Good day, everyone. Im Andrea Mitchell in new york alongside Chris Jansing for what could be the end of testimony in Donald Trumps criminal trial. Michael cohen is on the stand for a second day of crossexamination. Katy tur will join us in a moment. Trumps attorney, todd blanche, is pressing the president s onetime loyal ally turned adversary. The defense highlighting the many times cohen admits he lied under oath. Is he lying now . The only person who can counter much of what cohen is testifying about is donald trump himself. We are still waiting for a final decision on whether he will take the stand. With us in the studio, danny cevalos, catherine christian, and Criminal Defense Attorney and former manhattan prosecutor jeremy sala. Catherine, very low expectation that donald trump will take the stand. One of the things we are interested in, a 19minute sidebar before Michael Cohen came in. We are waiting for the transcript, which should hit during these hours. There was a provocative
davidson weighing in saying the fox reporter called him for comment right after the access hollywood tape came out with factually specific details that 3450ig9 have informed that story which didn t originally run. here with me now exclusively is the lawyer for that former fox report, nancy erika smith, a leading civil rights lawyer who also represented gretchen carlson in a sexual harassment lawsuit against former fox news ceo roger ailes. and former chief counsel of the senate watergate committee who knows a thing or two about investigating political crimes. thanks to each of you for being here. nancy, before we get deep into the details, what do you think mr. davidson, whatever his credibility, the core of what he s saying, does that help the case against trump? because it seems like another person corroborating that this was campaign-related. it absolutely does, and the timing does as well. when you re talking about mid-october, weeks before the election, you re talking about so
sort of behavior involving both judge and kavanaugh. so here you d have an independent person corroborating that by saying that judge talked about doing that exact activity with her. and just to be clear, those statements by mark judge would be admissible against him in court. they would not behearsay. so that is i think very useful testimony. it s the sort of thing that the fbi would be looking for when talking to different witnesses. seeing, for example, who judge kavanaugh and mark judge spoke to, what other details as was said earlier that would corroborate, in other words, back up the testimony of the accusers. let me ask you an fbi question, chris. there was a lot of talk in the senate about kavanaugh s yearbook and his calendar. how do those factor in for the fbi?
in that. how significant could that be, renato? into it could be very significant because it corroborates the testimony of miss swetnick who talked about that sort of behavior involving both judge and kavanaugh. here you would have an independent person corroborating that by saying the judge talked about doing that exact activity with her. and just to be clear, that those statements by mark judge would be admissible against him in court. they would not be hearsay for purposes of the rule. and it s possible that it might be admissible against judge kavanaugh, as well. so that is i think very useful testimony. it s the sort of thing that the fbi would be looking for when talking to different witnesses. seeing, for example, who judge kavanaugh and mark judge spoke to, what other details as was said earlier that would corroborate, in other words back
including senator kennedy when i talked to him on the show last week, i said if you want the facts why not investigate it. why not get more facts when all we have is he said, she said. why the can t we get account testimony of the one corroborating testimony mark judge. now we have both. it s good for democracy, good for the country, good for christine ford. i also think most importantly it s good for brett kavanaugh. i know where you re going and i said this earlier. it s possible that he can be vindy indicated. so then why not do it? what do they say to you when you said why not? well, i mean, john kennedy said that he wanted a supreme court justice seated by the next term which starts october 1st. but you know, the republicans remember are the one who s went eight months with not a full-court during account