think of the relative, the one that nobody in the family believes, they're text messaging about. you're laughing because you have that family member. i do too. i have a few of them, and you text about them, and they tell you a story and we all roll our eyes, how believable is that. people who don't remember when it's convenient for them, it doesn't look good. even if it's true. i wonder if the jury is seeing he had zero problems remembering things when the prosecution asked him, and now he seems to be giving answers, sounds like something, boy, i don't remember. when you're scripting your cross-examination, you can't etch it in granite. you have to be able to move with the answers, and i think a lot of these answers, these lack of memory answers, i think at least from the quasi transcript may be throwing todd blanche off a little bit. he's expecting questions he thinks cohen remembers, todd blanche is doing something i do

too, when you don't get the answer you want, you reask the same question. you're more amazing, and stalling, racking your brain, wait a minute, i had this down as a yes and now he's giving me an i don't know. you ask the same question again, if nothing else, you bought yourself eight seconds to figure out where you're going to go next. you can see that in the transcript, when he asks the same question again, he was surprised with the answer michael cohen gave him. you can't write your questions in stone because you're dealing with someone who on every question is trying to throw it back in your face. you have to be able to do improv. i want to say thank you so much for joining us this morning. it's the top of the hour, and give a quick reset for viewers who may be joining us now. michael cohen back on the stand. day three of cross-examination. he has been testifying before jurors for about an hour and a half this morning and todd blanche asking questions that

ultimately go to his credibility and whether he is truthful or not. our yasmin vossoughian continues to report outside the courthouse. take us through the key moments and where we are right now. >> reporter: i believe they're building towards the crescendo, the end of the initial cross-examination, and we'll move to redirect, and what seems to be the questions coming out of todd blanche, he has built this picture of michael cohen, made $4 million in the year of 2017, retainer agreements with various companies, six, seven communications, making exorbitant amounts of money. there was a line of questioning that i thought was interesting, they talked about the revelation, the "wall street journal" article about the payment made to stormy daniels, michael cohen repeatedly denied to many individuals that he spoke to at the time that donald trump had no knowledge of this payment, and he asked michael cohen repeatedly, you told, for instance, melania trump that donald trump knew nothing of these payments.

michael cohen said yes. you told other individuals throughout the period that donald trump knew nothing of these payments. michael cohen went on to say yes. you told maggie haberman on the record, that donald trump knew nothing of these payments. michael cohen said yes. you told a college friend that donald trump knew nothing of payments. michael cohen went on to say yes. bob costello, the friend of rudy giuliani, who donald trump, rudy giuliani and others were trying to convince michael cohen to retain as his attorney. he testified that he did not trust bob costello. he did not tell bob costello test because he never trusted him. there was an e-mail exchange between bob costello and michael cohen in which bob costello says i'm going to meet with my friend, rudy giuliani, kwhol -- who will then meet with his client, the president of the

united states at the time. did you tell bob costello that donald trump had sex with stormy daniels. no, because i did not trust him. they're building this picture of michael cohen in 2018 who repeatedly did not share information about donald trump knowing anything about these payments. he's getting all of this money, and he's denying that donald trump knew anything about the payments, building the crescendo, the end of the cross-examination, they will move to redirect from the prosecution, guys. >> thank you so much, yasmin, as we approach coming up on four past the hour. zana, and ms. demeros, a defense attorney. let's talk about what has been going on in the last half hour with this kind of focus on michael cohen's sources of income before, during and after trump becomes president and what he did for that income. and how that's now throwing on

what this 400,000 plus payment was all about. >> absolutely. so you know that this is where the defense was going to go, because one of their arguments is going to be, well, this really was a retainer, whether or not it was memorialized and it was in writing, it's not just the stormy daniels payment, it was more. you had other consulting agreements, made money from the trump organization outside of that. that's going to be one of the arguments that we see trump's team making in closings, and that's why there's so much focus. what they're going to try and say is, well, we called it a retainer. well, that's not really improper. it's not going to fulfill that level of falsification of business documents. on the flip side, you know, the stormy daniels payment is the lion's share of that, and michael cohen testified about structuring that payment as such in these $35,000 increments, specifically to pay him back, plus his taxes.

