Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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 never got to see the evidence for themselves. They didn't get to see Trump's eyes close and his mouth go slack while he sat slumped at the defense table.
They didn't get to hear Stormy Daniels' salacious testimony firsthand. They didn't get to watch the judge clear the courtroom, seemingly in anger, as he butted heads with one particularly truculent witness. Instead, Americans had to rely on word from the few reporters who were actually in the room, making notes, writing down, committing to memory the things we saw and experienced, things that a transcript cannot capture.
Take a look. That was something to behold. I could hear gasps all around me. I wasn't sure we were going to get to a place where we had any guilty verdict against Donald Trump, let alone all 34 counts. Donald Trump was criming from the Oval Office. Even Todd Blanch said that Donald Trump was writing checks from the White House. This is as professional a jury as you can get, and you can never read anything from them. Just in terms of the vibe in the room, what you have heard about it being kind of a
Tonight, we welcome you to this special MSNBC event, Prosecuting Donald Trump, Revealed.
Witness to history. Over this next hour, Andrew Weissman and I will lead you through what you missed inside that courtroom. Not the line by line details of witness testimony, but with the help of our MSNBC and NBC colleagues, we'll tell you what it was really like to sit just behind Donald Trump as the details of the case spilled out. We'll tell you what it felt like in the room when witnesses took the stand just a few feet away from the former president.
The unscripted, unpredictable moments when the former president seemed to be nodding off or muttering curse words. What people said to each other in the line for the bathroom after that riveting, controversial testimony from Stormy Daniels. From Andrew Weissman and from some of our best legal minds, we'll hear what they saw inside the courtroom that the non-lawyers like the rest of us might have missed. Let's start things off with our first impressions from inside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse.
It's a surreal moment to go into that courtroom for the first time and see a former president of the United States who is simultaneously the world's greatest clown. Those two things at the same time, as a criminal defendant, just spins things in your head that nothing else can. And the weirdness of that alone is your first reaction
hour in the courtroom. And in that first hour in the courtroom, 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, because I feel like as somebody who's written a Trump book and has been covering this man, you know, from the beginning of his presidential campaign on, this kind of felt like a crescendo moment for him and for the country. And it is the only trial that he's going to face. So it definitely felt like a big moment and something that I really did want to witness for myself.
Having worked in the Mueller investigation and, you know, we could not charge the sitting president, then Donald Trump, that was a Department of Justice rule. Now, in a full-fledged criminal case, it was kind of remarkable. I thought there'd be a lot of people there, a lot of pro-Trump people in particular, and there really weren't.
And then found my NBC fam, found the spot where we do stand-ups, found all the producers and camera operators and everything, and then just got in line and stood in line for a really long time. I will say the thing that I learned was it is not what you are wearing that makes a difference. It is what you are wearing on your feet.
because where you are going to get cold is through the soles of your dress shoes. You idiot. Why didn't you wear sneakers? So people understand it's not just you just walk up to the courthouse and they whisk you in and it's just kind of this easy breezy kind of thing. I mean, you line up outside across the street from Center Street because they anticipate a number of people showing up. So you have three different
It's almost like flying on an airline where they actually kind of put you in a different group of people to board. So they're two courtrooms. They look identical. The only difference being the judge and the jury, et cetera, aren't in the overflow. That overflow room holds other members of the media. It also holds members of the public. And that overflow room has a very large monitor at the front of it that shows directly the
counsel's table. So you have the prosecution on one side, the defense on the other. But you very clearly see Donald Trump. It was like a spa compared to the courtroom. You can go to the restroom whenever you want to. You can. And there's this absence of tension in the overflow room that I didn't know I was feeling in the courtroom.
until I wasn't in the courtroom. And it's almost like, you know, you're standing in this very difficult wind all day and then the wind stops. You know, it's that kind of very different sensation in what seems to be the same place. The day before Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama had gone to the trial and said it was the most depressing building he'd ever been in and heaped scorn on it. And I was, I take that man's
statements with a grain of salt, but it was perfectly nice. It was a good, highly functioning municipal building. It kind of struck me how much a certain class of Americans are used to very elite spaces, and they're not used to public spaces, municipal spaces, bureaucratic spaces. Particularly if you're poor, you have to spend a lot of time in those kinds of spaces. Elite people, people with power and money, they tend to be in
Donald Trump in that setting, both when he's walking past you, you know, he walks in and out and you kind of see him for the first time. And this is the first time I've ever seen him in person. He was less than expected. The first time I was in the courtroom, Donald Trump was very surprised to see me because it had been mostly reporters, you know, very few anchor types showing up there.
