Transcripts For MSNBCW The 20240703 : comparemela.com

Transcripts For MSNBCW The 20240703

Have a good show. Thank you, nicole. Welcome, everyone, to a twohour edition of the beat tonight as we go through a big day in court. Im ari melber, we have our Special Coverage, and we begin right now with the prosecutors star witness taking the stand. You may have heard about it, you may have readied for it, we are now here. The former trump lawyer Michael Cohen testifying about the work he did for trump, saying under oath this was the dirty work of a, kwot, fixer. And recounting today and the jury hearing it from his mouth for the first time, the road to the payments at the center of this physicalny case against Defendant Trump. Big day in the criminal trial of former president donald trump. The star witness takes the stand against donald j. Trump. Form fixer Michael Cohen now the star witness in the new york versus trump trial. Cohen on the stand. An extraordinary showdown today in court. The man at the center of the Hush Money Payments Scandal is testifying. The expresident coming face to face with the man who used to do his dirty work who now has turned into the key witness. Our own Nicole Wallace there putting it succinctly, from dirty work to key witness. Prosecutors began today with questions about the deals made more what they call the catch and kill plot, including model Karen Mcdougals story, of her time with trump. And that would have been a significant event having a Significant Impact on the campaign if exposed. If exposed, it would hurt donald trump, i should say. Mr. Cohen said that on the stand under oath. That matters a lot. And it matters for the jury to hear it for the first time. As ive told you before, and todays one of those days where the contrast matters a lot, what you know, what i know, what observer who is follow this closely know, is totally separate from what the jury learns in evidence, the strict rules for that. When we say there are tapes, you as a person who is informed might say ive heard about the tapes. But whats entered into evidence is a different level. I can tell you as a legal matter, the fact this tape is relevant, that it has been found to be credible, you know, put socalled, you know, madeup stuff into evidence, that matters. And Today Is The Day pursuant to cohens under Oath Testimony that the jury is hearing this. The prosecution playing the now infamous tape for this jury, and boy does it create problems for the Defense Arguments that all this is made up or cohens a or it came out of the blue, why is the jury hearing something that sound like donald trump thats been entered into evidence as donald trump that the judge has said, yep, treat this as evidence where cohen is secretly talking with his client and candidate trump. I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend david. I spoke to allen about it, when it comes time for the financing, which will be what financing . Well have to pay pay with cash. No, no, no, no, no. Cohen telling a jury under oath that understood that the payment would come from trump, thats why they were talking about cash and how to do it. Cohen saying, quote, what i was doing, i was doing at the direction of and for the benefit of trump. In other words, he did it. Michael cohen under oath accusing his former client, his former boss, of these deeds. Now, well get to what the jury will make of cohens evolution, but even before you get to that, i can tell you this was bad, okay . The jurys heard all these other thing, some of them dry, some of them boring, some at times might sound convoluted or why am i watching a cspan staffer talking about an old tape. I can tell you that today didnt play out that way. They got cohen to talk about this in detail and really explain it to the jury often in very direct, narrow answer, like the payments to daniels and that trump was angry to learn the whole thing had resurfaced in the critical campaign homestretch, cohen recounted. I thought you took care of this, cohen says that trump told him. I thought this was under control. Just take care of it, a seemingly exasperated trump cold cohen, upset that this had come back up, again, according to cohens account. Cohen testified that he, like others, viewed the daniels story as a catastrophic event. What, if anything did you think potential impact that the daniels story might have on the campaign, and there you see it, cohen, catastrophic. As this was going on, trump, the defendant, at times was seen looking away. He had his eyes closed. At other times he was seen reacting with his head bowed, even looking somewhat concerned according to at least one Sketch Artist there. Cohen paints a damning picture of his client. He says trump was not only in on everything but well aware of the coverup of everything. He was in on the plan to pay it off and he was in on the coverup. And he was in on the theory that cohen and pecker and other officials have conveyed that all of this would have an impact on the election. And thats central to the felony charge. The coverup was only for the 2016 election, not for some other set of reasons. Cohen walking the jury through the secret agreement with the enquirer, which corroborates testimony from its own publisher, pecker, who was, of course, kind of the first star witness in all of this. Confirming the stories would be beneficial to the campaign. The jury was shown how that would work. Cohen, like pecker, testified the tabloid never Paud To Kill Stories prior to this situation of helping a tabloid publishers friend, donald trump, run for president. Trumps lawyers were able to show in questioning that the tabloid did coordinate with other people