u.s. president. after years of covering stormy daniels and her claims that donald trump paid her to keep quiet about a sexual encounter so it would not come out before the 2016 election, what was it like to finally see her in person when she finally took the stand to testify against him, and after her dramatic, combative, sometimes shocking testimony, what was the conversation like among the reporters and spectators of the courthouse, and what about that bulletproof vest her lawyers say she wore. here are some more firsthand accounts from my colleagues who were inside the room. >> when she came in, all of us kind of took a deep breath. no one expected -- i mean, we don't know who the witnesses are until that day for a reason. the prosecution always protects their witnesses so resources we might figure out who the witness is maybe an hour before hand and that morning, donald trump had posted untruths social that they had just been informed of who the witness was and they had not prepared and that person should be able to take the stand and so the minute he had posted that and by the way, deleted it an hour later, we said, it's going to be stormy. i have compared this trial to watching two movies that are made eight years apart, and none of the central characters look the way you remember them in 2016, and that is as true of michael cohen, for example, as it is stormy daniels. on day one, she came in and a jumpsuit with her hair haphazardly piled up atop her head, wearing glasses and not looking at all like the adult film star we remembered. i have since come to learn, because her lawyer said this on another media outlet, she was wearing a bulletproof vest, and that accounted, i think, for her appearance. she was wearing an outfit that accommodated her wearing a bulletproof vest because she felt her life was at risk in coming to court and testify against former president trump and the reaction of people in maga world who are loyal to trump about her testimony, reinforced why she felt she was in danger. >> there were no trump reactions to the stormy daniels thing, but you can see there is donald trump, known to millions of people as the orange turned who has to sit there for the first time in his life and listen to himself being called the orange turned, and the person who was doing that was his defense lawyer, thinking this somehow harms stormy daniels, that she flippantly refers to donald trump as the orange turned. there is not a person there who cares that she refers to him as the orange turd. they're not offended by it. these are new yorkers. these are people who have heard worse in the subway. >> so, we leave the courtroom. we walk out. there was a row of bathrooms during breaks. everybody lines up in the bathroom like you would in any kind of public place. we are all in line looking at each other, giving eyes at each other, like oh my gosh is that what really happened? getting onto the elevator, going down for lunch, did she just accuse the former president of this? everyone is mulling over and digesting what we just heard. >> the jurors have been admirably stonefaced. i know i've seen reports. i did not see with my own eyes but i saw reports of jurors involuntarily reacting to some of the more salacious details that came out during stormy daniels' testimony. i didn't see anything like that. for me, the jury was like stonehenge. they were very restrained. >> this is a case about falsifying business records, and the defense team made it a case that sounded like a 1970s rape case. you've been in 200 adult films like how could you be raped? a look at the jury and they were poker-faced. this is a storied courthouse, storied prosecution team. they have done six -- sex crimes before and it was basically a moment where they told the woman at center of this case that she couldn't have been mistreated. >> she was treated so differently than different witnesses. hope hickson david pecker, the person who headed the national enquirer, were devastating witnesses. their subsequent testimony is so damning for donald trump and their cross-examination was kid gloves. >> nobody's testimony is in some restricts -- respects more devastating than hope hicks because of her proximity. no one questioned her credibility but if you take a step back and forget about the accident of their respective births, hope hicks coming from very wealthy greenwich connecticut, being raised as the ralph lauren model, the epitome of poise and grace in the trump white house contrasted with stormy daniels, who had, by contrast, a very rough childhood, a mother who abandoned her -- all of this comes out on her direct examination but the difference in how they were trusted, i think, is really palpable in sort of a toxic brew of class and misogyny. there was absolutely a judgment about her credibility based on what she did for a living and then you have to think to yourself well, wait a second, hope hicks may look the way that she did but she not only worked for trump once, she worked for trump twice. she left the white house in march of 2018, came back to work for the former president, and stayed after he lost the election despite the fact that she was privately advising him that he had lost, and the things that his lawyers and