Dont miss out on our fastest speed plans yet switch to Comcast Business and get started for 49. 99 a month. Plus, ask how to get up to an 800 prepaid card. Call today of course Andrew Weissmann told a great story during the commercial break, the 11th hour starts right now. Tonight, the star witness giving the Defense A Run for their money, the Tents Cross Examination of Stormy Daniels and what happens when Trumps Team Asked again, for a mistrial. Plus, blowback from bidens warning to israel. The defiant comments today, from Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu about a Ground Invasion of rafah. And guesses back, as trump and biden fight for her voters, nikki haley is coming out of the sidelines as the 11th hour gets underway on this thursday night. Good evening we are now 180 days out from the election and 14 days into Donald Trumps criminal trial. Today, adult film star Stormy Daniels returned to the Witness Stand and faced off against trumps defense team in a very interesting crossexamination. My coley, laura jarrett, has more. Tonight, Stormy Daniels leaving court after a blistering crossexamination former President Trumps defense team suggesting shes been trying to cash in on her story of sex with mr. Trump at a celebrity golf tournament, 18 years ago which he denies ever happened. The defense today, accusing daniels, of lying. Trump Attorney Susan Necheles hammering daniels years in theindustry said it gave her a lot of experience about Making Sex Appear Real Daniels Fighting back saying if the trump story was untrue, i would have written it a lot better, their exchanges growing heated, youve acted and had sex in over 200 movies but according to you, seeing a man sitting in bed and a tshirt and boxer shorts was so upsetting that you almost fainted . Daniels, defiant, noting mr. Trump is twice her age and bigger, necheles saying you made this all up, right . Daniels, forcibly responded, no, and necheles pressing, your story has complete we changed, hasnt it, daniels answering again, no, saying, this signed a statement where she denied an affair with mr. Trump was done while she was trying to comply with the terms of a Nondisclosure Agreement in which she was paid to keep silent. Today the defense argued that daniels has a financial stake in trying to take mr. Trump down, after making more than 1 million offer story in books, a strip club or and various other merchandise on her website, like a 40 stormy saint of indictments kendall, necheles accusing her of trying to make money trying to sell a story that you promised would put President Trump in jail, right, daniels responding, no. Prosecutors say the payment was meant to keep her quiet so she couldnt derail his campaign. Defense says there was no crime, it was all a shakedown. Daniel testifying today, i was asking to sell my story to publications to get the truth out. Necheles saying, she could have just done that with a Press Conference for free. Daniels responding, i could have , necheles asserting, you chose to make money, right . Daniel saying, i chose to take the Nondisclosure Agreement. The jury today again hearing a phone call between Michael Cohen and daniels lawyer, who negotiated the nda, that lawyer saying, she wanted this money more than you can ever imagine. On redirect by the state, daniels told the jury, money didnt drive her motivation for signing the nda, quote, we are all happy to take money, it was just a bonus. Later former trump aid Madeleine Wester House testifying about mr. Trumps reaction when the story about the Hush Money Deal first broke saying i remember he was very upset, late today, the judge denying the defense renewed request for a mistrial, mr. Froms attorneys had argued that Daniels Salacious Testimony was prejudicial. The judge also refusing to change the gag order which currently bars mr. Trump from commenting on daniels testimony. Everybody saw what happened today. I dont think we have to do any explaining. Ive got to get back on the campaign trail. Im not supposed to be here. We are so innocent. Theres never been anything like it. And with that, lets bring in our leadoff panel, hugo low, for the guardian, former federal prosecutor and jeremy salon, Criminal Defense Attorney and former ada and the trial of that manhattan das office, so good to have you here, jeremy, i will start with you, you and i are former prosecutors in das offices. But ive got to start with this, the slot shaming that went on today, it reminded me when i prosecuted a Sexual Assault case and a criminal attorney got up and try to shame the victim by attacking the way she dressed or why she was where she was at the time, what shocked me was this was done by a woman, this was done by a Female TerminalDefense Attorney, your thoughts about whether or not that strategy backfired . Sometimes you come with a woman Defense Attorney to soften the blow, and it did the opposite. And it was dehumanizing, it was degrading, it was insulting, sure, she may have lied which frankly, donald trump wants money, its rich to be rich, but i thought it really kind of backfired, i think, you have to take more of an approach of not coming out swinging because donald trump wants her to pay back in spades, that doesnt help your client even if he wants that to happen, it hurts and you as the Defense Attorney, do not want to be all eyes on you as the