Trump on trial: New York vs. Donald Trump Day 5 Highlights

i was at the courthouse today in manhattan i was in

the courtroom for opening statements for this first

criminal trial of former president i can report first

hand that the court room smells like old suit and stale breath

haha i can report that the police officers who police the

courtroom are working very hard and they appear to be very

stressed

i can report that judge moore shot is soft-spoken and has

what i think would be universally considered to be a

pleasant voice i can report that prosecutor matthew

colangelo speaks exactly like seth meyers speaks when seth

meyers is not telling jokes i can tell you that the first

witness david packer accidentally gave out his whole

phone number today when the prosecutor just asked him to

confirm the last four digits he was trying to remember the

last four digits and in order to get there in his head

he said the whole number out loud and loops didn't mean to

do that i can report that former president donald trump

looks a lot older than he used to

and that it seems to me and my subjective take that he knew

he seemed miserable to be but you know

i look a lot older than that used and i think anybody's got

a right to look miserable when they're sitting in a courtroom

charged with dozens of felonies at it as a criminal defendant

the courtroom is bare bones it is not large it is an

elegant it has an flattering lighting like i said it does

not smell good and everybody is very tense

what i mean to present to you with all of this information

is that given the choice nobody would want to be there

except of course journalists and reporters covering the most

historic trial in american political history

to that end

i'd also like to say that i'm sorry to the journalists who

are sitting immediately next to me

because i unintentionally snorted out loud and went to

when this happens today at the trial and when i read this

part of the transcript to you well know why i said

prosecutor matthew cole angela

in january twenty seventeen before the defendant move down

to washington to begin his presidency michael cohen met

with allen weisselberg the trump organization to talk

about how cohen was going to get reimbursed for the payoff

to stormy daniels weisselberg you'll remember was the trump

organization chief financial officer and he was one of the

defendants longest-serving and most trusted employees neither

trump nor the trump organization can just write a

check to michael cohen for a hundred and thirty thousand

dollars with a memo line that said reimbursement for porn

star pay off

they had to disguise the nature of the repayment so they agreed

to cook the books and make it look like the repayment was

actually income

payments for services rendered instead of a reimbursement

allen weisselberg ask mister cohen to bring a copy of a bank

statement showing the hundred and thirty thousand dollars

payment that cohen had made to keep stormy daniels quiet

before the election weisselberg and cohen agreed to

a total repayment amount of four hundred twenty thousand

dollars

here is how they got to that number

this is good

they started with a hundred and thirty thousand dollars that

trump owed cohen for the stormy daniels payoff then they added

fifty thousand dollars for a separate reimbursement cohen

was claiming which had to do with tax services he paid for

during the campaign that adds up to a hundred and eighty

then they agreed to double that amount to three hundred

sixty thousand dollars to account for taxes

now of course if trump was just reimbursing cohen there

was no need to grow set up for taxes they double that because

their plan was to call it income instead of a

reimbursement if cohen was getting money they were

calling income he would have to pay taxes on it cohen was

close to a fifty percent tax bracket so to make him whole

on the hundred and eight hundred and eighty thousand

dollars that the defendant owed him they had to double the

amount to three hundred sixty then he added another sixty

thousand dollars as a year-end bonus and all of that comes

out to a total of four hundred twenty thousand dollars

and allen weisselberg wrote all of that down

for a fine i annoyed the people sitting near me because

i snorted outloud said

he wrote it all down

if you're a fan of the wire this is the scene where

stringer bell turns to the young man and says are you

taking notes on a criminal conspiracy using a lot of swear

words

yes yes he was taking notes on a criminal conspiracy

prosecutor mike off that's your call angela allen

weisselberg wrote all of that down

the the hurricane you begin to believe this is real the bank

statement that i told you about that he asked cohen to bring

to their meeting the bank statement from the essential

consultants account which show the hundred and thirty thousand

dollar wire that cohen had made to keith davidson to keep

stormy daniels quiet you will see in this trial allen

weisselberg's handwriting down the side of that bank statement

laying out every one of the steps that i just described

showing how they converted the hundred and thirty thousand

dollars payoff them out to the four hundred twenty graham

cohen was going to get paid back as they grow step way to

disguise it not as reimbursement but as income

and they took notes about it every step of the way and the

prosecution has the notes

and then here's the kicker

magical angela prosecutor quote colin weisselberg been

met with trump who approved the repayment amount of four

