after 22 witnesses and 16 days of testimony, donald trump has become the first ever american president to be convicted of a crime. this trial will go down in history. but without cameras in the courtroom, americans did not get to see the evidence for themselves. they did not see his eyes closed while he sat slumped at the defense table. they didn't get to hear stormy daniels' testimony and they didn't get to watch the judge clear the courtroom in anger as he butted heads with a truculent witness. instead, americans had to rely on the words of reporters who were in the room making notes and writing down things we saw and experienced. things that a transcript cannot capture. >> that was something to behold. i could hear people gasping. i was not sure we were going to get a place where we had any guilty verdicts let alone all 34 accounts. >> todd blanche said he was writing checks from the white house. >> this was as professional a jury as you could get. >> what you've heard about it being the dingy courtroom is real. >> his eyes have been closed most of the morning and i cannot say what's happening behind those eyelids .>> guilty repeated over and over. >> tonight we welcome you to this special msnbc event. prosecuting donald trump. witness to history. andrew weissmann and i will lead you through what you missed inside the courtroom. not the line-by-line details of witness testimony, but with the help of our colleagues, we will tell you what it was like to sit just behind donald trump as the details of the case spilled out. we will tell you what it felt like in the room when witnesses took the stand a few feet away from him. the unscripted and unpredictable moments when the former president seemed to be nodding off or muttering curse words. what people said in the line at the bathroom. and this testimony from stormy daniels. we will hear what our best legal minds saw. let's start with first impressions from inside the manhattan criminal court house. >> it is a surreal moment to go into the courtroom for the first time. and see a former president who is simultaneously the world's greatest clown. those two things at the same time as a criminal defendant just spin things in your head. and the weirdness of that alone is your first hour in the courtroom. and it's hard to take in anything other than the weirdness of donald trump. >> anticipating going into the courtroom, i was actually excited to do it. first of all, i felt like as someone who has written a trump book and has been covering him from the beginning of his presidential campaign, this felt like a crescendo moment for him and for the country. and it's the only trial he will face. it felt like a big moment and something i wanted to witness for myself. >> having worked in the mueller investigation, we could not charge a sitting president, then, donald trump, that was a doj rule and now a full-fledged criminal case it was remarkable. >> i thought there would be a lot of pro trump people there and there really were not. and then, my nbc family all the producers and camera operators and got in line and stood in line for a really long time. the thing that i learned is it's not what you are wearing that makes a difference. it's what you wear on your feet because where you get cold is through the soles of your dress shoes. but people understand you don't just walk to the courthouse and they whisk you in. you line up outside across the street because they anticipate people showing up. so you have three different lines. it's like flying on an airline where they put you in a different group of people. >> there are two courtrooms. the only difference is the judge and jury are in the overflow. >> that room holds other members of the media and members of the public. and the overflow room has a very large monitor at the front of it that shows directly counsels' table. you have the prosecution on one side and the defense on the other side. but you very clearly see donald trump.>> it was likeyou can go to the restroom a >>. whenever you want. and there is this absence of tension in the overflow room that i did not know i was feeling in the courtroom until i was not in the courtroom. and it's almost like you're standing in the street with wind and then it stops. it's a very different sensation in what seems to be the same place. >> the day before tommy tuberville went to the trial and said it was the most depressing building he'd ever been in, and i take that man's statements with a grain of salt. but it was nice. it was a highly functioning municipal building. it struck me how much a certain class of americans are used to very elite spaces and not used to public spaces, bureaucratic spaces. you have to spend a lot of time in those spaces. people with power and money do not. >> donald trump in that setting, he walks in and out and you see him for the first time. this is the first time i saw him in person. he was less than expected. >> the first time i was in the courtroom, donald trump was surprised to see me because it had been mostly reporters and very few anchor types showing up, and donald trump has hated me longer than anyone who is going to walk into that courtroom. he was once very fond of stormy daniels and michael cohen. but in 2011 when he started talking about president obama's birth certificate, i said he was lying and i called him a liar. and he had never been called a liar before and when he was leaving that day, he did the stupidest thing you could do. he looked right at me in this grand way that everyone in the courtroom could see and