of course the defense attorneys are going to make that argument and poke holes, but i don't know if that's necessarily going to hold water at the end of the day. >> and, anna, we have been reporting the jury action, some looking around, watching people come in and out of the court, and i'm wondering is this necessary. does todd blanche need to continue on with cross-examination? >> we talked about this last week. this is a hard balance. what has to happen is on the one hand, you've got to keep the jury engaged. you want them to be listening, to be understanding what you're doing. on the other hand, if you don't get out particular facts, you may not argue them during summation. right now the defense is making sure it's getting out every single fact it wants to argue later on summation. that balance, now two and a half days in, this has been a long examination with needing to get

out every fact that they may want to argue on summation, and that's what they're dealing with right now. listen, they've got to be mindful as jurors zone out, it doesn't matter that you tell them you got it out during your cross-examination, they may not have heard it because they got bored. >> do you see, danny, as a defense attorney, a closing argument coming in to focus with where they're going here? >> yes, i mean, they really have a limited set of options here. they're going to pound the podium on reasonable doubt. i know that's coming. they're also going to point to the empty chair of allen weisselberg. one of the things in cross-examination, there's a sort of expectation, you can blame the movie "a few good men" or tv or whatever. we talked about this, you expect there to be an explosive moment. it doesn't happen that way in cross-examination. you're looking to get concessions, and you assemble

them at the end and highlight those in your closing argument. it's human nature. no one, including michael cohen is going to admit willingly that they were wrong or they lied. they're going to try and waffle out of it in some way. you're going to get an unsatisfying answer when you try to pin someone down. there were moments today, you stole from the trump organization, yes, i did. that was a huge concession. he didn't try to waffle out of the answer. not really, i thought of it as a reimbursement for my hard work. no, he admits he grabbed a bunch of cash and stole it. major concession. the real moments happen in closing when you marshal the facts together. the bottom line is you never know what a jury is going to seize on. sometimes they seize on something that's inconsequential. sometimes it's flat out irrelevant to the actual case. that's what they lock on to, end up discussing and when and if you find out as a lawyer, that,

everybody's nodding their head. they have had that experience. you think that's what you focused on. that wasn't even in the back of my mind, and yet it's that that leads attorneys to engage in over kill. it's because you never know. it's easy to say, this should be more surgical. i've been saying it. he should move on, tighten everything up. but we're not in there, and when you're in there and it's your case, and you know the facts cold, more than any of us ever will, including me, there is this tremendous fear that if you leave anything out, you might have missed that one thing, even if it's inconsequential that the jury would hang their head on and render a verdict in your favor. >> what's the responsibility now for the prosecution, and then talk to us, if you would, about the ever important judge's instructions? >> yeah, so right now, i think the prosecution on the redirect really needs to build or rehabilitate michael cohen. they need to rebuild him after

what i thought was effective, the effective testimony that was elicited by blanche about how he stole that money, they need to reinstate him as a human being, someone the defendant trump found, someone the prosecution didn't necessarily pick to deliver this testimony, and really highlight on the fact that cohen may have been a liar, may have some inconsistencies, may have some issues with his recollection, but when it comes down to the falsification of the business records, when it comes down to who paid that money to catch and kill the stormy daniels story, whether or not it was real false, and whether it comes down to how that money was repaid, therein lies the crime, and all of the stuff the defense wants to kind of focus on is irrelevant. because that is what michael cohen testified to and all of that was corroborated both by other testimonial evidence, as well as tangible documentary evidence. >> the judge's orders. >> with regard to the judge's

orders or jury instructions, when i was a prosecutor, what i liked to do was talk about the actual instructions they're going to hear from the court, and then i highlight all of the facts that i was able to show and elicit from the witness stand, all of the testimony that supports the law and how i've proven that law beyond a reasonable doubt. it looks like we're aligned, the instructions i'm saying to the jury is also going to be mirrored or repeated by the court when it comes down to right before deliberation when the judge gives instructions. >> i want to go back to vaughn hillyard. they're pressing cohen on conversations he had with robert costello, whose name has come up in this trial before, vaughn, but he's not someone who has taken the witness stand. what are jurors to make of this. explain how he fits into the

puzzle. >> reporter: right, and robert costello could potentially be called by the defense as a witness here, our own tom winter reported that costello suggested that he would be ready to testify. though he had not heard as of last week for the lawyers for donald trump that he should be ready to take the stand. costello is an interesting character, a trump ally lawyer who's been around the trump world for years now, but back in 2018, he was having conversations, lengthy conversations with michael cohen around the time that michael cohen had his phones taken by federal agents, and the fbi. they raided his hotel room, his home, his office, as part of their investigation into multiple layers of questionable decisions around michael cohen, and this is where robert costello, just last week in testimony, there were e-mails that were brought up by the

prosecution, in which robert costello was suggesting that his friend, rudy giuliani, was in close touch with donald trump. and it was essentially suggesting that he could be a conduit to having direct conversations with donald trump around the time of this investigation. of course there's concerns that he could potentially flip on trump. now, though, there was some questions over robert costello's public statements dating back to last year that cohen had told him that he did this on his own accord, the payment to stormy daniels and that donald trump did not direct him to do that. michael cohen has publicly stated that that is a lie, that he never told robert costello that. now what they're getting into here, the defense team for donald trump asking him about his relationship, essentially building up the credibility of robert costello, saying is it true that you communicated with costello up to 75 times. cohen says it seems high, but possible. did you have multiple phone