hundred twenty grand on the hundred and thirty thousand

dollars stormy daniels payment and a few other expenses

now you will see evidence at trial that trump was a very

frugal businessman

he believed in pinching pennies he believed in

watching every dollar he believed in negotiating every

bill it's all over all of the books he's written here on the

trump organization with total control you will hear

testimony about his relentless focus on the bottom line

but when it came time to pay michael cohen back for the

catch and kill deal you will see that he didn't negotiate

the price down he doubled it and he doubled it so they could

disguise it as income and you will hear evidence that the

trump organization was not in the practice of paying people

twice what they owed for anything this might be the

only time that ever happens and trump's willingness to do

so here shows just how important it was to him to hide

the true nature of cohen's illegal payment to miss daniels

and the overall election conspiracy that they had

launched in august twenty fifteen

prosecutors saying trump is paying a lot for this and he

never pays for anything that's how important and

sensitive this was

interestingly

moments later the defense used this same set of facts to make

the opposite point to the jury saying yeah trump really is

so cheap and so unwilling to pay for anything so

this must have been some other thing he was paying for

not the thing they have handwritten notes from his cfo

about

joining us now is former fbi general counsel andrew

weissmann also with us former assistant district attorney in

the manhattan district attorney's office katherine

christian author andrew thank you both for being here

andrew let me ask you first was stringer bell right to ask

allen west where are you taking notes on a criminal

conspiracy is this document potentially important east

so you might have seen by now it's because that is

started that was the page i had the same reaction

so one of things that you listen for when you listen to

openings on both sides is you know that they're witnesses are

going to testify do you think about how they're going to jay

whether they have memory issues whether they have

credibility issues but then you look for what is the

prosecution going to say with the spectrum with so-called

hard evidence and they're the things that stood out to me was

you had a reference to the tape recording that we've heard

about that's where donald trump is overheard saying

hey let's just pay the hundred thirty thousand in cash

that's that's a terrible tape for donald trump seconds

there was references to telephone records at a critical

time that the payments were first made by michael kahn

ju stormy daniels were there to cause that the prosecutor

referenced between michael cohen and donald trump and

then the third was this which is definitely a fall off your

chair moment where they have it in writing and what's so

interesting is that the defense said the repayment was not

repeat it was not reimbursement for the payments

to stormy daniels i do not know how they're going to deal

with that when you have these notes and remember when you

make a promise when you say something and openings as

catherine as kate in years that comes back to haunt you

if you have over promised if you've made a misstatement that

both sides are listening for that because they're going to

bring it up again in closing catherine is it is important

here that we don't expect allen weisselberg himself to be a

witness to potentially you know walked the jury through

what his notes matt and and explain this document that is

otherwise it's sort of a fall off your chair moment like

andrew said well it's a good thing since he's serving time

for perjury

so neither side wants him as a witness so it's it's very

good for the prosecution because they can just have the

notes and obviously donald trump doesn't want a perjurer

testify on his behalf so that's a good thing but i

agree with with andrew this is tucker operation when you talk

about michael cohen in his baggage this is where you have

cropper shun of his statement so there's no way the manhattan

da's office would have just relied on michael cohen's

testimony if they did not have corroborating documents

corroborating witnesses

now as lawrence o'donnell just mention today was the

first time that we've heard from the defense be heard from

the prosecution in effect with the indictment with the

announcement of charges that led to today's proceedings

but this is the first time we got to see the defense go

through their paces for the defense counsel for former

president trump we did get a sense and they're opening

statements today about how it looks like they're going to try

to defend their client if today's opening statements are

any guide they're going to stress that mister trump is a

former presidents and they're going to always call him

president trump they're going to stress beyond that that he

right now is the presumptive republican nominee for

president again or as his defense counsel called him

today the republican nominee not even presumptive they're

going to claim that every aspect of this was an innocent

act by trump that there wasn't an underlying sexual encounter

to cover up even though that would seem to be immaterial to

the charges they will seem to be claiming again of today's

opening statements are any guide that michael cohen

trump's lawyer paid a porn star on his own accord and for his