And Donald Trump has hated me longer than anyone who was going to walk into that courtroom. He was once very fond of Stormy Daniels and, you know, very fond of Michael Cohen. But in 2011, when Donald Trump started talking about President Obama's birth certificate, I said he was lying about it, and I called him a liar. And Donald Trump had never been called a liar before in his life, even though he lived a life of lying. When he was leaving that day,
He just did the stupidest thing he could possibly 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 tough guy and scary and threatening and full of hate. But he's a terrible actor.
And so 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 in all 50 states would be calling in sick to work in order to stay home and watch this thing. I mean, it 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 surprise to make every witness kind of a cliffhanger. I mean, it's it's you can't like I don't know if Trump is falling asleep or if he's just resting his eyes, but it's not boring. It's riveting.
Riveting is the perfect word to describe what it was like inside Donald Trump's trial. Every trial is dramatic. It's why we all get addicted to TV shows like Law & Order and The Wire.
But this is real life, and it was no exception. But it is one thing to hear the news about it, or if you're a nerd like me, to read the cold transcript. But tonight, we're going to continue to learn from people who are inside the courtroom, day in and day out, waking up at the crack of dawn 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. So tonight, I'm joined by a very special legal panel.
who also spent many hours in the Manhattan criminal courthouse. Please welcome NBC senior legal correspondent and attorney Laura Jarrett, MSNBC host, legal contributor, and like me, a former criminal trial attorney, Katie Fang, and MSNBC legal correspondent and a former big law litigator, Lisa Rubin. They are here with us for the whole hour, along with MSNBC hosts giving us their impressions from inside the courthouse. Lisa.
Obviously, some of these witnesses got a ton of attention. They may not have been the most important witnesses, but Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen, and maybe the most surprising witness, which was the defendant's last witness, the last witness anyone heard, Bob Costello. Spoiler alert, I thought that was a huge bomb.
But I was wondering, just big picture, what was your impression of how they did that people might not get from just reading accounts and hearing from us, you know, about what was technically said? What was the sort of demeanor and tone that people might get?
I think the most important part about the witness that you can't get from reading the transcripts or sometimes even watching our coverage is the entrance and the exit, because all of the witnesses were brought in through a side door to the courtroom instead of the traditional back door where you walk along the entirety of the gallery. You walk through the center well, and then you walk to the witness stand here.
Each and every witness, no matter hostile to Donald Trump or friendly, had to walk by his first row of surrogates on their way into the courtroom, flanked by courtroom security officers, and then those of them who had counsel, their counsel then followed thereafter. In some cases, Trump really wanted to have an interaction with them, as with Rona Graf, his former executive assistant.
other cases, the body language was as hostile as hostile could be. Michael Cohen looked like he wanted to vault over the courtroom little doors so that he could avoid being even proximate to Donald Trump. And so I thought that entrance and exit was really fascinating to watch. So, Katie, I had a question for you as somebody who's spent so many years as a criminal prosecutor.
prosecutor. Lots of people have talked about how there should have been cameras in the courtroom or at least audio. And let's leave that aside for a moment. Sure. How do you think if there had been cameras that might have affected witnesses, the lawyers on either side, or even the defendant, Donald Trump, if this had been televised? I think it would have increased the intensity of the experience for everyone involved, especially the witnesses.
