Stormy Daniels Testimony Backfires, and Michael Cohen's Credibility Issues, with Arthur Aidala, Mark Eiglarsh, and Phil Holloway ｜ 789
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 6 minutes
Words per Minute
185.22266
Summary
Abby and I survived a near-death experience on a commercial flight this week, and we're here to tell you all about it. Megyn tells the story of how the plane almost went down, and how we managed to survive.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at New East.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and a bonus episode this Friday night.
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All right, we're going to get to everything that happened in the Trump trial in two minutes.
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But I have got to start by telling you what just happened to me. OMG.
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So I was traveling this week. As you know, I had to go out to LA. I was a couple different places on business.
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And a third party got us a private plane to fly home on. Okay, so it wasn't booked by us. It wasn't our thing.
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It was offered to us and we said, okay, great. And so Abby, who oversees everything and micromanages everything in our lives,
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she wasn't in charge, but of course she flew back with me. OMG.
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This just happened like an hour and a half ago. My adrenaline is still flowing. I think I speak for Abby too.
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I don't think it's too far a stretch to say like, we almost went down. Like, yeah, we almost went down.
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Um, she and I were the only passengers. It was like a six seater. It was a small plane.
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And I, I, it was kind of a rough flight right from the beginning. Like there was no weather,
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but it was very like halty, you know, start and stop. You could almost like feel the pilot,
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like pressing the brake. That's how it felt. And then firing it back up.
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And I'm not a great flyer to begin with in his defense. Um, but it didn't, it just didn't feel good.
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And then out of nowhere, our small plane does a hard bank onto its side, like a, like a top gun
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maneuver. And Abby and I are looking at each other like, Oh my God, what's happening? And it starts
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beeping. The plane starts beeping and beeping and beeping. Like there's an emergency situation.
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And you know, we're like saying hail Mary's like what, what in the ever loving, no idea what's
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happening. And, and it starts to do the like fast acceleration thing. And then like it's turning,
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it's clear. We're not, this is not, we're not on course. Something bad is happening.
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I just don't know exactly how bad or what it is or why it is. And clearly Abby doesn't either.
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And so then it gets back upright and things start to calm down and we lived and we started like
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starting to reclaim our natural breathing. And finally the pilot turns around, starts explaining
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what happened. And all we hear is another plane, a commercial airliner, um, almost hit. We're like,
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what? Something like that. We're like, what, what? Right. Cause you can't hear in these planes.
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He's got his headphone. We're like, what could you know? This seems important to hear. So he finally
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gets up and he comes back to us, um, and starts explaining what he was just saying.
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And the explanation is as far as, and there was a bit of a language barrier. So it was like,
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forgive me. I don't, I wouldn't testify to these exact words in a court of law,
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but he said there was a commercial airliner above us that we were on path to either hit
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or come very, very close to. And, uh, sorry, this is loud in my ears. I don't know what's
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what I'm hearing anyway. Um, and so he, the, the automatic pilot on our plane took over and
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that's what made us go on our side. So we could avoid that plane's turbulence is what he said,
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right? We could avoid that plane's turbulence. And Abigail, do you want to come over here and
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show us what he did with the finger? So he said, so he goes, we had to, so the automated pilot came
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over and turned us on the side because if we hadn't done that, show him what he said we would
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have done. Okay. So he's in front of the plane talking to us. Okay. And he goes, if we hadn't done
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that, we would have gone. Ooh, I'm sorry. Ooh. What does that mean? You mean we would have gone
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down? What pilot, what kind of bedside manner is? Ooh, no, not. Okay. Okay.
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My only part. We were like, what? No, no one wants to see their pilot making that finger motion
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on the plane. We honestly, like Abby went to the bathroom where she prayed. I prayed in my seat.
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We held hands and we lived, but then he took out a big three ring binder that he seemed to be
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referencing in the midst of like what was a very dangerous flight apparently. And we were thinking
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like, what are you looking up? Near misses, you know, what to do so as not to hit a plane,
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how not to go, woo. Casually flip through it. Casually. Yeah. Is there something we could Google
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for you? Is it, can we help at all? Anyway, it got to the point where we were like, just land the
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plane anywhere. We don't care. We'll get a car back. It's fine. We don't, you don't need to drop
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us, you know, at the scheduled airport. I've never been so happy to be in an SUV, you know,
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when we got on ground and I thought about kissing the ground, but I thought it might be offensive.
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Like it might be aggressive. I didn't want to offend him. I'm sure he did his best. It just was not a
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great flight. Okay. It was not a great flight. Doesn't seem like you should be that close to a
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commercial airliner where woo is a possibility. Okay. Now it's funny. I didn't feel like I could
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start the show without telling you this. It just seemed like, so like near death might be too
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strong. We felt near deathy. No, it wasn't. We're laughing now. It wasn't. No, it wasn't.