allies were saying about his not losing the election and his wedding were fraudulent. she still stayed so i have to question like, who lacks credibility now? >> so fascinating to hear those stories. the legal brains in the room were hyper focused on the defense chick strategy to go hard after stormy daniels on cross-examination, but not hope hicks or david pecker. our panel, which had a front row seat to it all, is back. so, katie, from your spot in the courtroom, what you think of stormy daniels? how did she do? >> she did a spectacular job. stormy daniels' testimony did not come across as rehearsed. there is authenticity to her, whether you liked it or not because of the sincerity, it did not seem like she had rehearsed or practiced her testimony. she had prepared and that's a big difference but she prepared and she did a great job and she knew that even though i call it a detour, not a sideshow, but a detour, the case took a detour to explore what happened between her and donald trump, because they had to create the foundation of why the payment was made and how it got to the level of the business records been falsified, but you needed to have that dialogue and what was important is everybody likes to say this is a paper case but it is about humanity in some way. people's courage, people's involvement with others, extramarital affairs. hush money payments. all of that is a very human thing and she brought that humanity to the case. >> i had the same reaction. i thought in many ways she did better on cross because you got a better sense of her as a person, and she was responding naturally to questions that she didn't know what was coming up, and she really got a sense of her, and also i thought how smart she was. >> witty, quick. exactly. >> you know, the assumptions, as you said, are ones i sort of found myself checking myself, saying why am i so surprised? you shouldn't have been. so laura, one of the more unusual aspects of this case was how it ended. with bob costello being called by the defense. >> and, i did not see that coming. lisa always thought they would call him. i thought they wouldn't do it. >> i'm with you because bob castillo, if you remember, was somebody who donald trump had said that he wanted the grand jurors to hear from and i thought well okay, that's a really stupid move because it's never going to stop the grand jury from indicting and you just revealed something to the prosecution and you know, as a defense lawyer, one of the things you have, sometimes almost the only thing you have, is surprise, so here it was flopped out to the prosecution a year ago, so obviously the record here does give some flavor to bob costello. >> a little bit. i don't know if it explains the clearing of the courtroom and how dramatic it was to be in the room when the judge was so fired up i thought he was going to throw him behind bars, so bob castillo gets on the standard right away he is combative, aggressive, rolling his eyes, muttering audibly. i am in the courtroom lighting up the chat line. guys, this is going off the rails fast. we had a sense it was going south, but i didn't know it was going to go south as it did. >> when you're there, you're also communicating to her colleagues. >> yes, we sort of have a bizarre pony express situation now where we are allowed to use some electronics, so we can use our phones in the physical courtroom because there is a concern that somebody's going to take that even though we've been admonished not to, but we can use our laptops, so we can send messages via email or dm but we can use our phones so we are all sending color from the courtroom about tone, how things are going, what we are observing. i often focus on the jury. right away, the jury is looking at each other like some stuff is about to go down here. they have been a sleepy morning. everybody was feeling monday and all of its glory then bob costello gets on the stand in the afternoon and we are off to the races so because he was so contemptuous of the judge and the process and did not like being interrupted -- this is a former federal prosecutor who really felt like he should be respected and he thought the prosecutor was challenging him in a way that he didn't like and he didn't like being interrupted when she was objecting, most of those objections were sustained and so in the room the tension is boiling and it finally, the judge sends the jeering out and i go oh, gosh, here we go, but then robert castillo's giving it back to the judge and the judge got so upset he clears the courtroom from the press, which is highly unusual. usually if there is a security situation, that's one thing. this is not that. the judge was fired up and i think he was worried about what he might say so he clears the courtroom for only a few minutes. it wasn't long, but we all come back in and he still kind of rolling his eyes and for the remainder of the afternoon. >> there is a period where everyone is out of the courtroom other then you have the defense team, the prosecution table but then the public and the press are out of the room. >> not all of the public. >> so it's really interesting because i think as you mentioned, the first two rows, friends of -- it's like bride and groom, they are still