Transcripts For MSNBCW The 20240702 : comparemela.com

Transcripts For MSNBCW The 20240702



>> the value of this corrupt -- is the meeting cannot be overstated. >> this theme cooked up by these men could very well be what got trump elected. >> tonight, rachel maddow recaps the arguments with lawrence o'donnell, jen psaki, andrew weissmann, lisa rubin, and katie phang who were all inside the courthouse. and nicolle wallace, chris hayes, joy reid, ari melber, and stephanie ruhle is special coverage of trump on trial begins. , now. thank you for joining us tonight. we know you have every option in the world for where to follow the news of this remarkable moment in american history. it makes us all the more glad you are with us. i am rachel maddow and i am here with the great chris hayes and nicole wallace. the one and only lawrence o'donnell who was in the courtroom today in the closing arguments in the hush money, former president donald trump, lawrence will join us in a moment. he is still down at the courthouse it will join us as soon as he can get to a camera which we think will be in a moment, but who knows. here on set, ari melber is here and katie phang is here. she was in the overflow room at the courthouse as well. we will be joined over the course of these next two hours by joy reid and jen psaki ends stephanie ruhle. legal experts, andrew weissmann. he is standing by here with us at nbc headquarters. we will join lisa rubin and i camera outside the courthouse moments from now. this has all been breaking as we have been discussing about it. there is a lot to get to. we know we friend you know this is important news and its history in the making, but you have a life and a job in childcare and lots of people have traveled to deal with after the holiday weekend. we know you have stuff to do. as the trial draws to a close, as the days in court get longer and longer, tonight going into 8:00 p.m. until moments ago. we know it's hard to follow it all in real time over the course of the day. that is why you have us. our aim tonight is to catch you up. let's do it. we will talk about the big picture of what happened today. we will talk about where we are in the overall process, when we will learn trump's feet. will talk about the main points made by both sides in closing arguments today. will talk how the points are landing legally and more broadly. we will try to answer the questions that came up today like, for example, why did the judge yell at trump's defense lawyer as soon as he was done with his summation right when the jury went to lunch. why did he say, i think that statement was outrageous, mr. blanche. will try to answer that question tonight and more. we need to start with what has happened in the last few moments because the summation from the prosecution literally just into within the last five minutes. we do not have a go official transcript and i will read from our reporters updates of what happened the with the prosecution summation concluded. forgive me for this not being word for word perfect but it's the best we've got. joshua steinglass is the prosecutor who is giving the prosecution's summation. he says, quote, listen carefully to the judge's instructions. it's a crime to willfully create inaccurate tax forms. the defendant, trump, had an incentive to keep the conspiracy quiet and postelection effort to conceal pre-election as part of the same conspiracy and to prevent the catch and kill scheme from going public. he had every reason to continue to conceal the election fraud. as cohen tells you, he had already a announced his intention to run again. any one of the things i mentioned, unlawful means, is enough for you to conclude that the trump tower conspiracy, the conspiracy trump hatched with the company that owns the national enquirer, the trump tower conspiracy violated new york state election law, and the judge will tell you you don't have to agree meaning you the members of jury do not have to agree with one another which unlawful means. the defendant's intent to defraud in the case cannot be any clearer. why didn't he pay stormy daniels directly, one transaction but they devise this elaborate scheme. secret fedex packages and effort to conceal the truth. he didn't want anyone to find out about the conspiracy to steal the election. everything was cloaked in lies. lies in the invoices, bank paperwork and the 1099 a meaning the tax forms filed with the irs lies in the bank transfers, the shell companies, misleading denials, the name of the game he says was, quote, concealment for the man who benefited most, former president trump. our reporter notes, stein glasses getting fired up at this point. speaking up and going rapidfire through the above free marks. he says to the jury, quote, you have been a remarkable group. i know this has been a really long summation. i apologize for treating brevity for thoroughness, but we only get one shot. the defendant has a constitutional right to a fair trial and has a right to make us prove our burden. there are contracts, emails and texts that cooperate every bit of testimony. in this case, the evidence is, quote, literally overwhelming. now he is gotten the trial. he has had his day in court. remember, as the judge will tell you, and as mr. blanche told you, the law is the law, there is no special law for this defendant. donald trump cannot shoot someone on fifth avenue during rush hour and get away with it. objection. judge merchan, sustained. prosecutor. you the jury have the ability to hold the defendant accountable. remember you are the ones who have the opportunity to hear every witness and see every document. focus on the evidence and the logical inferences that can be drawn from that evidence. use your common sense and follow the judge's legal instructions. he then says to the jury pointedly, quote, come back in here and say guilty. guilty of 30 for counts of counts to cover a conspiracy to corrupt the 2016 election. then he concludes in the interest of justice and in the name of the people of the state of new york, i ask you to find the defendant guilty. thank you. he wrapped at 7:57 p.m. eastern time. whereupon judge merchan told the court, told the jurors, we will get started tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. why would they be getting started tomorrow 10:00 a.m. after the closing arguments just concluded? it's because a very very important thing is about to happen. we know what will happen tomorrow, 10:00 a.m., with the jury. it will be the judge instructed the jury about how to deliberate. that sounds like, that must be a boilerplate thing. that sounds like it must be the sort of, do your job. do not be biased