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Abigail. Abigail, fine. It does not always drop the F-bomb, but I agree with her. Anyway, back safe and
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sound on this Friday and I hope you are too. Okay. Let's get to Trump. Porn, porn star and director.
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What she really wanted to do was direct. Stormy Daniels was back on the stand yesterday, Thursday
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and Friday for fiery cross-examination by the former president, Donald Trump's defense team.
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No, it didn't. Her piece ended yesterday and today's witnesses worked to set the stage for the
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key prosecution witness who has glaring credibility issues and that's Michael Cohen.
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So while he may not be as salacious as Stormy, although you could make the case,
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he's the most important witness of the case, which is a disaster for the prosecution because he has no
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credibility. This is make or break time for the entire criminal case against Donald Trump.
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Will these witnesses seal the guilty verdict against him or could they turn the jury, even a single juror,
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firmly into the camp of not guilty? We're going to get to it with some of our Kelly's
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court all-stars today. Arthur Idalla is partner at Idalla, Bertuna and Caymans and host of the
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Arthur Idalla Power Hour. Mark Eiglarsh is a defense attorney at Eiglarsh Law,
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which you can find at speaktomark.com. And Phil Holloway is a legal analyst and host of
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Inside the Law on YouTube. Guys, thank you all so much for being here.
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It was the first time I saw Abigail in so long until he said hi.
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I felt like it was a little reunion. I'm sorry. A plane crash is what almost caused that from
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Great to be here, Megan, as a pilot for almost 30 years. I'm sorry to hear you had that experience.
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I promise you general aviation is not always like that.
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Phil, what happened? You can get sucked in another plane's turbulence and go down? What? This is brand
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It sounds to me like you crossed or were about to cross into the path of what's called
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wake turbulence behind a heavy aircraft. And if your aircraft is really light, wake turbulence can
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cause real big problems. And we have to go to great lengths to avoid it because it's a very
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serious consideration. It doesn't happen a lot. And that's why planes are supposed to keep their
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distance from one another. But it sounds like today your pilot did the right thing and kept you safe.
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Oh my, I guess. So do you think this is an air traffic control problem?
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Oh, I wouldn't want to begin to speculate, but if you're going in and out of a congested area,
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air traffic control is responsible for keeping adequate separation. So, um, sounds to me like
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There was not adequate separation. That's exactly right. There clearly was not adequate separation.
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And then, you know, Abigail Feinan and I were not, we were glad that we weren't separated. I have to
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say we were holding onto each other like old ladies, like, Oh my God, this is it. We're thinking
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about our kids. It was cray cray. You guys, um, I still have the adrenaline flow. Like when something
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big happens to you and you're like, Oh God, Oh God, you know, I don't, I don't, I shouldn't operate
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heavy machine machinery right now. So forgive me if the show is not as on point as it normally is.
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Okay. Back to stormy. We had our own stormy day. Um, she wrapped it's over. And I think
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my impression is I didn't get to see her in the courtroom as you did Arthur, but my impression
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was she was a disaster. She has no credibility. She was thoroughly embarrassed on the stand.
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And I don't even know anymore whether this jury is going to believe there was a sexual interlude.
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I actually think the defense did a pretty good job of suggesting she made the whole thing up
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to make money and to wind up extorting Donald Trump for something or to just threaten him.
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So I'll start with you, Arthur, cause you were in the courtroom, set the scene for us. And I know
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you spoke with team Trump after the fact, what do you think? Well, you know what I think is it's
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funny because there are people who are sitting two seats away from me who are like, Oh, stormy did
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great. They didn't lay a glove on her. And then this guy, a former judge who's on my radio show every
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night, he's been in the courtroom every day. And he's like, it's the best day the Trump team ever
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had. So it's kind of depends on who you speak with, but the criminal defense attorney who
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conducted the cross-examination for president Trump is a woman named Susan Necklace. She's
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very well known in New York and she's very experienced. And I thought she was very good.
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Then we get, she started on Tuesday with her cross-examination and that was really all about
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money, money, money, money, money. Uh, because on direct, she said, stormy said, Oh, I really wasn't
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in for the money. You know, I didn't answer your appropriate question. You said, set the stage.
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Let me set the stage for a second. Cause I was in the courtroom for the first time and
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maybe the only time the jury, the jury, I always look Megan on, on how jurors dress. If they're not
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told by the judge how to dress, cause old school judges used to say like dress like you're going
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to Sunday services. They don't do that anymore. But the jury dressed in a very appropriate way. Like
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you could tell they're going somewhere that's serious. There's no jeans. There's no ripped clothes.