own reasons that trump only paid michael cohen for legal

services just like he always had he just changed to a weird

new way of paying him after the porn star thing because

well they'll think of something

but if you are in this defense team if you are in charge of

coming up with the defense for mister trump

here's the part of the prosecution's case that would

seem to be the most difficult thing to explain logically

if you're really going to try to mount a defense that trump

did nothing at all wrong that there was no conspiracy to

corrupt the election as the prosecution put it at the top

of their opening statements today well this would seem to

be

the toughest thing logically that you're up against here it

is this is from the opening statement from prosecutor

matthew collection clanzel quote

now at this sorry this is not going to forgive me this is

the introduction at this point colangelo has explained to the

jury that there was what he called a criminal conspiracy

between trump and am i american media to publish positive

stories about trump to publish negative stories about trump's

rivals to find negative stories about trump that hadn't been

published yet and then too hey the sources of the stories

to make them shut up and not tell anybody about the stories

before the election so the prosecution has explained to

the jury at this point that my american media national

enquirer they first found a doorman door man named dean

dinos to judon who said that trump had fathered a secret

child with a housekeeper so june was the first one that

am i paid to keep quiet about his story and was the second

one woman and karen mcdougal who said she had an affair with

trump they paid her to not tell anybody about that story

as well that there was the third one stormy daniels

and although this point the enquirer was still willing to

make arrangements for her to be paid to be quiet about that

story by that point they were not ready to put up additional

money and so michael cohen put up the money for that so the

prosecutors explained all this to the jury and then he says

this prosecutor matthew clanzel

cohen made that pay minute donald trump's direction and

for his benefit and he did it with a specific goal of

influencing the outcome of the election now look no

politician wants bad press but the evidence at trial will show

that this was not spend our communications strategy

this was a planned coordinated long-running conspiracy to

influence the twenty sixteen election to help donald trump

get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people

who had something bad to say about his behavior using

doctored corporate records and bank forms to conceal those

payments along the way it was election fraud pure and

simple we will never know and it doesn't matter if this

conspiracy was the difference maker in a close election

but you will see evidence in the defendant's own words from

his social media posts from the speeches at campaign rallies

and other events you will see in his own words making crystal

clear that he was certainly concerned about how all of this

could hurt his standing with voters and with female voters

in particular you will also see evidence that on election

night

as news outlets got closer to calling the election for donald

trump the lawyer for both stormy daniels and karen

mcdougal tech student dylan howard editor at the national

fire and he said quote

what have we done

about a month after the election david packard

the ceo of american media then authorize am i to release both

dinos issued and the doorman and karen mcdougal from their

non-disclosure agreements

say that again about a month after the election packer

authorize am i to release the first two recipients of catch

and kill money

release them from their non-disclosure agreements

once the election is over colangelo quote so having paid

for the stories in order to keep them from the public

before election day packer in a i then told both that google

and student a month after the election that they were no

longer bound by the nondisclosure agreements

just think about what that means this claim right from

the from the defense is that none of these payments game

said anything to do with the election to knows what michael

cohen was doing paying that porn star donald trump was

just paying for legal fees right that the defense is

saying said nothing to do with the election the prosecution

says they will present evidence that trump american media paid

for all of these people to be silent until the election was

over

and then once the election was over they then released all

these people from these agreements to be silent because

once the election happened they didn't care anymore

because at that point mission accomplished because the

mission was to influence the election

and so once the election was done there's no more need for

these agreements

the mission was the election the mission was not to protect

his brand

the mission wasn't to save his family embarrassment it was to

keep these people silent to pay them to be silent specifically

and only

in order to win the election full stop

prosecution calls this a criminal scheme to corrupt the

twenty sixteen presidential election one that was covered

up by lying in this business records

logically that hole releasing people from the agreements once

the election was over logically that would seem to

be

the crux of this case if the prosecution can prove it

legally though will safe lots

so rachel it here we arrive at the different burdens