he was trying to do a face that would be the tough guy and scary and threatening and full of hate, but he's a terrible actor. it came out as just an insanely twisted face that meant nothing but madness. and i loved it. >> if there were cameras in the court, people all over america and in all 50 states would be calling in sick to stay home and watch this. is so freaking compelling in person and the drama of this particular criminal case against trump is both lurid and cogent and full of amazing characters and has just enough surprises to make every witness kind of a cliffhanger. you can't -- i don't know if trump is falling asleep or resting his eyes, but it is not boring. it is riveting. >> riveting is the perfect word to describe what it was like inside donald trump's trial. every trial is dramatic, but this is real life and was no exception. it's one thing to hear the news about it or to read the transcript. but tonight we will continue to learn from people who were inside the courtroom, day in and day out, waking up to wait in line to get one of the few seats available to the public and the press at 100 center street here in manhattan. tonight i'm joined by a special legal panel who spent many hours in the manhattan criminal court house. please welcome laura jarrett, and katie phang, and lisa rubin. they are here with us along with msnbc hosts giving us impressions. lisa, some of these witnesses got a lot of attention. the most surprising witness, the last witness, bob costello. what was your impression of what they did that people might not get from reading the accounts. what >> the most important part that was the demeanor and tone? you cannot get from reading the transcript is the entrance and the exit. they were all brought in from a side door rather than the traditional back door where you walk through the center. here, each and every witness, whether they were hostile or friendly, they had to walk by his first row of surrogates. and those who had counsel, they followed thereafter. in some cases trump wanted to have an interaction with them and in other cases the body language was as hostile as it could be. michael cohen looked like he wanted to vault over the doors so he could avoid being proximate to donald trump. i thought that was fascinating to watch. >> i have a question for you. someone who has spent so many years as a criminal prosecutor. people have talked about how there should've been cameras in the courtroom or at least audio. let's leave that aside for the moment. how do you think, if there had been cameras, that it may have affected witnesses and the lawyers on either side or the defendant if it had been televised? >> it would have increased the intensity of the experience for everyone involved, especially the witnesses. you ask yourself whether donald trump would've reacted more visibly than he did. maybe he would not have looked like he was asleep if he knew there was a camera on him. but when it comes to the witnesses, if they knew like we've seen in other trials that they would be on the witness stand, it would've amplified performances that we saw and i think you are more hyper aware, and i think the jurors would have been aware. even if you never saw their identity, they know what is at stake. it is a small space. it's not a huge federal courtroom. it is a small, state courtroom and people are in close proximity. and that is the jury. if you know it's not just the overflow room. it's america and the world, i think it amplifies the intensity. >> i was surprised by how close the witness stand was to the jury box. like really close. and the witness stand donald trump was much further. i don't think you get that not being there. we have much more of our legal panel coming up. but first, it was some of the most shocking testimony at the trial when stormy daniels took the stand and all the while wearing a bulletproof vest. after the break our team will take us not only inside the courtroom but the elevators and, wait for it, the bathroom lines where reporters tried to process what they heard. you're watching prosecuting donald trump: witness to history >> many of the journalists in the room were looking at each other and saying i can't believe this is what is being said, and by the way, how do i communicate this on television. cept that one. for all of life's laundry questions... it's got 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here are some more first-hand accounts. >> when she came in, all of us took a deep breath. we don't know who the witnesses are until that day. the prosecution always protects their witnesses. so we might figure out who the witness is maybe an hour beforehand. and that morning donald trump posted on truth social they had been informed of who the witness was and they had not prepared and that person should not be able to take the stand. so the minute he posted that, we said it's going to be stormy. i have compared this trial to watching two movies made eight years apart. >> none of the central characters look the way you remember them in 2016. and that is as true of michael cohen as it is for stormy daniels. she came in in a jumpsuit with her hair piled on top of her head wearing glasses and not looking at all like the adult film star that we remembered. i've since come to learn, because her lawyer said this, that she was wearing a bulletproof vest. and that accounted for her appearance. she was wearing an outfit that accommodated a bulletproof vest because she felt her life was at risk in coming to court and testifying. and the