I mean, you kind of ask yourself whether or not Donald Trump himself would have maybe reacted even more visibly than he did. Maybe he wouldn't have acted or looked like he was asleep if he knew that there was a camera trained on him. But when it comes to the witnesses himself, it's important because if they knew, just like we've seen in other trials, that they would be on the witness stand, I think it would have amplified maybe even performances that we've seen.
we saw from some of the witnesses. And so I think you're more hyper aware. And then I also think the jurors would have been aware, even if you never saw their identities. I know that they know it's important what is at stake, but when you're in the courtroom, it's a small space. I think people need to understand this is not some huge cavernous federal courtroom. It is a small state courtroom. And so people are within very close proximity to Lisa's point,
within feet of each other. And that is the jury. And so if you know also, it's not just the people in the courtroom that are watching or the overflow room, it's America and the world. I think that amplifies the intensity. Excellent point. I was really surprised by how close the witness stand was to the jury box. Really close. And actually the witness stand from Donald Trump was much, much further. So that was something I think you don't get from not being there.
We have much more of our super smart legal panel who are inside the courtroom coming up. But first, it was some of the most shocking testimony of the trial when Stormy Daniels took the stand, all while apparently, unbeknownst to us, wearing a bulletproof vest. After the break, our team takes us not only inside the courtroom, but inside the elevators and, wait for it, back to the court.
bathroom lines where reporters tried to process what they had just heard. You're watching Prosecuting Donald Trump, Witness to History. Many of the journalists in the room were kind of looking at each other thinking, my gosh, I cannot believe this is happening. I cannot believe this is actually what's being said on a public stage. And also, by the way, how am I going to communicate this on television?
Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts to get new episodes of Morning Joe and the Rachel Maddow Show ad-free. Plus, ad-free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, Ultra, Bagman, and Deja News.
And now all MSNBC original podcasts are available ad free and with bonus content, including how to win 2024 prosecuting Donald Trump. Why is this happening? And more subscribe to MSNBC premium on Apple podcast. Welcome back to prosecuting Donald Trump. Witness to history is our special report on in-person in the courtroom reporting of the first ever criminal trial of a U.S. president.
So after years of covering Stormy Daniels and her claims that Donald Trump paid her to keep quiet about a sexual encounter so it wouldn't come out before the 2016 election, what was it like to finally see her in person when she finally took the stand to testify against him? And after her dramatic, combative, sometimes shocking testimony, what was the conversation like among the reporters and the spectators at the courthouse?
And what about that bulletproof vest her lawyer says she wore to court? Here are some more firsthand accounts from my colleagues who are inside the room. When she came in, all of us kind of took a deep breath. No one expected, I mean, we don't know who the witnesses are until that day for a reason, right? The prosecution always protects their witnesses. And so through sources, we might figure out who the witnesses, maybe an hour beforehand. And that morning, Donald Trump had posted on True Social that
that they had just been informed of who the witness was and they hadn't prepared and that person shouldn't be able to take a stand. And so the minute he had posted that, and then by the way, deleted it an hour later,
we said it's going to be Stormy. I have compared this trial to watching two movies that are made eight years apart, and none of the central characters look the way you remember them in 2016. And that's as true of Michael Cohen, for example, as it is of Stormy Daniels. On day one, she came in in a jumpsuit with her hair sort of like haphazardly piled up atop her head, wearing glasses and not looking at all like Stormy.
the adult film star that we remembered.
I have since come to learn, because her lawyer said this on another media outlet, she was wearing a bulletproof vest. And that accounted, I think, for her appearance as well. She was wearing an outfit that accommodated her wearing a bulletproof vest because she felt that her life was at risk in coming to court and testifying against former President Trump. And the reaction of people in MAGA world or who are loyal to President Trump about her testimony — I can just tell you this by looking at my Twitter feed —
reinforced why she felt she was a danger. There were no Trump reactions to the Stormy Daniels thing that you can see. But there's Donald Trump, known to millions of people as the orange turd, who has to sit there for the first time in his life and listen to himself being called the orange turd. And the person who is doing that is his defense lawyer, thinking this somehow harms Stormy Daniels.