in The Public Eye and even some other candidates like Arnold Schwarzenegger about coverage. But it didnt get to the level of this very unusual catch and kill. And the big difference there is its one thing to have some kind of agreement with people, sources or otherwise, its another thing to start Spending Money on behalf of a campaign under the table. Thats whats ealleged. Cohen testifies when daniels story first resurfaced, trump said this is going to be a disaster for the campaign and trump said basically delay the election, if i win, it wont have any relevance, if i lose, i dont really care, trump said, according to cohens account. Now, note that contrast with trumps bravado about always winning. Or lying about when he does lose like in 2020. A lot of people, including people friendly to trump, view that as his natural way or even honest way or he really does believe he won when he lost. Weve seen people testifying under oath and you get a different picture. For example, right here, this then fixer says trump was making plans about losing and how h would play that, how he would save money if he lost in the context of a Campaign Catch and kill deal. So that already is a lot. Prosecutors also used today to circle back to other individuals whove testified. And remember, Trump Defense lawyers have gon after people like keith davidson, the lawyer you see on your screen, and suggested that maybe he was spinning or making things up in a certain way. But now you have people on both sides of emails and text, both sides of the contract, and cohen largely testified consistently with davidson. Davidson, for example, had said cohn was frustrating to work with, because he made excuses for not paying on time. So remember, thats not like some compliment to Michael Cohen, its just a claim about why things got delayed. And today, even if it comes to some sort of holy thing, how you use your time to celebrate a holiday, cohn admits he was trying to the lay because trump wanted to save money if he lost the election. The yom kippur holiday, up with of the hollyiest days of the year year for the jews, cohen says he would just use the holiday and other things as an excuse. When asked according to who, after the election, it wouldnt matter according to mr. Trump. Trump did come around beaks before the election and told cohen theres no reason to keep this thing out there, meet up with weisselberg, figure it out. Weisselberg is the now jailed cfo of the organization whos gone to jail twice now for trumprelated crimes. We do not yet see evidence or indication hell testify, although the judge did ask about it. We know the payments to daniels came directly from cohen but that the plan was it was trumps money, that all along it would be trumps money, that cohen was fronting the money just like a friend could loan you money or a bank could loan you money, this was just a bit more secretive. But cohen says to the jury today, trump promised to are pay him. And he wouldnt have paid daniels without that promise, permission, and plan, because everything required mr. Trumps signoff, he testified, and he, Michael Cohen, wanted his money back. Now then theres the questions about family. The defense has tried to argue that trump, like many other people, might simply want to avoid personal family problems, public embarrassment, and would have other motivations, not the campaign thing, which again, matters because the d. A. Has to prove the Cam Pawn Motive if its going to be a Campaign Crime. So again, imagine that youre a member of this jury. Most of this stuff is new to you, youre supposed to keep an open mind, and youre following these claims over time. And so far the prosecutors have put on person after person after person with a lot of corroboration along with receipts. And so cohen addressed this as well, and he said, no, it wasnt about melania, quote, this was all about the campaign, according to trumps motive, campaigns conduct, and the risks they took to keep this secret. Now, you take that all together, and this is what they call corroboration. It doesnt mean its done. If we were scoring this, we would say the prosecutors are way up, but theyre supposed to be. They almost have to be at this point. Theyve been in control of the case. And as for cohen, theyre up with him saying a lot of bad stuff about his boss that he has personal eyewitness knowledge of. This isnt some hearsay, this isnt some conjecture. He literally has tapes of his boss. He has texts, mail, explanations around it. Hes been in and out of prison. Hes under the thereto of perjury. He has every reason of telling the truth right now. Thats bad for the defendant. But this isnt an on the other hand but how it really works is he hasnt faced cross examination yet. One of the reasons the prosecutors may have held him as one of the last witnesses is hes strong what he knows but compromised in some ways for cross. Theyve put on a lot of witnesses that have had really pretty straight forward time on the cross examination. No perry mason moments. Here there may be some as the prosecutors rest, before they rest you have a defense thats going to come in and say havent you lied before . Havent you said on tiktok you want this guy in jail . Wouldnt it be reasonable to think youre a little biassed right now if youve announced your goal here is not just to tell the truth but to get your old boss in jail . Arent you mad you had to go to trail . Arent you mad you were convicted of, confessed to this Campaign Crime and no one else has got in trouble about it. Couldnt any of that cloud your judgement . And the jury might hear all of that tomorrow and thursday and have some doubts. But right now the prosecution is up, and right now if you were a defendant, forget trump, forget maga, forget the election, if you were a defendant in this kind of fraud case and your own lawyer turned in all the info, confessed, and said aurp part of the fraud, and remember, you cant use lawyers to commit that crime or any other, well, youd be pretty hot under the collar if you were the defendant right now. Cohens testimony will continue tomorrow and then cross, as i mentioned, after that. And we have two seasoned experts here to get into it, krity and molly, when were back in just 90 seconds. N were back in just 90 seconds keep up. 