calls that lasted over an hour, yes. if i told you i had talked to robert costello for more than nine hours collectively. yes. robert costello could be a credible witness if he were to come to the stand and testify that cohen in 2018 told him he did this himself, the $130,000 payment, not donald trump. the other part of this is there is some dispute over whether robert costello had an actual agreement to represent michael cohen than to what extent are their conversations privileged or not. and michael cohen is acknowledging that they did not have a formal retainer agreement but that he believed that it was privileged, which, again is hitting at kind of the heart of the greater part of the story of whether donald trump and michael cohen despite having no retainer agreement, whether he was formally representing him as legal counsel. this is getting weedsy, but if robert costello were to take the

stand, this could be impactful. >> what is it telling you when the line of questioning is about him and their relationship? >> what i have been listening, when we were reading the testimony, i'm thinking to myself, is the defense going to call costello, and is a lot of eliciting this testimony laying the foundation for the jury to understand the relationship between michael cohen and costello who has said he has e-mails, texts, written communications that directly refute what michael cohen has said on the stand. so is that the next step for the defense? will they call him as a witness. i always said he was a wild card in this case. would he be called? i suppose the idea would be to corroborate some of what the defense is trying to get out there, a lot of what michael cohen has said isn't necessarily true, and is there something more dispositive than poking holes in his credibility? >> if they're going to go there to make the jury not feel like this is just a side show, i mean, the fact that they're bringing all of this up, does

this mean the defense really has to deliver? in fact, i'm the jury, i'm thinking, okay, where is he going with this. what are you building up to, right? >> yeah, i mean, i think that's really the issue is there are so many side shows, and so on the one hand, that can be helpful to the defense, right? look over here, and don't look here. that's something that we've all done, i think, as defense attorneys. and so that can be effective. the problem here is that we're just going on all of these avenues, and i think at a certain point, the jury is going to be like where are we actually going? what is the defense? what should i be looking at here. with these people who aren't here but keep getting talked about, we know this isn't the only person who has been discussed a lot but hasn't actually testified. i think this comes down to the jury instructions. we were just talking about that a little bit. to me, this case is going to be won or lost on the jury

instructions, what the judge decides, how he's going to instruct the witnesses that have not testified. that's going to be crucial. are there inferences that the jury is going to draw or may not consider whatsoever. >> can you give examples of that, what he could say as it relates to this case? >> part of what the judge has to determine is whether or not there can be an adverse inference drawn. if one of the sides decides not to call a witness. >> like allen weisselberg, for example, could the judge says to jury, you may assume that the prosecutor could have called them, that he could have testified in their favor, and they chose not to, therefore you can draw an adverse inference against them. part of the instruction is that the party, the side who is going to call them must know that they could have testified favorably, and in this case, we don't know how he would testify, and so i

don't think the judge is able to say that he could testify flavorablely -- favorably for either side. the judge is going to have to modify the instruction and determine how he wants to use these empty seats. >> as a defense attorney, what are you doing if you don't plan to bring robert costello as a witness but you spend an hour and a half talking about robert costello and his relationship with cohen? >> i think it's likely they will not call robert costello as a witness. i still think the best likelihood is that there are no witnesses for the defense. >> really? >> because here's the thing. let's say you call robert costello, and let's say he puts the lie to something cohen said about his interactions with robert costello. how much of the prosecution's case does that actually attack? do you really want to put on a witness? because once you do, the burden

doesn't shift to the defense, but once you start putting on witnesses, spiritually, the burden kind of shifts in the sense that you must be trying to prove something. >> and it opens up different lines of questioning. >> that's the other fear. listen, there's this mythological criminal defense attorney who has the big chalk stripes and he's outrageous in course. the reality is most of us are really risk averse. that's why we don't call our clients. i often rest without calling any witnesses. you don't want to be the cautionary tale in the courthouse. you hear about steve, steve called a bunch of witnesses and the prosecution secured them, and he grasped defeat from the jaws of victory. he had that case won. none of us want to be that. as a result, we're in an industry that's very risk averse. you don't want to put on witnesses and start shifting the burden to yourself. now it never actually shifts, it kind of does when you start calling a bunch of witnesses.