there but this is what all of us have to go with. >> and its chaotic. the media screaming we have a right to be here, our media lawyer is trying to object. the court officers and judge are having none of it. thankfully the judge did make a record of what happened, what he said to bob costello so in a couple of hours we also the transcript but in the moment we were all sent out, which obviously wish had not happened. >> this legal panel will stay put for more of our excellent discussion but first, you could feel the tension in the courtroom when trumps one time fixer michael cohen took the stand and came face-to-face with his ex-boss for the first time in years. he was like sam a vona and john gotti, a long line of underlings flipping on the buses, so after the break, our team gives us their first-hand accounts of what that moment was like. >> the first moment when trumps lawyer, todd blanche, gets up and asks:, did you call me a little crying -- or whatever it was, the judge immediately instructs him to approaches the d.a.s office raises an objection. everyone was talking about that. talking about that. let's fly! 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what was it like when michael cohen saw his old boss for the first time in years and what was it like to witness the showdown between conan trumps defense lawyers during what turned out to be just a brutal cross examination? let's go back inside the courtroom with our msnbc and nbc colleagues. >> the jury has been waiting for this moment as long as we have. it is highly anticipated. they have come face to face before the civil fraud trial, but this is criminal. this is different and he is the only one who can tie donald trump directly to this crime. he is the linchpin of the prosecutor's case, and he is giving up the goods. he has put him from the trump tower to the oval office in a way no one else can. >> a few moments really stood out, the first moment when trumps lawyer, todd blanche, gets up and asks:, did you call me a little crying -- or whatever it was? the judge immediately instructs him to approaches the d.a.s office raises their objection. everybody was talking about what a strange way that was for blanche to open the proceedings. >> where you prosecute cases where everybody has their hands dirty. that is michael cohen at the time he was working for donald trump and doing these things for him, it always captivates and captures the interest of the jury when they hear from the fixer, when they hear from the henchman, when they hear from the guys that did the dirty work for the king pen. i did not notice any interaction between the former president and michael cohen, but i did notice how closely michael cohen is making eye contact with the jury, especially when he is describing some of the more emotional parts of the story, when he is describing his sort of come to jesus moment about why he decided he was going to choose his family over donald trump. >> i cohen was successful in maintaining control over his own demeanor. he did not get agitated. he did not act out. there were times where he got short or a little snippy, but mostly maintained the kind of equilibrium throughout that was probably helpful with the jury. >> i think he did do a pretty good job of humanizing himself. there were many people on the jury will never know a person whose loyalty to an accused criminal defendant was as extensive as michael collins was, by his own admission and of course, michael cohen is a person who pled guilty on two different occasions to put one of the judge is called a smorgasbord of crime. do i think he humanized himself? yes. i think he's necessarily relatable? not quite, but he does not have to be a person they want to have a beer with. >> these were some of the most stunning days in court when michael cohen finally took the stand. the jury seem to of been waiting for that moment as long as the journalists in the room had been, but being there in person, there were some really noticeable differences between michael cohen, who we've gotten to know on cable news shows versus who we saw testifying. his demeanor, how he sounded. i have to say, i almost did a double take when the defense played a clip of cohen from his podcast, when you heard his voice from the podcast and you compare that to what you would heard from the stand over the last day, and that contrast is something that can play very well for the defense in summation to argue there are really two michael collins. laura, i wanted to ask you about that issue of how you thought his very polite, unflappable, even kilt demeanor , which in many ways is what you want to witness to be, how you thought that played given that they did see this other piece, they actually heard his voice and he also was describing the way he behaved, bullying people and acting as -- a phrase that i hate but i'm going to use -- is sort of trumps pitbull. >> he has known this moment was coming for a long time. for anybody getting up there it is rattling and he kept his cool, even when things got thrown his way that he wasn't prepared for and were a surprise and made him look like a liar. >> yes, he was crossed at some point for information about his wife and his child and i thought okay, what's going