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Oh, he knew about everything. Everything had to go through mr. Trump, and it had to be approved by mr. Trump. Michael cohen, that was the last time he testified under oath, it was 2019. We had the footage because it was congress. Today we have the expert, we have the words, were going to get into it all, we have the sketches. We dont have video under the rules of new york courts, but we are joined by people who know the situation well, christy green berg, inside the Courtroom Today, and molly molly jongfast. Welcome to both of you. Starting, christy, with what it felt like in court, what did it feel like in the room . Even though weve heard this evidence before in the news, the access Hollywood Tape, the reporting that you mentioned, hearing it in that context, Michael Cohen hearing his own words, it did feel different. It felt momentous. And there were some really bombshell moments. That moment where theyre talking about the access Hollywood Tape and Michael Cohen say, oh, this locker room talk spin, that actually that came from melania . That was something i hadnt heard before. Im thinking, is that really something that melania would have said . And then when they were talking about the Stormy Daniels payment and delaying the payment, the reasons for it, the fact that it was that he wasnt willing to make that payment if it was for anything other than the campaign, was just striking. I mean, its 130,000. Hes a selfpurported billion nar, and hes not willing to spend 130,000 to sauf his marriage. And thats what the testimony was today, that, you know, if its not before the election, then i dont really care. So that was really striking. It made me think hes so worried that this would have been a disaster if it had come out before the election because it would hurt these female voters opinions of him, right now he needs to think about those five women on the jury, because im sure they dont have a very high opinion of him right now. Yeah, i mean, female voters are the key here spchlt he needs to get, you know, he is running again for president. So i do think this is all really meaningful. Theres been some people saying its not going to matter, but i think it does matter. Its permeating local news station, and a lot of people are getting their news from local news. He says according to cohen, and as ive emphasized, theres real risk and punishment if he was wantonly perjuring himself. And begun, well cover the cross when they deal with credibility. I say that to give people the perspective of what were getting. Its not a direct quote, its a cohen quote. Having said that he said that trump said, quote, women are going to hate me. This really is a disaster. Women will hate me. Guy, they think its cool. But this is going to be a disaster for the campaign, end quote. Give us the context of when cohen was saying that, why is it relevant legally, and if you want, what it means that the jury is looking at him saying, okay, is he telling the truth or not. Yeah, so this came up right before the lunch break, and it was this moment. We had been going through a lot of documents back and forth and getting into the minutia of those, and then this was a moment where there was no document, it was tell us what you and trump talked about. Tell us about these conversations. It really was a moment where he was able to say in Donald Trumps own words, like you could almost hear donald trump saying it was a disaster. I mean, it sounded like trump. So those statements, i think, were just incredibly meaningful. And why it matters legally is, as you said, in order to convert this falsified Business Records from a misdemeanor to a felony, have to be able to show there was an intent to unlawfully influence the election and thats what this payment was about. Not about protecting his family but about protecting his campaign chances so that he could be elected. I think when it was put that starkly in the conversation of its totally irrelevant if i if im not president than if i am president , i really dont care. It was just so stark and really it had an impact. And molly, when you think about what the jurys hearing, again, this isnt supposed to be a case about, quote,unquote, morals. This is not a proceeding involving, for example, an allegation regarding sexual bhatry. Right. Its not a Custody Proceeding for children where you can actually bring in more evidence of someones conduct that way. This is really about did you lie about it and was it about the campaign. To kristys point, people can come up with, and the jury may in deliberations discuss, what the multiple motivations were for donald trump, right . For example, he could argue that, well, as a Reality Tv Show celebrity with a, shall we say, uproarious and messy personal life, he felt he could explain to melania. To melania he could explain it, here they go again. Its still not true. The fact its printed wherever it was printed doesnt matter, right, thats different than losing a voting bl

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