the move employed by most, and i don't have statistics, but a lot of times, criminal defense attorneys call no witnesses and base their entire argument on that lack of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. it's the safe thing to do. is it always the right thing to do, i don't know. we really don't know. honestly, i would like to see more defendants called to the stand. i think it might help them, but that would be bucking hundreds of years of then conventional wisdom, and you don't want to be the guy that called your client to the stand and the guy was an absolute disaster. there are stories out there. everyone knows them, everyone at the table knows them, and the reality is this, individual civilians, even lawyers are not going to be amazing witnesses because the rules are skewed against them. the rules are the questioning attorney gets to ask the questions, you're only there to answer them. among us lawyers, very few of us have testified. the only people who testify every day are cops, and they

become good at testifying. we don't take the stand often. we're not very good at it. call no witnesses, go to closing argument, that's all they go, they got nothing. >> reminder, costello is connected to rudy giuliani. i don't know if that makes him a risky person for the defense to call because that could take a line of questioning into a completely different arena. let me read from the transcript right now, todd blanche asks in the time you spoke with costello to now there was a change in whether trump org was paying for lawyers. blanche, what happened that caused you to write to costello. there were significant influences from trump org to payment. you wanted costello to talk to giuliani about what was happening. cohen, i expressed to him that the nonpayment was becoming an issue and to let giuliani know to pass to president trump it was becoming an issue. blanche, you wanted costello in june of 2018 to communicate to

giuliani that nonpayment was becoming an issue. cohen, yes, sir. did you have any doubt it was you who initiated that communication with mr. costello. i don't recall if i asked him to reach out to giuliani other than i expressed to him. around the time your relationship ends, cohen, yes, sir, and blanche, you met a couple of times. privileged communication. where are they going with this, misty? >> i think they're trying to undercut the prosecution's testimony, which basically set this up as michael cohen was communicating with costello as this conduit to donald trump. there was this whole link in the chain with rudy giuliani being in the middle, and this was how he was going to communicate with trump about the legal trouble he was in. we heard that on the direct. from a defense perspective, and i agree with danny, i think they should just put the pens down and start to refocus on what matters in this case, and that's

the legal issues about whether an nda can be violative in these facts and circumstances. i don't think they're going to. >> can you repeat that again. >> an nda, untouched money is not dispositive, it's not necessary illegal so the defense has kind of overshadowed that point that a hush money payment on its own is not a crime, and so the defense is really shifted focus to that, and i think they made that fatal flaw in their opening. >> didn't they at one point try to argue, and this is part of, i think, the challenge for the jurors to go back and say, like, wait, who said what when is at one point, my recollection is there was an argument that trump didn't know anything about the payment, thus didn't know anything about the nda, wasn't involved in that. cohen was operating on his own. >> you're right, and that is the argument, and that's what the defense was hammering and what i'm suggesting is they created these issues where it really

matters every step of the way, but they're overshadowing a bigger issue that they could focus on that's a technical, legal issue. >> i want to bring in jeff, defense attorney and attorney for three white house employees during different issues under the clinton administration. so jeff, how do you see how the defense team has been doing so far today? >> it's interesting, today you heard testimony about michael cohen stealing money from the trump organization, and if i'm a juror, i'm sitting there saying these guys deserve each other. i mean, you heard negative testimony about trump. you have heard negative testimony about cohen. why does trump really employ cohen if he has all of these issues with cohen, and why would cohen make these payments without trump knowing, and that's something certainly that the government will argue. the other thing is, you know,

you have all of the sort of side cross-examination. now we're hearing about robert costello, i don't know if what they're trying to do is set up some inconsistency, and they will then call costello to say something blatantly different or whether we will get into some attorney client privileged information, and that will be a legal issue because if cohen was trying to hire costello, and told him some confidential information, is that privileged. you have a lot of complicated factors here, and i hear what people are saying, why not focus on the nda, on the legal issues, we're not doing that. and then in addition to what anna said, and i agree with her completely, the jury instructions are critical in cases. sometimes jurors make up their minds after opening statements. other times they listen to those jury instructions, and that's critical in terms of what the language will be in the jury

strurkss and whether the government will tie the facts to what that language is. >> we're looking at pictures inside the courthouse right now. you see everybody filing out of the courtroom where this trial is underway. they are in their morning recess. usually it's a 15-minute morning recess. in the meantime, if you're trump's legal team, after cohen is done with his testimony, are you calling any witnesses? >> you know, that's an interesting question. trump clearly is not going to testify, although i say clearly, you never can tell. what you have here is if you're a defense counsel, you have a difficult client. if you don't put your client on the stand and the client wants to testify, and you convince them otherwise, the first thing you're going to hear in the newspaper if and when he's convicted, i wanted to testify, my attorney wouldn't let me, and you end up with a malpractice

case. and so that's a difficult situation. you end up getting blasted in the media. you will have the judge essentially call trump and say, were you instructed that you can testify, yes, are you choosing not to testify. yes, and make it clear and put it on the record that he was advised that he has a right to testify and he's choosing not to testify. that will not be in front of the jury, by the way. and so then if you call costello, you're essentially opening it up, and another question is why does cohen have to go through costello to giuliani if cohen has this special relationship with trump. why can't he directly try to get his money back, and why does he have to get giuliani involved? there are a lot of question marks here. the issue will be whether one or two or three jurors find that reasonable doubt does exist here, and that the d.a. has not proven the case.