bad guy, center of attention because then all of a sudden you have a sympathetic witness and then it becomes the story which it didnt need to be about the sex when its not that case. And hugo, to jeremys point, why waste so much valuable time if you are the defense, class crossing Stormy Daniels, on all of these issues when you just got up and made such a big stink on tuesday about the prosecution getting too much time into the details. I went back and i looked at the Opening Statement by todd blanche, in the Opening Statement he actually says to the jury, im going to Say Something else about her testimony, her being Stormy Daniels and this is important. It doesnt matter. Hugo, your thoughts on that . Trumps lawyers on the Cross Examination of Stormy Daniels was really trying to focus on the inconsistencies in her various retellings of the story because he has gone out and basically talked about her sexual encounter with trump multiple times, but the one thing that was constant throughout all of her retellings of the story and this was elicited by prosecutors later on, was, she has always said that she had sex with donald trump in 2011 when she did the interview with Intouch Magazine and in 2018 when she did the interview with Anderson Cooper and on the stand at trial and it was kind of extraordinary to see, Susan Necheles, trumps lawyer, spend so much time on the things that they later complained about when they made the motion for a mistrial, all of this testimony and that included whether or not they spent together had dinner, they spent a long time talking about Whether Daniels was making up the story of the encounter, that focus more attention on the salacious details and not on the fact that she had no direct dealings with the falsified business records. And you know, it focused more attention on the fact that the offense didnt object, the motion for a mistrial, that was denied by judge merchan, he excoriated the defense at the end of the day. But he minute clear to the defense if they didnt object and if you look at the transcript of todays hearing he said to the defense, i was surprised there werent more objections and he also said to hugos point, you didnt spend any time on cross, with daniels talking about her lack of personal knowledge about the falsification of the business records. This is the second motion for a mistrial, was this done for the legitimate purpose of doing a mistrial right now, or they are just doing it for purposes of an appeal . I dont think they needed to do it for purposes of appeal. My suspicion is that you know, they are doing Donald Trumps bidding, hes a difficult client, i think they made a strategic error by not just conceding that this encounter happened, they could have preempted most of her to testimony but they had to call her because trump has been denying it for years, and ton lance repeated the denial in his Opening Statement so now if you believe Stormy Daniels testimony, then the only natural conclusions are that donald trump is lying as part of his defense and his lawyer, his lead counsel is not to be trusted because he will pass along his clients lies. All of the inconsistencies, Susan Necheles was driving at today, i wasnt in the room but i found it to be reading it, quite silly because, the only thing the jury needs to believe is that the two of them had sex and i dont think any serious person doubts that, so all of us, the only thing the jury has to take away is that they had sex, thats it. You know the other thing, too, they didnt believe dino the dormant but they still paid him off, to but if you dont believe Stormy Daniels, why are you paying her off anyway. At the end of the day, the defense actually moved or made an application as they call it in new york, to amend the gag order, donald trump saying through his lawyer that he needs to be able to respond to Stormy Daniels because last night her friend went on cnn, and made some statements that corroborated her statements, we will play a quick bit of sound because senator scott from florida was there with his pal, donald trump at the trial and he had some things to say. The judges daughter is a political operative. Raises money for democrats. Youve got the elite prosecutors wife, a significant donor to democrats, i think, biden, this is just a bunch of democrats saying, we want to make sure that donald trump cant talk. Jeremy the last time you and i were together, we were talking about this gag order and whether or not trump was going to get jail but heres the interesting nuance, so the expanded gag order imposes upon trump that he cant make statements about witnesses and he cant make other people say it in this instance, was this the new version of donald trump trying to and run a court order by having his surrogates talk about other people like witnesses . First of all we heard from trump and we heard that he puts loyalty before anything else before intelligence, work ethic, integrity, and that is frankly what rick scott is, hes there for his own agenda, but hes a loyal soldier for trump. Lets look at who that is. Number 2, in terms of enforceability, lets think of this as an order of protection. Its very hard when theres a thirdparty contract to establish that it was done at the behest of the bad actor or the person whos the accused, so you take that here, its a same issue. How do we prove