that she flippantly refers to Donald Trump as the orange turd. There's not a juror there who cares that Stormy Daniels refers to him as the orange turd. Not one. They're not offended by it. I mean, these are New Yorkers. These are people who have heard worse, you know, in every, you know, trip in the subway. So we leave the courtroom. We, you know, walk out. There's like a row of bathrooms during breaks. Everybody kind of lines up in the bathroom like you would
You know, at any kind of public place, we're all like online, kind of looking at each other, giving eyes at each other, especially when we know each other. Oh my gosh, is that really what happened? Getting onto the elevator, going down for lunch. Did she just accuse the former president of this? Did she just say this happened with the former president? Everyone's kind of mulling over and digesting what it is we all just heard. The jurors, I think, have been admirably sort of stone-faced about
I know I've seen reports. I didn't see it with my own eyes, but I've seen reports of some jurors kind of involuntarily reacting to some of the more salacious details that came out, particularly during Stormy Daniels' testimony. I didn't see anything like that. For me, the jury was like Stonehenge. Just like head, head, head, head. Like they were very...
Restrain. This is a case about falsifying business records, and the defense team made it a case that sounded like a 1970s rape case. They went at her really hard about the fact that she's been in the porn industry for years. The defense counsel said, you've been in more than 200 porn films, so how could it be that you were possibly this damsel in distress in the hotel room? And in that moment, I looked right at the jurors' faces to try to see if I could read anything and get any glimpse of what they were thinking. They're inscrutable.
They are maintaining a poker face the whole time. This is the same courtroom that Harvey Weinstein was tried in, right? This is a storied courthouse. This is a storied prosecution team. They have done sex crimes before, and it was just such a moment to have the woman at the center of this case basically told she couldn't have possibly been uncomfortable because she had been in porn. You know, she was treated...
so differently than other witnesses. Hope Hicks and David Pecker, the person who headed the National Enquirer, were devastating witnesses. Their substantive testimony
It's so damning for Donald Trump and their cross-examination was kid gloves. Nobody's testimony is in some respects more devastating to the former president than Hope Hicks because of her proximity. Nobody questioned her credibility. But if you take a step back and you separate these women and you forget about the accident of their respective births, Hope Hicks, for example, coming from very wealthy Greenwich, Connecticut, being raised as a Ralph Lauren model, sort of the epitome of polarizing
poise and grace in the Trump White House, contrasted with Stormy Daniels, who had, by contrast, a very rough childhood, a mother who abandoned her. All of this comes out on her direct examination. But
The difference in how they were trusted, I think, is really palpable in a sort of a toxic brew of class and misogyny. There was absolutely a judgment about her credibility based on what she did for a living. And then you have to think to yourself, well, wait a second. Hope Hicks may look the way that she did, but she's not.
But she not only worked for Trump once, she worked for Trump twice. She left the White House in March of 2018, came back to work for the former president and stayed after he lost the election, despite the fact that she was privately advising him that he had lost and the things that his lawyers and allies were saying about his not losing the election and his winning were fraudulent. She still stayed. And so I had a question like, who lacks credibility now?
So fascinating to hear those stories. And as that piece mentioned, the legal brains in the room were hyper-focused on the defense's strategy to go hard after Stormy Daniels on cross-examination, but not Hope Hicks or David Pecker. Our panel, which had a front-row seat to it all, is back. Katie Fang, Lisa Rubin, and Laura Jarrett. So, to the
Katie, from your spot in the courtroom, what do you think of Stormy Daniels? How did she do from actually seeing her live as opposed to just reading it cold? She did a spectacular job. Stormy Daniels' testimony did not come across as rehearsed. There was an authenticity to her, whether you liked it or not. Because of the sincerity, it didn't seem like she had rehearsed or practiced her testimony. Now, given she had prepared herself.
And that's the big difference. Preparing with lawyers is totally different. But she prepared for that and she did a great job. And I think she knew that even though I call it a detour, not a sideshow, but a detour, the case took a detour to explore what happens between her and Donald Trump because you had to create the foundation of why that payment was made by Michael Cohen and how it got to the level of the business records being falsified. But you needed to have that dialogue.
