2016 events in which the payments were made and then they were ultimately covered up , masked as fake invoices for michael cohen. hey, if you re going to go back to the beginning, tristan, does that mean you expect to hear from stormy daniels and potentially mcdougall? that is also true but i think the prosecutors are going to be well advised to not necessarily make them and their accounts of affairs from trump the centerpiece of this. they really want to focus on the crime rather than on his various peccadilloes. trump is going to try to make this saying, oh, you re putting my private life on trial. you are trying to criminalize the fact that i had these indiscretions, these affairs. which he denies. right. and then he denies them but he
and got a great one to start the year. nbc news senior capitol hill correspondent, my dear friend guaranteed joins us. katie benner is here, pulitzer prize-winning reporter for the new york times. and former federal prosecutor and msnbc legal analyst, glenn kirschner. glenn, you are getting the first question, not because you are the legal mind we need but because today is your birthday. happy birthday, glenn. thank you, staff. nobody i d rather bend them with you in our fellow panelists. one of the interesting things about donald trump s predicament, unlike most criminal defendants, if his first criminal trial, his first criminal prosecutions set for march 4th, slips, if that trial date slips because it gets hung up on appellate court, he s got a backup auxiliary criminal trial set for march 25th up in new york. that was really his first go around and try to gain unfair
correspondent, my dear friend gareth joins us. katie benner is here, pulitzer prize-winning reporter for the new york times. and former federal prosecutor and msnbc legal analyst, glenn kirschner. glenn, you are getting the first question, not because you are the legal mind we need but because today is your birthday. happy birthday, glenn. thank you, steph. nobody i d rather spend it with than you and our fellow panelists. one of the interesting things about donald trump s predicament, unlike most criminal defendants, if his first criminal trial, his first criminal prosecutions set for march 4th, slips, if that trial date slips because it gets hung up on appellate court, he s got a backup auxiliary criminal trial set for march 25th up in new york. that was really his first go
he is sitting in a virginia jail, his attorneys are making several requests before the judge, including whether he can be released ahead of his first criminal trial which is set to actually start in a month. nbc s tom winter joins me now with the latest on that. tom, first of all, my understanding, a hearing that was supposed to start shortly after 9:00 a.m. and it s still going some four hours later. did we expect it would last this long? quick, my understanding, other things the judge needed to take care of before the, they got to the manafort portion of the program, so to speak, this morning. i think this hasn t been entirely a result of just hearings and arguments that have been heard regarding the manafort case. in addition to that, craig, there s also a, there were documents received by the defense, and so they requested a recess. so i think this has all been a little fluid here this morning, and sometimes these pre-trial hearings can go on for a little