of prosecution and defense the prosecution is going for

logic and you are following their logic and their lodger

takes you over to the national enquirer and it takes you over

to this guy who said told require that you know trump

fathered a child that that turns out not to be true ever

in the courtroom agrees but that wasn't true and then

it takes you over to karen mcdougal and those are the two

who are released from their confidentiality agreement after

the election and what the defense is going to say in

final argument is

that has nothing to do with this case absolutely nothing

because remember what the defense needs in final argument

is not logic they're not trying to take you through a

flawlessly logical story they're just trying to target

any little do they can find any where and they will lane in

final argument on that agreement in that courtroom

that that guy who said that holding choir that donald

trump diligently for father child was not telling the

truth wasn't telling the truth just like stormy daniels

wasn't telling the truth about donald trump and donald trump

gets hustle by these people all the time and we have to deal

with them in different ways donald trump has said publicly

this happens to

every man every man

clued you chris a sitting at this table every man whose

public every man who is in the public eye is constantly paying

off tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of these deals all

the time that stall trump's claim right and he's going to

say you know this is happening to me all the time

and and and all of that macdougal stuff

everything involving packer everything involvement choir is

going to be thrown out the door in the final argument of donald

trump's defense lawyers because none of that is a charged

crime not a single thing in any of that it's these

business records and the other piece of the defense that we

heard today about the business records is

this is the name of the woman who made up you know the

checks this is the name of the book keeper centered on the

record who filled out the forms this is the name of the

person who told her to say legal services and donald trump

never told any of them to say legal services

that's the defense donald trump didn't tell them to keep

the books this way and the money oh by the way was not

for having anything to do with stormy daniels says the entire

defense there's no other piece of that fence and it has

nothing to do with other people's home nondisclosure

agreements and all that stuff and and of course all that

stuff makes perfect sense when the prosecution is building you

this flawless table that has logical for logical legs to it

and defense is going to come along and say no it has no

legs the table has no life

you know we released all these people from these

agreements after the election because we love late november

release of their merry christmas is a time that

they're going to feel no need to offense will feel no need to

explain why those nondisclosure agreements are no longer in

four small they will have any need to wear in their final

argument don't throw something out there in the course of the

trial but that they won't feel compelled to explore what

you're talking about about that the claim of from dino

the dorm and being a false claim

what am i nevertheless agreed to pay for it and what

michael cohen was paid and how they arrived at that out

was the star your coffee out your nose in the courtroom

moment today we're going to talk about that including with

andrew weissmann and catherine christians were here you are

good at keeping us keeping us on the on the legal straight

narrow as we as we proceed with our primetime recap

today's criminal proceedings against former president donald

trump

okay questions from the prosecutor

so a ceo and president and chairman did you have the

final say over publishing decisions including which

stories would get published and which stories would not get

published answer from david packer former ceo of american

media yes i have the final say

on the celebrity side of the magazine industry at least on

the tabloid side we used checkbook journalism and we pay

for stories so i gave a number to the editors that they could

not spend more than ten thousand dollars to investigate

or produce are published a story so anything over ten

thousand dollars that they would spend on a story that

would have to be vetted and brought up to me if they were

going to spend more for approval question prosecutor in

addition to having to approve expenditures did you also have

final kind of editorial say in other words the ability to

determine that a particular story was not going to be run

or a particular story was going to be run answer david packer

being in the publishing industry for forty years

i realized early in my career that the only thing that was

important is the cover of a magazine so when the editors

produce a story are prepared to cover would have a meeting and

they were presented with the story would be with the concept

was what the cost is going to be question prosecutor and if

the story involves a guess for lack of a better way to say it

a big story or famous person did you have the final say on

whether or not to publish that story answer david pecker's

yes i did

the first witness in the criminal trial of former

president donald trump today was david packer the former

ceo of american media inc am i which is the company that

used to on the national enquirer now two salient