And what was really important is everybody likes to say that this is a paper case, but it is about humanity in some way, right? People's courage, people's involvement with others, extramarital affairs, you know, hush money payments. I mean, all of that is a very human thing. And she brought that humanity, I think, to the case. Yeah, I had the same reaction. 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 well.
sort of naturally to questions that she didn't know what was coming up. And you really got a sense of her. And also, I thought how smart she was. Witty, quick. Exactly. Like, you know, the sort of assumptions, as you said, are ones that are sort of you sort of I sort of found myself checking myself saying, why did I why am I so surprised? I shouldn't have been. So, Laura,
So one of the more unusual aspects of this case was how it ended, with Bob Costello being called by the defense. And I did not see that coming. Lisa always thought they would call him. I thought they wouldn't do it.
I am with you. And one of the reasons I'm with you is that Bob Costello, if you remember, was somebody who Donald Trump said before this case was indicted that he wanted the grand jurors to hear from him. And I thought, well, OK, that's a really stupid move because it's never going to stop the grand jury from indicting. And you just revealed something to the prosecution. And, you know, as a defense lawyer, I'm
one of the things you have, as a matter of fact, sometimes almost the only thing you have is surprise. And so here they sort of, it was flopped out to the prosecution a year ago. So,
Obviously, the cold record here does give some flavor to Bob Costello. I don't know if it explains the clearing of the courtroom and how dramatic it was to be in the room when the judge was so fired up. I thought he was going to throw him behind bars. Yeah. So Bob Costello gets on the stand and right away he is combative. He is aggressive. He is rolling his eyes. He's muttering audibly. Could you hear it? I am in the courtroom lighting up the chat like God.
this is going off the rails fast, okay? And we just, we had a sense it was going south, but I didn't know it was going to go as south as it did. And when you're the cheese in the overflow room, by the way. Yeah. Wow. And so when you're there, you're also communicating to your colleagues. Yes, we should. We sort of have a bizarre pony express situation now where we're allowed to use some electronics, but not all in the courtroom. So we can't use our phones in the physical courtroom because I think there's a concern that somebody's going to mess up and tape it, even though we've been admonished not to, but we can use our lap
laptops. And so we can send messages via email, via Slack, via DM, but we just can't use our phones. And so in the chat, we're all sending color from the courtroom about what we're observing, about tone, about how sort of things are going. I often just focus on the jury because I'm very interested in what they're picking up on. Right away, the jury's looking at each other like some stuff's about to go down here. OK, so it had been a sleepy morning. Everybody was sort of feeling Monday and
In all of its glory. And then Bob Costello gets on the stand in the afternoon and we're off to the races. And so because he was so, I think, contemptuous of the judge and the process and did not like being interrupted. This is a former federal prosecutor who really felt like he should be respected. And he thought Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, was challenging him in a way that he didn't like. And he didn't like being interrupted when she was objecting. And most of those objections were sustained.
And so in the room, it just the tension is boiling. OK. And finally, the judge sends the jury out and I go, oh, God, here we go. But then Robert Cassell is giving it back to
back to the judge and the judge got so upset, he clears the courtroom from the press, which is highly unusual. OK, usually if there's a security situation, that's one thing. This was not that this was the judge was fired up. And I think he was worried about what he might say. And so he clears the courtroom for only a few minutes. We should make that clear. It wasn't long. We all come back in and he's still kind of rolling his eyes for the for the remainder of the afternoon. So there is a period that the period where everyone's out of the courtroom, uh,
other than you have the, obviously the defense table, the prosecution table, but then the public and the press are out of the room. So now we're- Well, not all the public. The allies say. Yeah, there you go. That's what I was going to say. So it's really interesting because I think, as you mentioned, the first two rows, which are sort of friends of, it's like bride and groom, they're still there.
But this is one where all of us have to go with a cold record. And it's chaotic. The media is screaming, we have a right to be here. Our media lawyers trying to object. The court officers are having none of it. The judge is not having any of it. So everybody's ushered out. Now, thankfully, the judge did make a record of what happened.
and what he said to Bob Costello. And so in a couple of hours, we all saw the transcript. We know what happened. But in the moment, we all were sent out, which obviously we wish had not happened. So this legal panel will stay put for more of our excellent discussion. But first, you could feel the tension in the courtroom when Trump's one time fixer, Michael Cohen, took the stand and came face to face with his ex boss for the first time in years.
