the beat with ari melber starts now. you were speaking to donald trump s former lawyer, now grand jury witness last night i spoke to his current lawyer, who blames everything just about on the former lawyer. i m curious what you think of it all, including your skills as an established political communicator what we re hearing coming out of this team? well, first of all, i m so glad to get to talk to you i described you behind your back as masterful it was a brilliant interview i watched it when i got home i think that what he is doing is what you said. he was engaged in political communications his defense as he described it to you was that he would have paid it either way because melania would be mad well, the federal crime isn t being charged by sdny. this is a state investigation. it doesn t seem like an apples to apples kind of comment. what i think is about to happen in this country is a giant debate about whether this was just a foot foul, sort of a b.s. kind of t
what every prosecutor knows. you tell them what you are going to tell them. you tell them that and then you told them what you told them. but beware. the jury is going to have to keep ya honest and they will hold you accountable. that s why, for so many, you underpromise, and then you over deliver which leads you right to that moment when you have more than satisfied your burden of proof. there is no room for any recommend doubt. well, last night as hearing was that tell em what you are going to tell em part. the testimony of pom prominent figures relevant not just because of their proximity to then-president trump but also the role they played within the government. maybe, as a member of congress or a white house aide or maybe they were playing the role of lawyer in a courtroom, trying to convince a judge of a big lie. i wonder if it surprised any of you from one-time trump loyalist like former-attorney general bill barr. calling trump s stolen election lie, quote, bullshi
to be able to look out for any possible women that may raise issues about him during the campaign. a wider scheme? a wider scheme that involved karen mcdougal, the former playboy playmate that donald trump had a two-year affair with. and we played an audio recording to mr. tacopina of trump you hear his voice talking to cohen about that. and that s deadly that s his voice talking about it it makes him a witness to that case and it makes him a witness to the entire scheme because you can t look at that without looking at the $130,000 paid to stormy daniels and if the d.a. s office is smart, what they ought to be doing is also incorporating in their indictment the overall theme that what donald trump did was to use his company as a piggy bank basically to make false statements to banks, to insurers, putting in false doc documentation, not just on michael cohen s payment but also on all of these other lies
will to stay until power. and that was donald trump. and there were a number of people around him some who were accomplices and some who decided that their morality and their conscience wouldn t allow them to move forward. and so, it was a bottom-line, upfront preview of the next hearings that are going to come across. and then, in those hearings, we are going to provide the detail, much like we did in the first hearing in first-person, um, testimonies as well as doc documentation. to have the american people hear, not in my voice, not in the voices of necessarily the members of this committee, but rather, in the voices of the people around former-president trump who either knew better and