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
it s justified this is within the realm of what trial lawyers can do doesn t mean they always to, but it could win work. admitting it doesn t prove the case if you are dealing with a crime about misleading the government and you are caught misleading the government that adds to the actual evidence, testimonial and otherwise, that a jury considers, especially if the case is about whether they believe beyond a reasonable doubt you have criminally misled the government lying in public can add to that evidence and in this case a lie would seem to be about the actual payment which is what the d.a. may want to focus on it s what the d.a. may want to focus on and it s what we re all focused on when we take it all together based on what we think is going on here mr. tacopina is not denying there are past lies nor is he and the legal team denying that donald trump was offered this fairly severe measure of being
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
relating to his financial statements that the attorney general has charged. as is often the case, you point out extra things we wept through a lot here at the top of the program you are reminding everyone that corporate entity has already been convicted by this new york d.a. in this jurisdiction. what you are telling people there might be a road here that doesn t live or die by whether you call it a campaign spending item, which mr. tacopina and i discussed, but you might have a much wider case about a kind of a corporate criminal entity. stick with me. we are going to get a break. it s just 60 seconds i am going to ask livvy casey and we re back in a minute we re gonna catch a big one we re gonna catch a big one. look out for the water. can t go under it. the rocks and the mud. can t go over it. gotta go through it! we re going on a bear hunt. we re going on a bear hunt. oh going on a bear hunt! going on a bear hunt! yeah we re going on a be
tacopina denies it was a lie then claims his client had to lie because of the settlement. not true then he concedes that the previous defense was not true. he literally says that on live tv let s hear just that part. so is it the truth? of course it s not the truth was he supposed to tell the truth? of course it s not the truth. you don t get that every-day whether or not he says that in this forum or other, i try to keep it transparent, keep it 100 with you, and i will tell you whatever you think of mr. tacopina that skilled trial lawyers can and do make multiple arguments sometimes. they offer different arguments in the alternative and even in what to someone outside like a court would look like contradicts evans, a trial balloon defense, we didn t do it, if we did, here is where it s not a crime, here is why