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There's no hoodies. They're all dressed in like, we're down for business. And when Susan Necklace was
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really hitting it, it was a tennis match. I looked at the jurors. They're looking at stormy. They're
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looking at the, the, uh, defense attorney. Stormy was dressed in a black jacket with a bright green
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top. She's a big woman, you know, coming on and off the stand. She's tall. Uh, no one would ever use
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the word petite to describe her. And at times she was there, uh, especially towards the end when
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she was kind of figuring out like what this is all about. And she was, she was angling her body
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towards the jurors answering the question. But I think-
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You're crossing your arms. You're for the listening audience. You're crossing your arms.
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Yes. I'm sorry. Yes. So I'm crossing my arms and cheating towards the jurors and starting more to
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talk to the jurors than to Susan Necklace. Um, but the real, I thought the highlight of the cross
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examination was towards the end. There were kind of two highlights, but she said to her, the question
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was, and you've written 150 adult film scripts yourself, haven't you? And, and Stormy was proud.
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Oh yes, I have. Yes. I wrote them all myself. And those are all fiction. Correct. Correct.
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Those are stories that you've made up about men and women having sex in different scenarios.
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Correct. Correct. So you're an expert creating fictitious stories that never happened that aren't
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real. And she goes, well, the sex is real in those stories. Like the sex was real here. And if I was
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making up this story, I would have made up a better story. But the point came across that like,
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she's done this 150 times she's made up these stories. And then the other highlight kind of
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was just at the very, very end. It was a question that Susan Necklace wasn't looking for an answer
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was, you don't know anything about how Donald Trump writes his checks, right? You don't know how
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they're logged in the books back in New York, right? You have nothing to do with his finances.
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Correct. Correct. And she sat down. Um, it was interesting. I mean, you know,
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sometimes courtroom scenes can be very boring. It was not a boring day.
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Uh, no, I mean, this is her testimony was anything but boring. Mark, you do this for
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a living as well. And you're not wrong. Like ask a different person, you'll get a different
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take. And it tends to come down to politics. You know, we're trying to keep it out of that.
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We're trying to give sound legal analysis. Like what actually, how did she objectively do? I don't,
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maybe you can't take politics out of this because you're in New York, the jury probably isn't in love
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with Trump. There might be a couple, but if you can be objective about it based on what we've read,
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how do you think she did? Okay. I think that the prosecution jumped the shark by getting into the
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areas that they did. And for those not familiar with that, the same cringy, bizarre feeling you
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got when Fonzie was water skiing over sharks. We got when Stormy Daniels in a fraud trial testified
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to the former leader of a free world laying in his boxers, posing on a bed about to allegedly commit
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an extramarital affair. We shouldn't have that image in our head. It was problematic for the
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prosecution to get into those kinds of details. When I say to you in response to how does she do,
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it doesn't really matter. And by that, I mean, any good defense lawyer would get up and say,
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look what the prosecution did. They wanted to show bad character like they did in the Harvey Weinstein
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case. And they wanted to focus on something other than the issue of whether he knowingly
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committed fraud. Why else would they bring her in? There's proof that she was paid. It wasn't
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necessary. Look at the lengths that they're going to, to, to, to, to try to prove this case when they
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don't have any direct evidence. So how did she do? She looked horrible as she should the same way
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Cohen's going to look. And I think that, that the defense could make a lot out of it in closing
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argument if they do. So interesting. So Phil, here's just an example of what, uh, Susan Necklace
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tried to do on cross-examination of Stormy Daniels. Uh, she got into, for example, and there's a lot we
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can go through, but it will start, start here. How Stormy Daniels missed, you know, I wasn't in this
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for the money. That's not why, you know, I, I, I sold my story. Yes. But, um, you know, I, this wasn't
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an attempt at extortion and so on. She zeroed in on the number of ways in which Stormy has made
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money off of this and has touted it. And here's one example. Um, she showed tweets beginning March
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30th, 2023, the day Trump was first indicted celebrating the criminal case against him per
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Katie Fang of MSNBC, who, you know, we were reliant on the reporters for exactly that wordage
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that happens, the verbiage inside the courtroom exhibit, a photo of Daniels's online store with a
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candle that is titled Stormy Saint of Indictments candle. Necklace, you're saying you are the saint
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of the Trump indictment. Daniels, no. Okay. So already you're not saying that your candle is
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Stormy Daniels indictment, patron saint altar candle. Like what indictment are you talking about
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on the day after anyway? So she denies that she's saying she's the saint of the Trump indictment.
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Necklace, you are selling team Stormy merchandise, making $40 each. Daniels, no, I was making about
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$7. Okay. But the point's taken, right? You are selling team Stormy, team Stormy merchandise.