point here about that testimony from david packer is only on

the stand for like half an hour today but we get all of this

very salient stuff for the prosecution's case

first of all there's there's what he said about what counts

as a normal amount of money for the kind of checkbook

journalism that he says his company dots anything over ten

thousand dollars

that would be unusual that would be sort of out of bounds

that would have to get personal approval from him as the

chairman president and ceo of not just one of these

publications but the entire company with dozens of

publications ten grand was the ceiling beyond that it had to

go personally through him

but in this case prosecutors say they will present evidence

that am i was doing something and a whole other league when

it came to what they were doing for trump for example before

even investigating a trump property door man's claim about

trump supposedly fathering a secret child with a

housekeeper they paid that man thirty thousand dollars

they paid the man making the claim thirty thousand dollars

to make him be quiet about it before they even investigated

whether it might be true

triple what is their normal limit for having to go to the

ceo

also the claim about the affair with trump from former playboy

playmate karen mcdougal they paid her a hundred and

fifty thousand dollars which was fifteen times their limit

for going to the ceo and appears to have been way beyond

what they were paying anybody else for anything

prosecutor matthew clincial close after consulting with

cohen parker directed his editor in chief at the national

enquirer to negotiate an agreement to pay thirty

thousand dollars to the doorman to buy exclusive rights to that

story the evidence will show that packer was not acting as a

publisher he was acting as a co-conspirator

the evidence will show that this was a highly unusual deal

even for tabloid journalism it was a lot more money than

they would usually paid to a source

they bought the doorman story without even fully

investigating it was the first time david packer had never

paid anyone for information about donald trump

packard directed that the deal take place because of the

agreement he had reached a because he had promised trump

at the trump tower meeting in august twenty fifteen that he

would use his media empire to help the defendants campaigns

and they knew that public disclosure of the door man's

information would hurt that campaign

what prosecutors laid out today and what the witness help them

prove today is that the practices described here in

this alleged criminal conspiracy we're not at all

normal not even for tabloid check but journalism that pays

for stories and even for american media specifically and

the national enquirer specifically this is not their

back this is not part of what they do as a magazine

this is part of what they do as an alleged criminal conspiracy

with donald trump to illegally influence the election

so that's one

the second and final part about this david packer testimony

that is perhaps alien to the overall case here is the part

where he says that the quote only thing that's important is

the cover it's a magazine

stepping back from just the legal fight here

if this was a criminal conspiracy to influence the

election

how much influence we talking about here

in terms of how much influence this alleged criminal

conspiracy could have had on the election

how influential is the national enquirer all right i mean

the national enquirer only reportedly has about a hundred

and fifty thousand two hundred thousand copies sold nationwide

in a week these days

but the covers covers of the only thing that matters

they have their covers in the face of everyone who shops in

the mainstream grocery store anywhere in america in all

fifty states the cover of the national enquirer per david

packer the only thing that matters that covers of time

magazine from the time of this alleged criminal conspiracy

with trump

covers that were in your face in every supermarket in the

country week after week and for months on end looked like this

trump why i am the only choice for president

the donald trump nobody knows the babes and bucks the real

reason he hates obama and the clintons this one has a

special place in my heart

putin picks trump for president

this one how trump will win

or following how trump will win the debate also hillary's

nephew was in the klan

trump takes charge also bill clinton his diet

and hillary is dying haha areas

corrupt that was not clear enough just as corrupt as one

big word also hillary will never be president and this was

their election eve bombshell edition

just make sure you had all the bases here hillary corrupt

faces criminal

before twenty sixteen the national enquirer never-before

endorsed a presidential candidate

all right this is what they did in twenty sixteen when they

did those covers they were doing something very different

with donald trump the man ever done with any politician before

something that was in the face of every person who ever walked

up to the little conveyor belt thing at a supermarket checkout

line anywhere in america any time during the duration of

the alleged conspiracy which was the duration of the twenty

sixteen campaign whether or not you ever picked up that

magazine let alone opened it past the cover this

propaganda which was the product of this allegedly

illegal campaign scheme was in the face of

likely if not tens of millions of americans perhaps