He was like Sammy Gravano and John Gotti, Andy Fastow and Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay, a long line of underlings flipping on their bosses. So after the break, our team gives us their firsthand accounts of what that moment was like. The first moment when Trump's lawyer, Todd Blanch, gets up and asks Cohen, did you call me a...
a little crying or whatever. The judge immediately instructs them to approach as the DA's office raises an objection. Everyone was talking about that. Subscribe to MSNBC premium on Apple podcasts to get new episodes of morning Joe and the Rachel Maddow show ad free plus ad free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, ultra bag man and Deja news.
And now, all MSNBC original podcasts are available ad-free and with bonus content, including How to Win 2024, Prosecuting Donald Trump, Why Is This Happening?, and more. Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts. Once the testimony from Stormy Daniels was over, we didn't have to wait long before the next very dramatic testimony. Michael Cohen, Trump's former fixer and loyal attack dog, said,
now a star witness for the prosecution. And his testimony placed the former president at the center of this alleged criminal scheme. So what was it like in person? What was it like when Michael Cohen saw his old boss for the first time in years? And what was it like to witness the showdown between Cohen and Trump's defense lawyers during what turned out to be just a brutal cross-examination?
Let's go back inside the courtroom with our MSNBC and NBC colleagues.
The jury has been waiting for this moment as long as we have. It's highly anticipated. They've come face to face before in the civil fraud trial, but this is criminal. This is different. And he is the only one who can tie Donald Trump directly to this crime. He is the linchpin of the prosecutor's case and he's given up the goods. He's put him from Trump Tower to the Oval Office in a way that nobody else can. There's a few moments that really stood out. The first moment when
Trump's lawyer, Todd Blanch, gets up and asks Cohen, did you call me a little crying sh** or whatever it was, and the judge immediately instructs him to approach as the DA's office raises an objection. Everyone was talking about that. Everyone was talking about what a strange way that was for Blanch to open the proceedings. When you prosecute cases where everybody has their hands dirty, and that's Michael Cohen at the time when he was working for Donald Trump and doing these things for him,
It always, always captivates and captures the interest of the jury when they hear from
the fixer, when they hear from the henchmen, when they hear from the guys that did the dirty work for the kingpin. I did not notice any interaction between the former president and Michael Cohen, but I did notice how closely Michael Cohen is making eye contact with the jury, especially when he's describing some of the more emotional parts of the story, when he's describing his sort of
come-to-Jesus moment about why he decided he was going to choose his family over Donald Trump. I think Cohn was successful in maintaining control over his own demeanor. He did not get agitated. He did not act out. There were times where he got short or a little snippy, but mostly maintained a kind of equilibrium throughout that I think was probably helpful with the jury.
I think he did do a pretty good job of humanizing himself. Look, there are many people on the jury that will never know a person whose loyalty to an accused criminal defendant was as extensive as Michael Cohen's was by his own admission. And of course, Michael Cohen is a person who pled guilty on two different occasions to a panoply of federal crimes, what one of the judges called a smorgasbord of crime.
Those were some of the most stunning days in court when Michael Cohen finally took the stand. As the piece mentioned, the jury seemed to have been waiting for that moment as long as the journalists in the room had been.