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Necklace, do you plan to continue selling your story? Daniels, I plan to continue to do my job
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and find my extra and fund my extraordinary legal bills. Necklace, you have an online store. You are
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bragging about getting president Trump indicted. Daniels, I got president Trump indicted. Necklace,
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aren't you bragging about that? Daniels, no. Just look at the damn candle. Here's the last bit of
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it. Pardon the New York Times. Necklace, you're celebrating indictments by selling things from
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your store. Then Daniels goes to not unlike Mr. Trump. So it's no longer no. Now it's yes,
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I'm doing it. But Trump cashes in on things too. And so that's it on the candle and the money.
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It is not a credible person, Phil, and we can keep going through the examples.
00:16:58.180
Yeah, there was testimony, Megan, that she would turn down or cancel media interviews because they
00:17:04.560
weren't going to pay her. Anytime a witness takes the witness stand, when they sit in that chair,
00:17:10.740
their own credibility is always an issue in the case. And she may not be a convicted fraudster like
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Michael Cohen, which we'll see next week. But look, if she has a financial interest in this case
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becoming high profile or anything else, or just perpetuating this, pushing it forward,
00:17:30.820
making sure that the case goes to trial, she has a financial interest in that. That means the jury
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can take all of that into consideration to determine her credibility. On top of the financial interest
00:17:42.160
that she has in all of this, she never seems to be able to tell the same version of events about
00:17:47.960
what's happened. So you have what's called prior inconsistent statements. These lawyers did a very
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good job, I think, detailing and chronicling those and going through them item by item by item to show
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the jury in a much better way than I could. I can't keep it straight in my head. But they chronicled
00:18:06.600
all of the different statements that she's made and how it has changed and morphed over time. And I
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think this whole thing about her being a fiction storyteller in terms of writing scripts about
00:18:20.380
fictional sexual encounters, I think that was a work of art by the defense team. They did a fantastic
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job, Megan, in my opinion, with a witness who should not even have been on the stand in the first place.
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What in the hell does Stormy Daniels have to do with bookkeeping at the Trump organization? Of
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course, the answer to that is nothing. And if the answer is nothing, she should not have been on the
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stand. Judge Merchant has showed his bias. He's biased against the defendant in this case. And he's
00:18:51.620
risking reversible error just by allowing the prosecutor to call her. But at the end of the day,
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these lawyers have to deal with the cards they've been dealt. They were dealt Stormy Daniels,
00:19:01.400
and they dealt with her. They showed the jury she can't be believed.
00:19:05.860
Yeah, but let me, Megan, let me just, let me stand up for Judge Merchant for a second.
00:19:09.580
He addressed Phil's point yesterday at the end of the day. He said, basically, he blamed it on the
00:19:16.520
defense team. He said, you guys opened the door in your opening arguments. You said in your opening
00:19:22.400
arguments that you were going to prove that the sex never happened. The judge said, had you not said that,
00:19:29.220
I would have entertained your motion to preclude her from testifying. And he basically scolded
00:19:35.640
them. He kind of chastised them. I can't imagine President Trump was very happy with his team at
00:19:40.300
the end of the day, or they had to give a little spin to him. But he said, so here's what happened
00:19:46.620
in a nutshell. At the end of the day yesterday, I did have a chance to chat with some of the people
00:19:51.260
on the team off the record. And mistrials and things like that were some of the things that
00:19:57.180
were discussed. And the judge basically said to them, when they moved for a mistrial again yesterday,
00:20:03.420
for they wanted to preclude all of her statement, he threw it right back at the defense. He does so,
00:20:09.400
Megan, so you know, his demeanor, unlike Judge Kaplan, who was the E.G. and Carroll judge,
00:20:15.440
who was, you know, bombastic and caustic. This judge is very quiet. He's very calm. He's very
00:20:21.140
reserved. And he just said, I would have entertained your motion. I would have precluded her. But you
00:20:25.820
opened the door on saying the sex never happened, which is basically the prosecutor's motive.
00:20:31.840
And once you put that in an issue, now I have to let them introvert what you have said is a lie.
00:20:39.500
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I see that. But the other dispute that came up was to what extent? How much do you
00:20:47.160
have to let in? Do you have to let in that they did it without a condom? Do you have to let in all
00:20:51.040
these salacious details? And now the judge is like, I can't believe you didn't object. It's like,
00:20:55.660
well, we tried to keep this whole line out. You promised us you weren't gonna let it get too
00:20:59.640
X-rated. And they're kind of blaming each other, the judge and the defense team. And he wanted an
00:21:06.400
objection on every question. There is a question in my mind about why the defense didn't object on
00:21:11.320
every objectionable question. I think it was because they didn't want to look like this was
00:21:15.160
hurting them, right? Which is a tactic that a lot of defense lawyers go with. But Arthur,
00:21:20.160
I'll start with you on it. Why do you think that they let a lot of that in without objection?