more than a hundred million americans how many of us go to

a grocery store

this was strictly a strange out of character first time ever

arrangement they made but this one candidate with trump that

prosecutors today in their opening statement said was a

criminal scheme to corrupt the twenty sixteen presidential

election criminal scheme that was hatched in a trump tower

meeting just a few weeks after he announced his candidacy for

president

a criminal scheme which ultimately landed him in

criminal court today as the first-ever us president to be a

defendant in a criminal trial when you cover up of that

alleged criminal conspiracy which charged as a string of

thirty four felonies and new york state

trump's lawyer defense council dot todd blanche was in the

middle of his opening statements today when something

unusual happened todd blanche trump defense council quote

michael cohen paying stormy daniels or stephanie clifford

a hundred and thirty thousand dollars in exchange for her

green to not publicly spread false false claims about

president trump it is not illegal i'm going to say that

again entering into a nondisclosure agreement

prosecutor objection judge sustained

mister blanche entering into a nondisclosure agreement is

perfectly legal prosecution objection the judge overruled

mister thompson continues on for a moment then it happens

again pretty much right away todd blanche when miss daniels

threatened to go public with her false claim of a sexual

encounter with president trump back in two thousand eight

that it was as the people just said very close to the

election and it was almost an attempt by ms clifford ms

daniels to extort president trump prosecutor objection

judge sustains

lance then tries to keep going but then a moment later

mister blanche again entering into an agreement with another

individual you'll hear this agreement was negotiated by

lawyers prosecutor objection

now at this point judge for sean does not even rule on the

objection doesn't say sustain doesn't say overruled instead

calls lawyers from both sides up to the bench please

approach

lawyers and the judge then confer and then the judge

rules judge the objection is the state

still mister blanched trump's lawyer moves on to another

topic

but it makes it just three further pages into the

transcript and the whole thing starts all over again this time

it's over a mention of michael cohen todd blanche trump's

defense council quote separately from his obsession

with president trump has obsession get president trump

on multiple occasions michael cohen has testified under oath

and lied prosecutor objection the judge sustained

blanche he walked his he's walked into a courtroom very

near here raised his right hand and swore to tell the

truth and now he will tell you i expect that he was

lying prosecutor objection judge sustained

and for a second time the judge calls up the lawyers for

both sides to the bench to the best counsel please approach

and a second time he upholds the objection

the judge was shot the objection is the state

i was in the court when the string of objections happened

in the middle of trump's teams opening statements both sides

getting repeatedly hauled up before the judge that report

or excuse me the lawyer having to restart what he was saying

try to find his momentum again pick back up

to me as a lay person it seemed dramatic and strange

but i want to ask our lawyers here how rare is it for

objections to be made during opening statements how rare is

it for the judge to interrupt opening statements with

multiple directions to the lawyers including the one

making the opening statement they got to come up with a

mention doctor the judge

why are these objections made what does this tell us about

the trial and about the defense that trump's lawyer is trying

to make luckily joining us now is lisa rubin who was at

the courthouse today in the overflow room lisa i

understand that part of your sacrifice today was allowing me

to be in the courtroom in a seat that you might otherwise

have had your butt in so as not to attack a fight i'm very

grateful and i here by the creek back to yeah

you actually in some ways in the office of overflow or might

have a slightly better view of this than i did sitting at the

back of the courtroom watching it started down the aisle

what was happening there at how weird was it

so it was weird not just because there was one

objection but because of how many there were relative to the

brevity of todd lunches opening statement let's start

with the fact that tub lynch was an experienced prosecutor

and the southern district of new york but what he's not is

an experienced defense lawyer we learned today from new york

magazine something that confirms something that i

suspected which is that tomblin just right exactly one

trial as defense counsel and the last decade and on a fairly

narrow issue and if you were just in that courtroom he

probably would have expected as much because he's flow was

interrupted so many times by these frequent objections and

the side bars now that having been said rachel i think a

number of the things that he did today where perfectly

intentional because while they were objected to in the

objections were sustained he still planted the seeds of

doubt in the jurors minds and in particular for example

when he said that stormy daniels made donald trump a

victim of extortion that was immediately objected to in

sustained because that among other things is a legal

conclusion there was no prosecution for example