reaction of people in maga world who are loyal to trump about her testimony, i can tell you this by my twitter feed, reinforced why she felt she was in danger. >> there were no trump reactions to stormy daniels saying that you could see. but there is trump, known to millions of people as the orange turd and listen to himself being called that and the personis his defense lawyer thinking who is doing thatit harms stormy daniels that she refers to him as the orange turd. there is not a juror there who cares. they are not offended by it. these are new yorkers and they've heard worse in every trip on the subway. >> we leave the courtroom and we walk out and everybody lines up to go to the bathroom like you would any public place. we are like all looking at each other. and getting onto the elevator and going down for lunch, did she just accuse the former president of this and everyone is kind of digesting what is we all just heard. >> the jurors, i think, have been admirably stone-faced. i've seen reports, i didn't see it with my own eyes, but i saw jurors involuntary reacting to some of the salacious details. i did not see anything like that. the jury was like stonehenge. there were -- they were very restrained. >> this is about falsifying business records and the defense went at her really hard about the fact that she was in the porn industry for years and defense counsel said more than 200 porn films. how you'vecould you be this damsel in distress. and in that moment i have been looked at the jurors faces to insee if i could read anything and get a glimpse of what they were thinking. and they are maintaining a poker face the entire time. this is the same courtroom that harvey weinstein was tried in. it was such a moment to have the woman at the center of this case basically told she could not have possibly been uncomfortable because she was in porn. >> she was treated so differently than other witnesses. hope hicks and david pecker were devastating witnesses. their substantive testimony is so damning for donald trump as their cross-examination was with kid gloves. but nobody's testimony is more devastating to the former president that hope hicks because of her proximity. but if you take a step back and you separate these women and forget about the accident of their respective births. hope hicks coming from greenwich, connecticut, and the epitome of poise and grace contrasted with stormy daniels who had a very rough childhood and a mother who abandoned her but the difference in how they were trusted is palpable and a toxic brew of class and misogyny. there was a judgment about her credibility,that hope hicks may look the and you haveway she did, but she worked for to thinktrump twice. she left the white house and came back to work for him and stayed after he lost the election despite the fact she was privately advising him that he lost in the things that people were saying about is not losing the election were fraudulent. and she still stayed. and i thought, who lacks credibility now? >> the legal brains in the room were hyper focused on the defensive strategy to go hard after stormy daniels on cross- examination but not hope hicks or david pecker. our panel that had a front row seat is back. from your spot in the courtroom, what did you think of stormy daniels? how did she do from seeing her live? >> she did a spectacular job. her testimony did not come across as rehearsed. there was an authenticity to her. it didn't seem like she rehearsed or practiced her she had prepared. preparing testimony. with lawyers is different, but she prepared for it and did a great job, and she knew that even though, it took explore what happened between a detourher and donald trump because you have to explore the tofoundation of the payment and how got to the level of the records being falsified. what was important it is everyone says it's a paper case, but it's about humanity and people's involvement with others and extramarital affairs and it's all a very human thing and she bought that humanity to the case. >> i thought in many ways she did better on cross because you got a better sense of her as a person. and she was responding to questions that she did not know what was coming up. and i thought how smart she was. and the assumptions are ones that i found myself checking myself saying, why am i so surprised. i should not have been. one the more unusual aspects of this case was how it ended. with bob costello being called by the defense. >> i did not see that coming. i thought they would not do it. >> one of the reasons i'm with you is that if you remember, he was someone who donald trump said that he wanted the grand jurors to hear from. and i thought that was stupid because it won't stop the grand jury from indicting and you just revealed something to the prosecution. as a defense lawyer, sometimes the only thing you have is surprise. it was kind of flopped out to the prosecution. obviously, the record gives some flavor to him. >> and the clearing of the courtroom and how dramatic it was when the judge was so fired up. i thought he was going to throw him behind bars. robert costello is combative and aggressive and rolling his eyes and muttering audibly. >> did you hear? >> i am in the courtroom lighting up the chat and it was going off the rails fast. >> when the you were there, >> we have a bizarre pony you're communicating to colleagues.express situation where we can use some electronics. so we cannot use our phones because there's a concern that someone will mess up and tape it, but we can use our lapt