and then the issue again will be whether there's a retrial. we have a lot of issues still. this is also one of the reasons that i think the judge is not sending the jury out until next week because there are issues to resolve this week prior to that happening. >> jeff, what would those issues be, and so that's a question that we have all had this morning, so why the schedule as it appears is essentially a week and a day is what the judge has been calling for. what is going to be done during that week and day? >> you'll have the prosecutor doing rebuttal, and he has to be very careful with michael cohen that he doesn't raise other issues. you will have any defense witnesses be called if any, and then you will have a battle over jury instructions and there will be negotiations and arguments to the judge over the language and

jury instruction, particularly if trump calls an fec expert. then you have the issue of the expert cannot testify to the ultimate matter here, the ultimate issue as to whether trump is guilty or not but can testify about certain fec regulations, and then you will have, you know, the judge will have to be very careful as to how far he lets that expert go. once the jury instructions are resolved, ultimately then if the jury is instructed as to what the instructions are, the jury comes home, sleeps over the weekend and comes back negotiating. >> we know todd blanche has experience as a lawyer and mostly a federal prosecutor, this is his second trial as a defense attorney if you're seeing any of that inexperience in how he's approaching this cross-examination? >> anna, that's an interesting question. many prosecutors become defense

counsel, and i think what i'm seeing is, you know, most prosecutors and defense counsel want to have a very narrow cross. this isn't very narrow, and i wonder if his client is really urging him obon to make it broader and prove certain facts in the political campaign. you don't know what's going on between the two of them. this is a very broad cross when usually it's narrow. >> jeff, thank you so much for being with us this morning. appreciate your perspective and your time. we're going to take a short break and continue with a whole lot more. >> you're watching msnbc special coverage. stay right there. coverage stay right there could be a sign that your digestive system isn't at its best. but a little metamucil everyday can help. metamucil's psyllium fiber gels to trap and remove the waste that weighs you down... so you can lighten every day the metamucil way.

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welcome back, 34 past the hour. anna bower, legal fellow for law affair. she's been inside the courthouse this morning. good morning, what have you noticed and seen this morning? >> right. so this morning we had the continued cross-examination of michael cohen, and it once again was a bit of a meandering performance from todd blanche. at times he covered ground that he already has covered many times before during his cross-examination over the past several days. he's focused on michael cohen's credibility, portraying him as someone who is a liar, someone who's motivated by fame and money, but there were two substantiative portions of the

cross-examination that i think are important to point out. one is that michael cohen did testify that there was some legal work that he did for donald trump in the early months of 2017. that of course goes to the defense's key point that they are likely to argue in closings, which is that these reimbursement payments, in fact, were payments for legal expenses, just as they were marked in the trump organization ledgers. prosecutors allege that was a false statement. the second aspect of the cross-examination that i think is important to point out is the focus on these phone calls that occurred around the time that michael cohen paid stormy daniels the hush money in the lead up to the 2016 election. there are two key calls that occur on the very day that michael cohen goes to open the bank account to pay stormy daniels. those calls with donald trump, the defense elicited testimony in which they had michael cohen

say that, yes, there were other things that maybe he was working on for trump at the time. for example, they discussed a potential extortion plot against tiffany trump, donald trump's daughter, and so they were trying to make this argument in which they were saying that to the jurors, that there were other things that potentially michael cohen could have talked to donald trump that morning, that didn't relate to stormy daniels. but michael cohen did stand his ground saying, no, i recall that it was about the stormy daniels matter because that was what was most important to me at the time. >> and, anna, just curious to get what you have observed of cohen's demeanor, how he's answering questions today versus the other days he's been on the stand, and donald trump's demeanor, if you can see him from your vantage point in the courthouse? >> right. so once again michael cohen has a demeanor that is very calm and cool and collected. not his typical bombastic self

as people know him to be. it's not the michael cohen that appears on the podcast. it is the michael cohen we have seen in court who has remained very calm. we also have donald trump continuing to have his eyes closed throughout the testimony of michael cohen. again, it's unclear if he is sleeping or listening, but he has kept his eyes closed for most of the day. i have been in the overflow room. i haven't been able to see the faces of the jurors. i will say that i'm told by colleagues who have been in the courtroom that the jurors at times during this somewhat meandering performance by todd blanche appeared to be shifting in their seats, a little bit bored. so i think that particularly if the jurors are feeling how i was feeling at times during todd blanche's performance this morning, they may be thinking that this is ground that has already been covered on the previous days of the cross-examination. but we do expect todd blanche to

wrap up this cross-examination sometime today. >> indeed, merchan is back in the courtroom. all the parties are present, and it's all the process of getting everybody back in. and if you could, expand a little bit about what you're saying about blanche not being pinpoint specific. in what ways was that manifested? >> sorry, i couldn't quite hear you. could you say that again. >> about blanche, you're saying his questioning was meandering or not specific. in what ways would you say that was represented? >> right. so there's been -- this is the fourth day of michael cohen's testimony. this is multiple days of cross-examination we have had here. we have heard before, for example, about how much money it is that michael cohen has made off of his podcast, off of his books.