00:21:25.080
Well, Susan Necklace spoke, I think, at the end of the day on Tuesday. And to your point,
00:21:30.400
Megan, she's like, look, judge, we spoke about, we all spoke about this before Stormy Daniels
00:21:36.220
took the stand. And I thought your ruling was, you were going to allow all of this in, or at least
00:21:41.140
the majority of it in. So therefore, we scaled back. But she did, if you look at the record,
00:21:46.080
and when I was in court, she did object to a lot of things, Susan, and the judge was sustaining the
00:21:52.560
objections. I can't crawl into their head. I don't know if it was strategic, like you said,
00:21:57.660
because a lot of lawyers don't want to make it look like to the jury that they're hiding
00:22:01.500
something, or if it was a mistake. But the judge specifically yesterday afternoon said,
00:22:06.420
why didn't you object when he said conduct? I want to sustain the objection. However,
00:22:10.600
all of us who are lawyers here have been in a courtroom where a judge sui sponte just goes
00:22:16.400
sustained without anyone objecting. You just out of the judge's mouth says, sustained,
00:22:21.020
it doesn't let an answer come out. So I don't exactly know what happened.
00:22:24.580
Been there and done that. You're being pounded by prejudicial, grossly irrelevant testimony,
00:22:33.800
and then you got to make the choice. And you jump up, and you object, and you get a sustain.
00:22:41.240
And maybe even an admonishment by the judge saying, you know what, forget that last thing.
00:22:47.180
Forget the tiger wearing the Nazi helmet on the unicycle juggling balls.
00:22:53.420
You know, it's impossible. And even for some who might've, you know, maybe was distracted in the
00:22:59.920
moment, wait, wait, what were we supposed to disregard? The first thing they're wearing,
00:23:03.060
oh, the condom. Oh, you wore a condom. You know, you don't want to highlight it. You want to just
00:23:07.200
let it go. And then you've got so much to discredit her that sometimes you just have to live with it.
00:23:13.980
You know, they're not, she's not going to be worthy of belief. But the biggest problem is this case
00:23:18.760
shouldn't come down to whether they did it or they didn't. Who cares at this point? It's not
00:23:26.200
going to hurt his political base. They don't care. Most people believe he probably did. Who cares?
00:23:31.700
What it does is it hurts your credibility in a criminal case when the president's word is on
00:23:37.620
the line. That's what matters. Did he commit fraud? And if he's lying about the affair, well,
00:23:42.680
that spills over in their minds. I wouldn't have kind of drawn a line in the sand that this case
00:23:48.760
hinges so much upon whether he did it or he didn't and whether they can prove it or not.
00:23:54.400
Whatever. She's a liar. Let's move on. Yeah. Well, I mean, they did put it in. I mean,
00:23:59.780
the defense said, no, it didn't happen. And I'm sure it was important to Trump to say it didn't
00:24:04.200
happen. He's been saying it publicly and it will come down to, he said, she said, to the extent the
00:24:09.660
jury is now going to consider that. Although I agree with you, even if they say it did happen,
00:24:13.600
that doesn't mean he's guilty of falsifying documents and the real crimes that he's charged
00:24:19.780
with. But her credibility does matter. So, you know, if we're going to get into who he said,
00:24:24.960
she said, then her credibility does matter. And here's another attempt by the defense attorneys
00:24:29.740
to eat away at it. Okay. They spent a little time on whether the two, Phil, had dinner together
00:24:36.200
during that one night in which she claims they had a sexual encounter. And she was quizzed extensively
00:24:42.800
per the New York Post on whether she actually ate dinner in Trump's hotel room back in 2006.
00:24:50.540
She testified it was dinner, but we never got food. Per the New York Times, Necklace is addressing
00:24:57.360
something that Daniels has long said, which is that she did not eat while in Trump's hotel room in 2006,
00:25:04.260
presenting evidence that Daniels has at times described that episode as having been, quote,
00:25:10.040
a dinner. Necklace highlighted exchanges, both during Stormy's 2011 interview with InTouch magazine,
00:25:16.120
and then later on CNN, in which Daniels said she and Trump, quote, had dinner and that the encounter
00:25:22.480
was during dinner. So in other words, her, did you have dinner or didn't you, right? She's been saying
00:25:28.660
up until now that they had dinner, that this all happened during dinner, but now she takes the stand
00:25:33.960
and testifies, it was dinner, but we never got food. And Necklace's cross was the details of your
00:25:40.620
story keep changing. And she said, well, it was dinner, it was dinner time, but I maintained that
00:25:46.900
I didn't get food. And Necklace said, your words don't mean what they say, do they? There was an
00:25:53.100
objection, but the point had already been made, that you wiggle, you set the stage for things that
00:25:59.740
don't pan out. And I think the clear implication here, Phil, is you claim to people that you went
00:26:05.400
over there for dinner to make yourself look like something other than a slut. That's what you did.