But being there in person, there were some really noticeable differences between the Michael Cohen we've gotten to know on cable news shows or maybe his podcast versus who we saw testifying, his demeanor, how he sounded. I have to say, I almost did a double take when the defense played a clip
of Cohen from his podcast, when you heard his voice from the podcast, and you could just compare that to what you had heard from the stand over the last day. And that contrast is something that can play very well for the defense in summation to argue there are really two Michael Cohens. Katie, Lisa, and Laura are back with us. So Laura, I wanted to ask you about that issue of how you thought
his sort of very polite, unflappable, even keeled demeanor. Solemn. Yeah. Which in many ways is what you want a witness to be. How you thought that played given that they did see this other piece of that he actually heard his voice. And he also was describing the way he behaved and bullying people and acting as a phrase that I hate, but I'm going to use as sort of Trump's pit
He has known that this moment is coming for a long time. For anybody getting up there, it's rattling, and he kept his cool, even when things got thrown his way that he wasn't prepared for and that were a surprise and that made him look like a liar. Yeah, even, you know, he was crossed at some point about his, um,
with information about his wife and his child. And I thought, "Oof, okay, what's gonna happen?" I was waiting for fireworks. What happened? - But they didn't come. He kept it calm. And I think that he came off
on the stand sort of had in hand honest. There were certain times where I felt like he was sort of resisting in terms of like, well, that wasn't really a lie. And I thought, just tell them, of course, just own it. You've already come this far. They've heard you on another podcast talking about
Revenge is a dish best served cold. Like, let's just lay it all out there. And they won't punish you for it. If you if the jury thinks that you're being authentic, even if what you said was like horrendous. Right. Jurors have believed like drug dealers and people who have murdered children before. They think they're being honest. They can get there. But you have to come off as authentic. And so I was surprised there were times where there was like you could feel that resistance.
Katie, I wanted to talk to you about Juan Marchand, the judge overseeing this. Full disclosure, I now have a man crush on him. I...
I just think he is just a spectacular judge. The first thing when I went to court the very first time, I was struck by his voice. And we've all been in court. We've seen judges and we've seen judges who can't control the courtroom. We see judges who control the courtroom by raising their voice and through histrionics and here, you know,
he controlled the courtroom by being the adult in the room and had such a calm judicial temperament. And I, I,
I just felt like he wasn't going to tolerate and he expected everyone to behave properly. It was just, I thought, just remarkable. And I thought, well, that's sort of my view. I didn't let that influence you. How did you think he did? I mean, this is the first ever trial of a current or former president. Enormous pressures, enormous claims of power.
violations of the gag order that he found 10 times and a lot of novel legal issues to deal with. How do you think he did managing this case? So you and I know as trial lawyers, I mean, we've been inside courtrooms in front of judges on very high stakes cases. The one thing that we know is the person who's gatekeeping everything is the judge, right? And to Laura's point that she made earlier, the jury looks to the judge specifically
sometimes as a paternal figure or a maternal figure or just somebody who's going to be there to kind of guide us through this process, which can be confusing. It can be maze-like for some people. The thing about Donald Trump is he has introduced us to different judges, right? We've seen the confirmation hearings of the Brett Kavanaughs of the world and his demeanor during a confirmation hearing.
night. We've also seen Justice Arthur Ngoron through the civil fraud trial for the New York attorney general. We've seen Judge Kaplan, Judge Lewis Kaplan from federal court for E.G. Carroll's trials. We've seen different judges. And the thing that I think is so, you know, so poor in terms of America not being able to know Judge Marchand is not being able to see and hear him.
Because he is measured and he is calm, even in the face of all of this scrutiny and even the face of all these complex legal issues. Why? Because this man, Judge Bershon, came to the United States. He emigrated at the age of six from Colombia.
He's the he's one of six children. He was washing dishes. He went to school. You know, he graduated. He's the first member of his family to go to college. He lived in Queens. He worked at the New York days, the Manhattan D.A.'s office, excuse me, and the New York state attorney general's office and has been a judge since 2006. If there's anyone who isn't a fellow New Yorker.
I beg you, find somebody else who's not more New York than Judge Juan Merchant. He is what a lot of New Yorkers are. And I think that's a really interesting thing when you think about Donald Trump having a jury of his peers in this trial. But having a man like Judge Merchant, who's overseeing just the personalities, right, and having to be able to manage that, he's done a fantastic job. And I think it's just not good that we haven't been able to see that in terms of on video and on audio. Yeah.
I love your response because Donald Trump has attacked this judge. It's not the first time he's attacked judges because of, as Donald Trump says, he's unfair because of where he comes from. That's a quote. We all know what that means. And your answer tells us exactly where this judge came from. And, you know, there will be controversy on this trial with one side or the other in every trial.
one side is disappointed or not as to what happened. And the fact that we were all there inside the court, I think we can all agree. I mean, this is such a fair trial and such a fair process because of the judge. There are really good lawyers on both sides. Whatever, you know, is happening, it's not because the process isn't working. And it's really, I think, important. And I think the judge is primarily responsible for that in terms of how he's handled this.