that rick scott was acting on the behest of trump, i think it is dead in the water but thats also in part, why judge merchan is recognizing that we have to keep this intact, im not going to limit it because ultimately other witnesses will come on and they cant have the fear that as soon as theyre done testifying its attack, attack whether its donald trump or someone else. So its limited in its scope and its doing its job. Jeremy, do you go back if you are alvin brad, do you go back and try and get an even more expanded gag order where it prevents that from happening . Where you bring in rick scott and you have him put under oath and say whether or not donald trump had him say these things. It become such a sideshow. Are you have rick scott testifying and hes cross examined on whether he tells the truth or not, they dont need that. This is a records case and the das office needs to move this forward and get this done and get it to a conclusion. Hugo i also want to talk about one of the other witnesses, rebecca, she was the assistant to Alan Weisselberg and the thing that really stuck in my craw about her testimony, putting aside the fact that trump and weisselberg were thick as thieves, the checks went from the Trump Organization to keep the bodyguards personal address in washington, d. C. And that is how the checks made it to donald trump who went through madeleine to get them signed. Why are the checks not going into a pouch to the white house like Everything Else would . We got a granular look at how the Check Signing Process took place, Madeleine Westerhout also testified to this later, about how the checks go from new york , they would be put in a fedex package and then it would get fedex to d. C. And it would end up at schillers house and then it would go to the white house. Its an interesting story and details that we havent heard previously. Its not clear why they went through this process, Susan Necheles tried to suggest on cross that it was mainly because the way that the white house Mail Processing work, that the checks wouldnt arrive to the oval office fast enough and they needed this expedited but that wasnt ultimately elicited. I think it was interesting that tying all of the players together, we are talking about a criminal conspiracy an earlier we heard Stormy Daniels talking about how it was schiller up and schiller makes another appearance here and you have this cast of characters and i thought in that sense it was significant with tying the story and one nice bow. Schiller is the bodyguards standing outside the hotel went Stormy Daniels has the dinner and i believe the reason why it goes to schiller is that there is less of a trail, less of people knowing at the white house that these checks are going for trump to sign them. Madeleine westerhout, the last witness on the stand, the waterworks bothered me. I know shes young, but hope hicks and Madeleine Westerhout crying on the stand, both of them, both of them paying you know, some type of mosh to donald trump, but Madeleine Westerhout was interesting because just like hope hicks, she did her former boss in, she said donald trump paid attention to the details. He signed the checks himself with that Notorious Sharpie but he definitely was aware of everything that was going on. Are these witnesses that are being called by the prosecution, are they doing damage to donald trump because on the cross, you saw Susan Necheles, are you okay, you made mistakes, you were young . Yeah, i mean, look , some of these witnesses are filling in fairly narrow gaps, but things that are useful to the das case but i want to echo something that jeremy said because i share his view that like this needs to move to the main event at this point. I dont know how many books they put into evidence by donald trump at this point but are we ever going to talk about his involvement in falsifying the records, whether he knew that was an underlying crime, whether the das office can establish that he intended to aid or conceal a crime given his involvement, of course they are going to get there. They have to get there whether they like it or not. But we are halfway through this trial according to the das office, and Madeleine Westerhout wont make or break the case, the books wont make the case and so, you know, they are useful, but i dont think theyve established the key thing yet and they will need to get there. I want to stick with this for one second before weve got to part ways. But the falsification of the business records, that is the layout, there was never a retainer agreement, Michael Cohen will testify that he was not providing legal services, so thats your misdemeanor, thats the 34 misdemeanors right there. You dont think theres been enough from the prosecution to talk about the intent of the motive as to why donald trump would want to hide this before the November 2016 election . Thats not what they need to establish, they need to establish that he falsify the records to conceal a crime, so someone has to put into his head on the prosecution has to established by evidence, that he was aware that there was a potential criminal exposure resulting from the underlying repayment scheme. Its not enough to say that you dont want the story to come out because itll be bad for the election, that will not get them the conviction. We have to go because im being told we