to happen? i was waiting for fireworks. >> yes, but they didn't calm -- come. he stayed calm and came off as on the stand, sort of honest. there were certain times where i felt like he was sort of resisting in terms of like well, that wasn't really a lie and i thought just tell them. just own it. you've already come this far. they've heard you on the podcast talking about revenge is a dish best served cold like let's just lay it all out there and they won't punish you for it. if the jury thinks you are being honest, even if what you said is horrendous, juries have believed drug dealers and people who have murdered children before. you have to come off as authentic so i was surprised there were times where you could feel that resistance. >> katie, i wanted to talk to you about judge merchan, the judge overseeing this. full disclosure, i now have a man crush on him. i think he was just a spectacular judge. when i went to court the very first time, i was struck by his voice and we've all been in court. we've seen judges who can't control their courtroom. we've seen judges who control the courtroom by raising their voice and through histrionics and here he controlled the courtroom by being the adult in the room, and had such a calm judicial temperament, and i just felt like he wasn't going to tolerate -- he expected everyone to behave properly. i thought it was just remarkable. how do you think he did? this is the first ever trial of a current or former president, enormous pressures, enormous claims of violations of the gag order that he found 10 times, and a lot of novel legal issues to deal with. how do you think he did managing this case? >> you and i have been inside courtrooms, in front of judges on very high-stakes cases, the one thing we know is that the person who is gatekeeping everything is the judge, and to laura's point that she made earlier, the jury looks to the judge sometimes as a paternal figure or maternal figure, or somebody's going to be there to guide us through this process, which can be confusing. it can be mays -like for some people. the thing about donald trump as he has introduced us to different judges. we've seen the combination of the brett kavanaugh's of the world and his demeanor during the confirmation hearing. we've also seen justice anger on . we seem just -- judge lewis kaplan from federal court. we seen different judges and the thing i think that is so poor in terms of america not being able to know judge merchan is not being able to see and hear him because he is measured and calm, even in the face of all of the scrutiny and in the face of all of these complex legal issues. why? because this man, judge merchan, immigrated at the age of six from columbia. he is one of six children. he was washing dishes. he went to school, you know, he graduated. he was the first member of his family to go to college. he lived in queens. he worked at the manhattan d.a.s office and the new york state attorney general's office and has been a judge since 2006. if there is anyone who is not a fellow new yorker, i beg you, find somebody else who is not more new york than judge mershon. i think that's an interesting theme when you think about donald trump having a jury of his peers in this trial but having a man like judge merchan who is overseeing just the personalities and having to be able to manage that, he's done a fantastic job and i think it is just not good that we have not been able to see that on video. >> i love your response because donald trump has attacked this judge. it's not the first time he's attacked judges by saying he's unfair because of where he comes from. that's a quote. we all know what that means and your answer tells us exactly where this judge came from and you know, there will be controversy in this trial with one side or the other, in every trial, one side is disappointed or not, as to what happened and the fact that we were all there inside the court, i think we can all agree this was such a fair trial and such a fair process because of the judge. there are really good lawyers on both sides. whatever is happening, it's not because the process isn't working in a inc. it's really important and i think the judge is primarily responsible for that in terms of how he handled this. so, all right. we are not the only ones consumed by this trial. our viewers also have a lot of questions. we will answer a few of them. you are watching prosecuting donald trump, witness to history. donald trump, witness to history. the only migraine medication that helps treat and prevent, all in one. to those with migraine, i see you. for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura and the preventive treatment of episodic migraine in adults. don't take if allergic to nurtec odt. allergic reactions can occur, even days after using. most common side effects were nausea, indigestion, and stomach pain. it's time we all shine. talk to a healthcare provider about nurtec odt from pfizer. dad is a legend. and his legendary moves might be passed down to you. ancestrydna can show you which traits were inherited, where they came from, and who he shares them with. but get movin', this sale is only for a limited time. smile! you found it. the feeling of finding psoriasis