So, all right, we're not the only ones consumed by this trial. Our viewers also have a lot of questions. We'll answer a few of them. You're watching Prosecuting Donald Trump, Witness to History.
So, all right, we're not the only ones consumed by this trial. Our viewers also have a lot of questions. We'll answer a few of them. You're watching Prosecuting Donald Trump, Witness to History. So welcome back to Prosecuting Donald Trump, Witness to History, our special report on in-person, in-the-courtroom reporting of the first ever criminal trial of an American president.
Over the last 50 minutes or so, we've given you an inside look at the trial through the eyes of our MSNBC team. So welcome back to Prosecuting Donald Trump, Witness to History, our special report on in-person, in-the-courtroom reporting of the first ever criminal trial of an American president. Over the last 50 minutes or so, we've given you an inside look at the trial through the eyes of our MSNBC team. But we know that you have lots of questions about what you saw over the last several weeks.
Here's Andrew Weissman and our legal panel. Thanks, Rachel. Back with us now, Laurie Jarrett, Katie Fang, Lisa Rubin.
Let's get right to the viewer question. So Myrna from New Jersey asks, in the New York City courthouse, why were special accommodations made for Trump and his allies? I know you've been very focused on the last part of that, his allies. For example, Trump was allowed a special area to rant and rave against the judicial system and others and lie blatantly. And his son and allies were allowed to keep their phones while in court. So why was that?
I'll give you what I think is the only reasonable argument for it and then stipulate that it has been abused and wildly so. I think the legitimate reason is for his own security. These are arrangements that were made between the court, the NYPD and the Secret Service. So, for example, Trump enters through a separate entrance to the courthouse. There is a street that is blocked off for his motorcade to approach that entrance. They use separate elevators. He's got his own holding rooms. And when he appears for those press conferences that Myrna noted,
he comes through a set of darkened glass doors beyond which are those holding rooms. However, there are some things that are going on here that definitely have been abused. The first of which is the reserved seats. Those are supposed to be for extra members of his defense team. And that's the way that the DA's office has used their side of the bride side, as you put it earlier. But again,
In Trump's case, he's using it for sort of a rotating surrogate operation. And those surrogates not only have their phones, but they are tweeting from the courtroom. We can prove that they are tweeting from the courtroom, given the timestamps on their tweets or true social posts. And they are often doing it to circumvent the gag order, which one of them admitted on another media outlet last week. So there are some special arrangements here.
They should have been made for former president's security, and yet they have been rampantly abused by him and his friends. Including the group of people from Congress wearing, well, the men at least were wearing sort of identical uniforms, which were mini-me's of the former president. I should note, all former presidents are given secret service, so it's not like Donald Trump on that is being treated differently. Last question that we have from Michelle from the Netherlands, and she asks...
Is the decision of the jury final? Well, welcome to being in with a panel of lawyers, because this is the kind of question where this is why lawyers don't have a great name, which is it depends. But here's like a one key answer. If there is a conviction, right?
That is something that can be appealed on the law. If there were legal mistakes that were made, if the jury was instructed improperly on the law, if evidence was kept out that was material improperly, those kinds of things can be appealed and it can take quite some time.
And so there is recourse there. So really complicated. But let me just say thank you so much to our incredible team. It is really great to be here nerding out with lawyers and all of us having been in the courtroom. Thanks so much for your perception and insight and personal stories. And thank you.
all of you for spending the last hour with us. If you can't get enough Trump news and you want to dig even deeper, try the MSNBC podcast, Prosecuting Donald Trump, hosted by Mary McCord and me. Have a great night.
Hi, everyone. It's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, Why Is This Happening, author and philosopher Daniel Chandler on the roots of a just society. I think that those genuinely big fundamental questions about whether liberal democracy will survive, what the shape of our society should be, feel like they're genuinely back on the agenda. I think it feels like we're at a real, you know, an inflection point or a turning point in the history of liberal democracy. That's this week on Why Is This Happening. Search for Why Is This Happening wherever you're listening right now and follow.