00:26:11.780
You went over there, you knew very well going into Donald Trump's hotel room.
00:26:17.500
On the first day you met him, you didn't meet him for, quote, dinner at a hotel. You met him for,
00:26:23.440
quote, dinner in his hotel room. And you lied to say there was dinner because we all know there was
00:26:30.100
no food. There was only one thing. And you were fine with that as your earlier interviews make
00:26:35.840
clear. I think this is a clear attempt by Necklace to show she lies. She lies to make herself look
00:26:40.180
better than she is. We all know why she went to the hotel room. It's done. Go ahead. What do you
00:26:44.840
think, Phil? Yeah. So I think that in order to show that she's making all these prior inconsistent
00:26:50.820
statements which go to her credibility or the lack thereof, sometimes the lawyers have to get down
00:26:56.500
into the weeds. But unfortunately, to do that in this case, you wind up rolling around in the mud,
00:27:02.920
basically, with all of these salacious details. And it takes the trial into a place, further into a
00:27:08.900
place that it never should be in. We shouldn't be going into the gritty details of the sexual
00:27:15.220
encounter or the lack thereof or whatever happened, because all of that stuff is irrelevant.
00:27:20.460
I think to the point earlier, the judge, I think, sandbagged the defense a little bit in the opening
00:27:26.600
statement. If your case is being billed as a hush money trial, your client is accused of paying
00:27:33.380
money to hide a sexual affair, to hide the fact that or the alleged fact that there was sexual
00:27:40.360
intercourse. You've got to talk about that in opening statements. So I think it was unfair of the judge
00:27:45.580
to then put that back on the defense and say, oh, no, you open the door. No, Alvin Bragg made it that
00:27:51.100
way. He's the one who made this case, the so-called hush money trial, that it was a payment to cover up
00:27:57.340
a sexual affair. So you've got to talk about the sex in the opening statement. But what I don't
00:28:02.280
understand is why there was not some type of motion in lemonade, which is a device that lawyers can use
00:28:09.480
prior to anybody's testimony to limit the testimony to things that are relevant. I just don't really
00:28:16.980
understand why we haven't seen a lot of that in this case, because the judge let this trial get
00:28:22.680
way, way, way off the rails. At the end of the day, probably it helps the defense more than it hurts
00:28:28.000
them. But I think it was unfair to blame them for opening the door to getting into all these weeds.
00:28:33.600
Let Mark go, and then I'll get to you, Arthur. Go ahead, Mark. Okay, Megan, when you said what you
00:28:42.640
said, and I didn't know it before you said it, that the judge was saying, you know, had you not
00:28:48.680
said an opening statement that she was a liar about the affair, then, you know, I wouldn't have let all
00:28:53.780
this in. So now that changes things. And as a defense lawyer, I was sitting here thinking, how would
00:28:58.200
I handle it? And I would have to convince my client, albeit Donald Trump, that if we bring up and we
00:29:05.500
say, you didn't have an affair with her, that is a total lie, then that's opening up the door to the
00:29:11.560
graphic detail. Because at that point, when it becomes an issue in the trial, how can somebody
00:29:17.700
prove that something happened without giving the extraordinary detail? So how I would have handled it
00:29:23.860
in opening, knowing that those horrible details are coming in, that's the worst case scenario for
00:29:28.840
my client, I would say that this is not about whether the affair occurred or not. And if we get
00:29:36.280
into that, that is going to take away from the issue in this case is what exactly what the prosecutors
00:29:41.840
want. The issue is whether the payment was committed in a fraudulent manner, like I would have kind of
00:29:48.820
neutralized it. And I know that wouldn't have pleased my client, maybe Trump would have made me
00:29:53.240
get up there and say, he didn't do it. But I would have been in his face saying, no, you got to let
00:29:59.080
me do it this way. Otherwise, we're going to hear about your boxers and whether you are condom-less or
00:30:03.820
not. Yeah, your positions, how brief it was. Keep going, Arthur. So I agree with what Mark just said,
00:30:11.500
but it's rough. A little story out of school. You know, Joe Tacopino was the original lawyer on this
00:30:18.980
case. And I went to high school with Joe. I worked in the DA's office with Joe. And, you know, he's
00:30:24.480
not on the case anymore. And Joe and I are both from Brooklyn. No client is going to tell us how
00:30:30.100
to try their case. Lawrence Taylor, he told me how to try my case. He was fantastic. He was one of the
00:30:34.860
best defendants I had in terms of helping me. But he didn't tell me what to do. He suggested what to
00:30:41.360
do. Donald Trump is a different character. So I think they have a rough, rough road to just put that
00:30:47.620
aside, although I agree with Mark. Phil, there was a motion to limit this. And one of the things
00:30:52.880
that I'm pretty sure the judge limited was she wanted to describe Trump's private parts and not
00:30:59.100
in the most complimentary way. And the judge was like, no, absolutely. I'm not going to allow that
00:31:04.980
to happen. When she really looked like a BS artist. And that's why sometimes it's better to have a woman
00:31:12.500
cross-examining a woman. Because if I would have done it, Phil or Mark, we would have been accused.