can't filter out the real you. so go ahead, live unfiltered with the one and only sotyktu, a once-daily pill for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, and the chance at clear or almost clear skin. it's like the feeling of finding you're so ready for your close-up. or finding you don't have to hide your skin just your background. once-daily sotyktu was proven better, getting more people clearer skin than the leading pill. don't take if you're allergic to sotyktu; serious reactions can occur. sotyktu can lower your ability to fight infections, including tb. serious infections, cancers including lymphoma, muscle problems, and changes in certain labs have occurred. tell your doctor if you have an infection, liver or kidney problems, high triglycerides, or had a vaccine or plan to. sotyktu is a tyk2 inhibitor. tyk2 is part of the jak family. it's not known if sotyktu has the same risks as jak inhibitors. find what plaque psoriasis has been hiding. there's only one sotyktu, so ask for it by name. so clearly you. sotyktu. lowering bad cholesterol can be hard, even with a statin. diets and exercise add to the struggle. today, it's possible to go from struggle to cholesterol success with leqvio. with a statin, leqvio is proven to lower bad cholesterol by 50% and keep it low with 2 doses a year. common side effects were injection site reaction, joint pain, and chest cold. ask your doctor about twice-yearly leqvio. lower. longer. leqvio® i don't want you to move. i'm gonna miss you so much. you realize we'll have internet waiting for us at the new place, right? oh, we know. we just like making a scene. transferring your services has never been easier. get connected on the day of your move with the xfinity app. can i sleep over at your new place? can katie sleep over tonight? sure, honey! this generation is so dramatic! move with xfinity. welcome back to our special report on in person in the courtroom reporting of the first ever criminal trial of an american president. over the last 15 minutes or so we've given you an inside look at this trial through the eyes of our msnbc team but we know you have lots of questions about what you saw over the last several weeks. >> thanks, rachel. back with us now, let's get right to viewer questions. myrna from new jersey asks, in the new york city courthouse why were special accommodations made for trump and his allies? i know you've been very focused on the last part of that, his allies. for example, trump is allowed a special area to rant and rave against the judicial system and others and lie blatantly in his son and allies were allowed to keep their phones while in court, so why was that? >> i will give you what i think is the only reasonable argument for it, and then stipulate that it has been abused, and wildly so. i think the legitimate reason is for his own security. these were arrangements made between the court, the nypd and the secret service. for example, trump enters through a separate entrance to the courthouse. there is a street blocked off for his motorcade to approach that entrance. they use separate elevators. he has his own holding rooms and when he appears, he comes through a set of darkened glass doors, beyond which are those holding rooms. however, there are some things going on here that definitely have been abused, the first of which is the reserved seats. those are supposed to be for extra members of his defense team and that is the way the d.a.s office has used their side of the -- the bribe side as you put it, but in trump's case he's using it as a rotating surrogates operation and those surrogates are tweeting from the courtroom. we can prove that given the timestamps on their tweets and their often doing it to circumvent the gag order, which one of them admitted on another media outlet last week so there are some special arrangements here. they should've been made for the former president security and yet they have been rampantly abused by him and his friends. >> at concluding the group of people from congress wearing identical uniforms which were mini-means of the former president. all former presidents are given secret service, so it's not that donald trump is being treated differently. the last question we have michelle from the netherlands and she asks, is the decision of the jury final? well, welcome to being in the panel of lawyers because this is the kind of question i lawyers have a great name, because it depends. if there is a conviction, that is something that can be appealed on the law. if there were legal mistakes that were made, if the jury was instructed improperly on the law, if evidence was kept out that was material, improperly, those kinds of things can be appealed, and it can take quite some time, and so there is recourse there, so really complicated, but let me just say thank you so much to our incredible team. it was really great to be here girding out with lawyers, and all of us having been in the courtroom. thanks so much for your perception and insight and personal stories and thank all of you for spending the last hour with us. if you can't get enough trump news, and you want to dig even deeper, try the msnbc podcast, " prosecuting donald trump," hosted by mary mccord and me. have a great night