those are podcasts and books, some of which are focused on trump. we have heard many statements elicited, where he says, yes, these are conversations i have had on the podcasts about donald trump, that i have said i hope he's held accountable and goes to jail. the defense elicited a lot of testimony from michael cohen in which he talked about the fact that he has made over $4 million, so again, focusing on things like that that we've already heard over and over and over again, and potentially the strategy there is just really trying to hammer home with the jurors that this is a guy who has motivated by money, he has made a career off of or so they say, he has made a career off of making podcasts and books about donald trump. he's made money from that. he's motivated by fame. we heard a lot about michael cohen's relationships with reporters. we heard about how he consistently speaks to reporters. he did say even after his testimony last week, he spoke to

some reporters over the weekend and in the intervening days, but he said that it was not about this case, but i think that the defense is trying to underscore to the jurors that michael cohen may be someone who is motivated by fame and that's one of the motivations he may have for testifying against trump in the way that he is. so i think that that is just some of the ways that we've seen todd blanche come back to subjects that have already been heard before. >> anna bower, thank you so much, we appreciate your perspective. and now from one ana to another ana, i want to get your reaction from that anna, and what she just told us. >> there was a few things i was thinking about, the first is we're not sitting in the courtroom, we don't know every objection that's happening, but, one thing that i've noticed is there isn't seem to be many asked and answered objections by the prosecution, and they have

every right to object. >> what does that mean? >> you can't repeat over and over and over again. it's one thing to say, you're wearing a tie, the tie is green, it's dark green. but if i say five minutes later, i want to talk about your tie, it's green. there can be an asked and answered objection. i'm not allowed to go over the same thing and again. maybe the prosecutor is restrained, let him keep going, that bores the jury and that works were fell for us. it also shows that the judge is being thoughtful about letting the defense do what it wants to do here. not having there been appellate issue where the judge limited what the defense was doing so much there was an issue on appeal if there was a finding of guilt. that's one thing i was thinking about as your colleague was

reflecting what's happening down dl. >> -- down there. >> and when i was a prosecutor, one of the things i wanted to make sure in addition to proving my case beyond a reasonable doubt, i don't want to get back down on appeal. i'm also making sure not to frivolous objections or objections like asked and answered, things like that because i want to give the defense the room that the defense attorney thinks they need so that if there's any issues on appeal, you can see that maybe they're harmless, and the whole case will not come back down. it protects the complaining witness in this case. i think from a strategic point, the prosecutor wants to be able to point to michael cohen and say, i did not choose michael cohen. and i think by making those objections, asked and answered, things like that, it makes it seem like the prosecutor can be somewhat aligned and maybe michael cohen is a team player, and that is not the image the prosecutor wants to convey to

the jury. from this standpoint, allowing blanche to go on and on, yes, it's boring, yes, the prosecutor can stop it, yes, it's asked and answered and it's not harmful from a strategic point, it allows the jury to see, hey, we're not aligned. this is who we had to call on the stand because the defendant picked him. >> we talked a lot, just to follow up on that, we talked about how the d.a.'s office did do witness prep with michael cohen, leading up to this trial, but you're saying, kristen, that that is different than the prosecutor working cohesively with michael cohen during the trial. >> you got it. you got it. at the end of the day, michael cohen is the witness they need to call, and so having that witness prepared and, like, being cool, calm and collected when answering questions both to the prosecutor as well as to the defense, particularly for someone like michael cohen who we know from podcasts and prior

testimony, he goes on and on and on. he meanders with answering simple questions. we saw him testify in prior trials and coming off somewhat incredible at times. he hasn't really shown that. we haven't seen that about his demeanor. i think there's a major difference between preparing and witness and making sure that even though that's the witness you have to call, he's not part of the team. he is just someone that the prosecution must call. >> once again, the defense trying to build a certain image of michael cohen and what his interests are and what they aren't. and blanche just started when the trial resumed, when we took our break, you were talking about the show the fixer. how long have you been dealing with it. cohen, approximately three months after it was shot, and the next three months after that. and then blanche, you're also working on a third book, cohen, i'm considering writing a third book. you said you were considering a run for congress. cohen, i did. you said that because you have