generic patriotic instructions. the instructions to the jury is very much a contested matter and hotly fought over by both sides. judge merchan started the proceedings today by saying essentially to the prosecution and defense he had heard them out in terms of what they wanted from his jury instructions, and he had made his decision. he asked if they had further, to what the instruction should be. neither said they did so he announced at the beginning of today's proceedings, effectively, you know what my jury instructions will be. it is final. that will happen when you are done with the summations. he said that at the start of what ended up being a very very long day in court today starting at the 9:00 a.m. hour and not ending until just now. we have so much to talk about. it was such a big day. let's start by going to the courthouse. let's bring in msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin. he's been there for the entire trial and earning her kibble today. lisa, thank you for sticking it out for the whole day. thank you for joining us from outside. i have to ask, your big picture take overall on how the two side stay with her summation and what you think is most important for the country to understand about the way the trial concluded today. >> reporter: i think the way the trial concluded today was with a very exhausted group of people upstairs. not only the jury but for example, all the court officers who have been protecting us, protecting the trial. they work as long as the judge says the jury, the trial is going on. i asked, at what point do you change shifts? one said i am here until the trial closes today. you are looking at a group of people from reporters to the jury who are a little tired. my big take away the end of the day as i feel like goldilocks in search of the right bed. that is because it todd blanche's closing was light and detail long on hyperbole, you got the exact opposite from joshua steinglass in four hours of excruciating detail where he ping-pong between call records and text messages and every contact that could be used to cooperate the witness that they did not want the jury to think this case rests on. michael cohen. they said michael cohen many fewer times than the defense did. if you were to listen to steinglass today, the star witness here, david pecker, hope hicks, and all the records from business records meaning the 30 for business records that are part of the felony counts to call records, text messages, emails. josh did a very thorough exegesis of the time line starting in august of 2015 at the trump tower meeting where the conspiracy was formed. going all the way through the end of 2018 with michael cohen's plea to two counts of election violations. one involving ami's payment to karen mcdougal and the other his own payment to stormy daniels. in between you got everything from middle and west are hot talking about how trump sign things in the white house to details about jeff mcconney and deborah and the trump organization in terms how they process business records and everything and everything in between. i feel a little whiplash right now having witnessed these closings because it was so remarkably short on details and evidence and all about poking little holes at evidence including some obvious cherry picking of the testimony the prosecution was able to refute. then you have steinglass in four plus hours went through every possible piece of evidence and maybe he didn't make the selective injudicious choices as somebody who is a little more distance would have made in trying to convince a jury who's been sitting here for six weeks that they can convict something less than every bit of the evidence. to underscore how detailed the closing was, at one point i looked at the slides he was showing, they are demonstratives, that encapsulate evidence. in the bottom right-hand corner they have numbers. i noticed they were taking up with each time, the trial technician or paralegal, pressed a button to further animate further the slides. at the last count, they were on slide 420. that might give a sense of how much detail was packed in there. why it's hard in many respects to see that from the trees because we were in the woods with the today. >> lisa, thank you for that. i want -- i know we will be speaking with lawrence who is in there. i want to put what you said to our lawyers who here on the panel. you were both in the courtroom today. what lisa is describing the two different approached closings, mirrored in some ways but the difference between the openings. i was ever opening statements, and my feeling about the prosecution's opening statement versus the defense is the defense opening statement was hard to follow. very emotional. sort of emotionally unpredictable. like, why are you yelling now? not very linear. whereas the prosecution's was calm, linear, and not as exciting because it was not is weird. it sounds like there was a little of that in the closing. it may be the style of these two legal teams. but, as a nonlawyer, i don't know how to translate that style into effectiveness for the jury. what lisa was describing makes me worry for the prosecution's sake that maybe they gave him too much to chew on. >> i thought it was a strong day for the prosecution because it was voluminous, so thorough, and she felt that and it help them deal with the cohen issue. if you ask me, it was too long. it did not need to be that long. it may or may not matter. it was longer than it needed to be. i think that is a fair statement. >> was the defense summation which was first, was it also too long? was a too short? it was three hours roughly. steinglass went for four plus hours. what did you think of the defense? >> it could also have been shorter because it still meandered. it still hammered what it wanted to about cohen and poking holes for reasonable doubt. i thought the prosecution reminded everyone why you do not need cohen. it's a records case and there's all these records. i want to remind everyone, if this were a cooking show, it's not like both contestants have to make a great meal. the prosecution has to have a five course perfect meal with every ingredient. if the defense is able to serve an edible hot dog, that may be reasonable to. i remind everyone at home, we have talked about this, why are we being so nice to the defense ? the defense has to do less. if they can poke reasonable defer one juror or more, they can get a mass trial. >> reasonable defer something that matters. >> being there today and watching, i think it was clear to the extent anything changed, it's clear the prosecution realized, we may have a bigger cohen problem then we even