Outlined in carefully choreographed testimony today how he boosted donald trump in his tabloids, how his entire apparatus blasted trumps rivals blatantly bogus stories and how he struck and off the books packed with trump to bury stories to bolster his 2016 election chances by Bamboozling American voters. The former trump friends, but two plus hours on the stand today as the former president was there glaring, as you can see here in this court sketch from across the room. And what marx, a no doubt about it betrayal for the politician who most prizes loyalty and new tonight, donald trump is again testing the limits of what he can say and how far he can push the judge who is presiding over this trial before he is actually punished. Now in a new interview, trump is committing what looks like and sounds like a pretty clear cut violence relation of that gag order that restricts what he can say about some of the main characters. In this case, who witnesses such as former fixer, Michael Cohen
Joining us, msnbcs Yasmin Vossoughian outside the courthouse. Temidayo agangawilliams, a former prosecuor and Defense Attorney caroline pull lisi. Yasmin, Jury Instrekss under way right now. Whats going on . Jury instructions under way ahead of Opening Statements, jose and ana. 45 minutes for the prosecution, 25 minutes for the defense. Theyre doing that because theres going to be a lot of details, much of a timeline, a lot of dates and they dont want to overwhelm the jury in the Opening Statements process. Judgments made from the bench that i want to talk about with you quickly, first, when it comes to the evidence if, in fact, the former president decides to testify, judge juan merchan is allowing six various cases to be decided if donald trump it was. Talking about the trump payroll judgment, the trump civil fraud gag orders as well along with e. Jean carol assault case and the defamation case. A couple more things happening in court this morning. The former president spoke about ho
Story a number of times. The prosecution is going to present sort of an Upside Down Pyramid here. Theyre going to go big. Thats why theyre starting with pecker. Theyre setting the stage with this scheme theyre calling it. As a defense attorney, i feel the need to inform everybody the Catchandkill Process is not illegal. The act in and of itself of Keeping Information from the public in this manner is not illegal. What is being alleged which is illegal is The Way they went about accounting for it, and that it was a Campaign Contribution above the limit for reporting purposes for the federal election commission. I think the prosecution, again, is going to try to paint this picture of things being generally bad in this area. Then theyre going to hit the documents, the specific pay stubs and the checks and things like that. We understand the opening statements have begun. Matthew coangelo is saying good morning to everybody there
they would sit on it and i at one point of my reporting got access to a master list of many, many stories that over the years the enquirer had done this with with respect to trump. so anderson spoke with karen mcdougal in 2018, the playboy model who said she had an affair with trump and was paid for her silence. i m going to play part of that where she explains her experience with this catch and kill process. what s your understanding of a catch and kill. from what i m learning a catch and kill is somebody for, like, for yourself taking a story about somebody you like or care about or have a friendship about and they squash a story so it doesn t hurt you. or hurt them. so did you know that that s what was going that s the allegation of what was going on here. did you realize that at the time? i knew the story wasn t going to be printed. yeah. why do you think they squashed the story?
in possession of those stories. uh and instead of running the results of that transaction in the enquirer, they would sit on it. and i at one point in my reporting, ah got access to a master list of many, many stories that over the years the enquirer had done this with with respect to trump. so anderson spoke with karen macdougal back in 2018, the playboy model. who said she had an affair with trump and was paid for her silence. i m gonna play part of that interview where she explains her experience with this catch and kill process. what s your understanding of catching killers? catch us from what i m learning. a catch and kill is somebody for legacy for yourself, for example, taking a story about somebody you like or care about every friendship about and they squash a story so it doesn t hurt you. so them did you know that? that s what was going on. that s the allegation of what was going on here. did