the best name recognition out there going after trump. cohen, yes. you have name recognition because of trump. cohen, my name recognition is because of the journey i have been on, and it is associated with trump. >> i also like the next line because i think it's revealing. blanche asked your journey has included daily attacks on trump, and cohen said my journey is to tell my story. so, misty. >> will i be watching "the fixer," is that your question? i don't know. look, they keep hammering this home. this is the theme. he's a known liar, admitted liar, number two, he has personal animus against trump. number three, he financially benefits by that personal animus. we're seeing this over and over again. something problematic, from the jury perspective, i get it. by the same token. is the prosecution going to sit there and say, all of these

qualities make him the slippery guy are the very qualities that when donald trump worked with him for ten plus years, he valued. and so maybe that's partially why the prosecutors are kind of letting it just go on the record, even though some of this had already been put on the record previously. >> the interesting thing in just hearing about cohen over the spoke with some reporters and that he is still interested in maybe a third book, et cetera, et cetera, that shows not only that he had a financial interest in being associated with trump before and during the presidency, but that now he sees his source of income going forward is directly related to what may or may not happen to donald trump. >> i think a lot of these questions are a good avenue of inquiry. the problem is you're dealing with attention loss. and it may not even really be the fault of the defense, to some degree, jurors lose their attention. i'm guilty of it. i have a horrible attention

span. so i think whether or not you're a lawyer, sometimes you're sitting at the defense table, you get bored with your own case. it can be boring in there. and sometimes they have to put the case on. you know who deals with this, federal prosecutors in white collar financial cases, they have to introduce reams of documents. i'm going to have to introduce and authenticate thousands of pages of bank records, and they're panicked that i'm going to lose the jury. some of the crimes are difficult to understand. this is not possession of a gun by a again felon, this is white collar type of crime. you have to educate the jury, so, look, boredom is going to happen. attention span problems are going to happen. so i think this is an interesting avenue. i think it's something they have to explore. at this point, they may be thinking, look, we have already been going on forever, we've got to get these facts in.

i've got to do it. they're making a calculated risk. for all of us out here it seems like it's too much. to the defense table, they're living in it, and sometimes that makes you lose perspective. that's the problem of trying the case. you get immersed in the facts and lose the forest for the tree, and you kind of lose objectivity. that may be what's happening here. to give you an example, you could have said, you make daily takes on trump. you threw in journey. look at the difference in crafting a question, there's no wiggle room out of. when you ask a question for a little flare, your journey has included daily attacks on trump, go back days ago to a question asked of keith davidson. your job was to extort celebrities. that word extort, no lawyer is going to let you have that on

the record. i don't think that as extorting. you lost the question, went for the ah-ha moment, and your journey included daily attacks on trump. you gave cohen an opportunity to say, it's not my journey, my journey is to tell the truth. you can see in just a little moment there, one question, every question you ask on cross gives the witness an opportunity to hit you over the head, figuratively with a folding chair. and that is the risk. that is the danger here. and it's the danger every minute you keep cohen on the stand. >> and i also wonder how that goes over with the jury which we know includes kristen. >> yeah. it's interesting because to danny's point, and you were saying this over and over again. i think it's so important. cross-examinations need to be surgical. that doesn't mean that a cross can't go on, but if it was more surgical, it probably could have been done by now and all of these points that you know, blanche wants to get out for closing argument as well as for

in order to show the jury that he's a liar, inconsistent all these things, could have been done without allowing cohen to tell his narrative. >> there's a bench meeting now when right before it was called, blanche asked cohen, you testified that mr. weisselberg told you that was being gross up because you're in a 50% tax bracket. you didn't claim that on your taxes, did you. that's when the objection was created. objection sustained. blanche then asks for a bench meeting, which is currently underway. vaughn hillyard, a lot of this. again, we've been hearing it over and over again. is a repetitious need to establish the inconsistencies with cohen's testimony and actions. >> right. and again, we are back at the compensation michael cohen from donald trump here. so we keep going back to some of these pieces here and i just

want to underline when we came into today, the defense for donald trump indicated to judge merchan they only had about an hour of cross-examination left, yet we are about halfway through our number three now and we could very well hit the lunch break in cross-examination continuing here. for michael cohen, it was interesting. danny was just talking about his response to his journey being directly connected to donald trump. it was very reminiscent of what stormy daniels said under cross-examination from susan necheles, another one of trump's attorneys. when it was being implied from the jury they were seeking fame, money, sort of their own characters in this movie. both of them come back to their journeys are so closely tied to donald trump, their notoriety to donald trump because of donald trump here. i think much of this is really

when you're looking at what the testimony inside is, i think we may have a shock from outside here because right now, just a few feet from where we're standing, you can hear some of trump's allies that have come today that are beginning a press conference right now. you have four different members of congress who are here. you have alan dershowitz here, trump ally, lawyer. kash patel, former chief of staff to acting secretary chris miller who was installed after the 2020 election. you have the likes of the former new york city police commissioner, trump ally. that's who's speaking now. he is somebody who came up as part of the special counsel's investigation because of his advisement of rudy giuliani in the months following the 2020 election. when michael cohen continues his testimony, outside, there's chaotic surrogates here who are here facing protestors here at the same time.