thought even though we prepared. the sign is that opened their big closing arguments by saying , let's talk about cohen. we told you he can lie. use more than one way to interpret the stakes. these are the other things that support what he said. if you want to throw him out, you can still convict. those are all true legal statements. it showed you that by the end of the defense's summation, they were at least concerned enough to want to punch back on that and then they did their business. >> lawrence just walked out of the courtroom and i want to go to him. katie i want to hear from you next. lawrence, you had a very very long day in the courtroom today. you've just been able to get out to the camera. i want to get your instant, your take, your overall take on what you saw how things went and what you think was important for people to understand how the summations unfolded. >> longest day i've ever had in a courtroom. thanks to the prosecution closing, which i think everyone will agree was much longer than i had to be. however, however, the assistant district attorney is a very compelling speaker. he is easy to listen to. you could be 2.5 hours into it and not feel as if you're 2.5 hours into with. by the time you were four hours into it, you knew you were four hours into it. if he had some really, really powerful moments, he did his own imagined version of the 92nd phone call that is in dispute in the case where, according to michael cohen, he called keith and he spoke to keith about some harassment he was suffering. he spoke to donald trump for the remainder of the 90 seconds. we saw the da come up with an entire version of that conversation and how that could have gone and 49 seconds. it was one of those moments in a courtroom that was very impressive, very effective. it's -- he is the kind of student who really fills the exam paper. doesn't leave anything out. oddly enough, it didn't feel that repetitive. that's the funny thing about it. the essence of it was basically , look, this was in fact a reimbursement. in fact, there was a moment where he rattled off all the reasons why it was a reimbursement to michael cohen and not a big paycheck. at the end of the reasons he gave for being a reimbursement, and then going to the trump position it's not a reimbursement, his loudest moment in the courtroom today was saying, does anyone believe that? i think he is right. there is no one on the jury who does not believe that that was indeed a reimbursement arrangement for michael cohen. the question here for the jury is just, is donald trump guilty? in a falsified business records scheme that was entered into in order to corruptly affect the election. that may be for the jury a complicated question. >> can i ask you, in terms of todd blanche's summation, a lot of reporters today described that is hard to follow. as being, because he wasn't going chronologically the way the exhaustive summation from the prosecution went, that his summation was sometimes hard to know what he was getting at. which point he was trying to make other than going liar, liar, and liar at michael cohen and trying to make the fact that michael cohen has been proven to lie, something that should be fatal to the case. was it in fact hard to follow? >> listen, i have watched a lot of criminal lawyers in my life trying and struggling to defend a guilty client. that is what it looks like. there is no good way. there is no easy way. i don't see how todd blanche could've done any better, actually, in his summation given the facts he is loaded down with. given the complexities he fails to deal with. the da pointed out, this point i have been making about the defense argument, which is it's in conflict with itself. the defense argument is, michael cohen was paid this big paycheck in 2017 and it had nothing to do with reimbursement of the $130,000 to stormy daniels. but we know, and the defense knows the calculation of how much he would be paid was based on a document and written by allen weisselberg that includes of $130,000 to stormy daniels. that's never been explained by the defense. not at any point. and then, the da made this point when he got up to speak saying, look, you can't accuse michael cohen of stealing in the reimbursement scheme if you are also saying he was never reimbursed. that is the central problem that the defense has. it has theories crashing into each other, and in one side of their theory, they are fully adopting the prosecution case which is michael cohen was reimbursed. when the defense adopts the idea michael cohen was reimbursed, they say in the formula for the reimbursement, michael cohen lie and managed to still $30,000. as the da said, you cannot accuse him of stealing and then say he was not reimbursed. it cannot have it both ways. that was one of those things is a trial develops, you sit there and wait. something tougher one side, you should sit there and wait to hear that side address the most difficult thing they have. the most difficult thing the defense has is that number, $130,000, written in allen weisselberg's handwriting on the document. the defense has never explained it. they've never come close to explaining it. the prosecution made that very clear today that they have never explained that. the difficult challenge for the prosecution today, laid out to them by the defense argument was michael cohen is a liar. you cannot convict donald trump on the testimony of michael cohen, and it's only michael cohen's testimony that says donald trump new and approved the payment to stormy daniels before the election. that evidence comes only from michael cohen and the defense insisted you cannot find donald trump guilty based on that testimony from michael cohen. the prosecution did a lot of work on that point. did a lot of work on corroborating michael cohen is much as they possibly could on that very point. the prosecution was not afraid to go after the most difficult challenge posed by the defense. the defense never came close to the most serious challenges proposed by the prosecution. >> that was clear to me than anything else i have seen in terms of the heart of the case and the fight between the prosecution and defense could. the prosecution can say, here are two documents that are smoking gun documents. yes, they have something to do with michael cohen getting paid but the reason we have these documents as they have been corroborated by other trump organization personnel. that is why they are in evidence and there's no contrary explanation as to what the smoking gun documents may be. that feels to me to be the sort of unassailable core of where we are. for

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