00:31:17.860
I think it's called slut-shaming or something like that. What Susan Necklace was able to do was she
00:31:23.280
said, so you testified in direct examination that you went to the ladies' room after your non-food
00:31:29.440
dinner. And when you came out, the 60-year-old billionaire, I shouldn't say that, but, you know,
00:31:35.440
you're getting the picture, was sitting on the bed in boxer shorts and a t-shirt. And you were so
00:31:40.480
stunned as you got lightheaded and almost blacked out. She's like, that's after you made,
00:31:52.620
And it was just like so obvious how full of crap she was.
00:31:54.780
It was a great moment. Yes, completely great. Very good moment for Necklace and Team Trump.
00:32:00.000
Per the New York Post, she asks, since Daniels has seen naked men and women in adult films all the
00:32:05.600
time, why would it be surprising to her to see a man in boxer shorts and a t-shirt to the point where
00:32:09.420
she felt so lightheaded she was going to faint? Necklace. You've acted and had sex in over 200
00:32:14.120
porn movies? Daniels. It was closer to 150. Okay. Necklace. And there are naked men and naked
00:32:23.480
women having sex, right? Daniels, yes. Necklace. But according to you, seeing a man on a bed in a
00:32:29.380
t-shirt and boxer shorts, you got lightheaded? Daniels said she felt shock, surprise when she
00:32:36.560
saw Trump in the bed and when she came back into the hotel room and said it was a power shift because
00:32:42.080
she earlier felt she had, quote, control of the situation. Daniels, quote, if I came out of the
00:32:48.280
bathroom and saw an older man in his underwear that I wasn't expecting to see there, yeah, she's
00:32:53.880
signing on to her lightheaded lie, is my opinion. Then she pointed at Trump, who apparently was
00:33:00.140
paying rapt attention to this testimony, and added that, Stormy did, she sees her husband naked all
00:33:06.140
the time, but that if she left her bathroom at home and saw Trump today lying half naked on her bed,
00:33:12.120
she would be alarmed. Now this, of course, is part of this BS that this was traumatic to her.
00:33:19.100
After she's been on the record, we covered this yesterday, repeatedly saying this was a
00:33:24.180
non-threatening situation. She bragged about it. She said he was nice. She said she was stimulated by
00:33:31.320
him. And she was thinking about, oh, gee, I hope he doesn't offer me money. But if he does,
00:33:36.140
it better be a lot while they were having sex. This is not a woman who's blacked out and has no feeling
00:33:42.200
in her fingers or toes as she's now claiming. So then one other thing, per CBS, necklace pushed Daniels
00:33:48.280
about this claim she had blacked out during the alleged act, saying you told a different story
00:33:54.760
in 2011 to InTouch Magazine. Daniels, well, there were parts I didn't remember. There were parts I
00:34:00.880
didn't remember. So you forgot all the relevant parts back in 2011 about the sex act that allegedly
00:34:06.280
happened in 2006. But now here in 2024, this is MK talking, you remember it all. Remember it so much
00:34:12.560
better now. You've remembered all the stuff. She goes on to say, you made all this up, right?
00:34:18.040
Daniels, no, forcefully. Necklace, you made all of this up, right? Daniels, no. Necklace,
00:34:24.420
your story has completely changed, hasn't it? Daniels, no. And Daniels says, you're trying to
00:34:31.060
make me say it's changed, but it hasn't changed. But it has changed, you guys. It's changed. It's
00:34:37.160
changed a lot, Phil. Yeah, she can't say the same thing the same way twice. And so what happens if
00:34:46.480
she takes a stand and she says, no, my story's never changed. And then, of course, the defense
00:34:50.880
lawyer can chronicle everything that has changed. You said this on this day, you said this on the
00:34:55.940
other day, and so on and so forth. It's absolutely the kind of thing that will destroy a witness's
00:35:03.200
credibility. And in a rational legal system that you might find somewhere other than in downtown
00:35:10.720
Manhattan when Donald Trump is on trial, that would be the kind of thing that would cause a
00:35:14.840
prosecutor's case to just implode. The parties would go out in the hallway and say, look, we got to cut
00:35:19.040
a deal or do something because my case has just gone to hell in a handbasket. But in New York, in
00:35:25.600
Manhattan, with this jury, I don't think that's even crossed the minds of the prosecutors because they
00:35:31.920
know that no matter how sideways this case goes, how unbelievable or disbelievable their witnesses
00:35:38.880
are, they think that with this jury, they've already got it in the bag. And that's why I think
00:35:45.040
that this entire thing is just so unfair that it's probably beyond redemption at this point.