they're out here to defend the guy who's the defendant within. >> your reference to a movie and what movie it is that we're watching. i'm taken back to, salvador dahli. surrealism in film. it's really an amazing story. >> this whole story has seemed like a reality show in many ways. for more, let's bring in mark short, former chief of staff to mike pence. he also served as trump's former president trump's legislative director in the white house. so, mark, thanks for joining us. let's pick up where vaughn left off. this is seeing more and more of these trump allies showing up in court today. we have the attorney general of south carolina, four republican members of congress. what's your read on what they're trying to accomplish? >> i don't think that they're accomplishing much. i think they're probably trying

to play to an audience of one here and make sure the former president sees them coming to his defense. ultimately for the bigger picture of voters, we have a situation in which there's really not that many swing voters left on this issue. i think the nation is pretty polarized and their opinions of trump and biden are well cemented. i think donald trump has a concern if that he needs to solidify his republican party when he's losing up to 15% of primary votes when somebody's dropped out of the race. if there's a belief that there's been prosecutorial abuse, it continues to pull people back to the side as it did for the primary and that may be what they're trying to achieve. >> is there many diminishing returns for trump with this continuing and in the outcome of this? because if there is a guilty on this, do you think that would have substantial impact on trump's standing within, you

know, not only his own party, but that small group of undecided? >> i don't think a guilty verdict is going to make much different. the reality is that the people who have sworn their allegiance to trump are not going to defect over a verdict in this case. i think the district attorney bringing, and new york having brought i think two trials that i think were the least valid cases relative to what the federal charges are against president trump, has enabled him politically to say look, this is, i'm a victim here. this is prosecutorial abuse. so i think that there isn't much what happened with the conviction, but you know, it is the return, you're right. without a doubt. but if we have a third party candidate in this race, then really you can win a presidential race with 44, 45, 46% of the vote. if you're available to solidify your own party, that's a pathway to victory. >> and mark, quickly. you've been inside trump world before. what kind of conversations are

happening behind the scenes now deciding whether or not trump himself will take the stand? >> i think ultimately that will be the lawyers' advice and i think the president would listen to that. i think there's a lot of bluster and pretension that he would want to testify, but at the end of the day, he's going to listen to his counsel. i think as far as the conversation, ultimately, it will be a lot of public professions he wants to testify, but he'll listen to what his counsel says. >> thank you so much and right now, blanche has just stated no further questions after that last line of questioning. talking once again about cohen's desire to get revenge. that was kind of the last section there that blanche was going in with cohen. after he said no further questions.

and now a side bar. >> side bar. and we'll see redirect as that gets underway shortly. i do think it's interesting this is how he chose to end the questioning. he goes back to a comment that cohen made on his podcast. specifically the revenge is a dish best served cold. cohen, best served cold. blanche, you meant it when you said it then, now. yes, sir, blanche, you're willing to lie under oath if it affects your personal life. i asked whether it was true if you were willing to lie under oath. there's objection, sustained. blanche, this trial affects your personal life? cohen, yes, sir. >> very quickly, i'm sorry. there's also this line of questioning. blanche says do you have a financial interest in the outcome of this case? cohen, yes, sir. >> here's the hope. you start strong, you end strong. he ended strong. so if the jury tuned out for the

entire thing but listened to this last group of questions, they can find cohen to be not credible. therefore, the prosecutor doesn't win. bravo on ending on a high note. what the jury will actually make of it is what we have to see and going back to those jury instructions being so critical as to how they analyze this. the jury can consider bias, motive. they consider people lying but they can also say they've done all those things and we still credit their testimony. >> we only have about a minute left. so what do you think we'll see in redirect here? >> i think we're going to have to rehave that line that came at the end. do you have a financial interest in the outcome of this case. yes, sir. it does go on to say i talk about podcast. gives me more to talk about in the future. but i think the prosecution should potentially start there. okay, but does that affect your ability to tell the truth about this particular engagement? no, it does not.

does that make you want to tell this jury a lie or fabricate in any capacity as to why you were here today? no, it does not. let's focus on why you were here today then get into those points. and because they have been here all morning, i think the prosecution has to hit their seeds and go. you usually hear that for cross-examinations but for the direct, i think the prosecution just needs to kind of restate their case and outline how cohen had direct knowledge that this money was very concealment purpose it is. >> christie, what do you think as the redirect begins? >> hit those material issues and don't get caught too much in trying to rehabilitate everything. hit the material issues that have other corroboration because the table was set for cohen testified. get this, get out. >> thank you so much. you all are wonderful. that's going to do it for us this hour. >> thank you for the privilege of your