00:35:52.360
Here's another piece of it. I mean, we talked when Phil was on the show the other day about
00:35:57.400
this new Me Too suggestion. It's implicit. She can't say it explicitly like I was Me Too'd by the
00:36:04.200
guy. But she's now talking about the power differential between them and how, okay,
00:36:09.640
he didn't behave in a threatening way, but he blocked my path out of the hotel room because I
00:36:14.080
emerged from the bathroom and there he was on the bed. And the hotel room door was on the other side
00:36:18.580
of him. Hello, that's called life. You walk around the bed and you open up the hotel room like we've
00:36:23.740
all done a million times at the door. It's not that hard. It's not threatening just because
00:36:27.660
somebody's there trying allegedly to do what it was clearly both of your mission to do when you
00:36:33.480
showed up and didn't have dinner. So here is Susan Necklace zeroing in on testimony Stormy gave on
00:36:42.200
direct, which I had missed, about this is another one of the reasons she allegedly felt so threatened
00:36:47.620
and couldn't leave and therefore she had to stay and have sex with him.
00:36:50.420
He had a bodyguard outside the door. You see guys, and apparently this was also threatening
00:36:56.480
in some way, even though Trump was non-threatening. This also led Stormy to believe, I guess I can't
00:37:01.020
leave. So the Trump defense attorney, this is Necklace Dill. Did you testify on direct that one
00:37:07.500
of the reasons you did not leave the room is because you felt threatened by Trump's bodyguard
00:37:12.360
being outside? Stormy, absolutely. And then she refers to a Vogue 2018 interview Stormy did.
00:37:22.660
Did you say in this interview that you never felt threatened at all during your alleged sexual
00:37:27.880
encounter? And she says, I don't control what parts of quotes they use. I don't know what that's
00:37:35.940
supposed to mean, but it sounds like a no. It sounds like a no, I didn't. I didn't say I never felt
00:37:40.280
threatened. Let me refer to the quote from the Vogue article, which we pulled.
00:37:45.680
This is the author of the article, the journalist writing, quote,
00:37:49.260
Our interview is almost over, but I have a nagging question left to ask. She's always insisted that
00:37:55.240
the sex was consensual and that her story has nothing to do with the Me Too movement.
00:37:59.460
But ever since I watched Daniels tell Anderson Cooper that she felt a sense of obligation to Trump,
00:38:04.140
quote, I had it coming for making a bad decision for going into someone's room alone, end quote,
00:38:09.280
she said. I've wondered why she didn't just leave. Did Trump do something that made her feel like she
00:38:15.840
had to have sex with him? Daniels is emphatic. No, nothing, she says, quote, not once did I ever feel
00:38:25.220
like I was in any sort of physical danger. I'm sure if I would have taken off running,
00:38:31.140
he wouldn't have given chase. And even if I had, there's no way he could have caught me.
00:38:38.200
Contrast that to one of the reasons I didn't leave is because I felt threatened his bodyguard
00:38:43.280
was out front. You guys, this is a joke. That was good. In the courtroom yesterday,
00:38:47.640
that was a highlight. That was another one of the highlights, especially the part where he wouldn't
00:38:52.560
have caught me. And I said this at the beginning, she's not a small woman. She's not like this little
00:38:58.960
petite, you know, four foot, 11, 99 pound woman. Like she's, when she got off that stand, she's tall.
00:39:06.120
She got broad shoulders. You know, she's not that little scared little girl. And I did something a
00:39:12.180
little crazy last night. Don't get mad at me. Don't tell Nana. But I Googled Stormy Daniels.
00:39:20.800
Wow. I mean, oh, mistake. You're going to have to explain this to Marianne.
00:39:26.700
Yeah, exactly. I believe I hit delete the history delete. So if any of the jurors disobey the judge
00:39:34.000
and just do that and see what's there. I mean, I didn't put in Stormy Daniels naked,
00:39:39.140
Stormy Daniels sex. I just put in her name and it's all naked, crazy, horrible pictures of her.
00:39:45.200
They don't have to Google her to learn all that, Arthur. She gave up.
00:39:50.040
Arthur's doing his research, Mark. Get out of his case.
00:39:57.960
Oh, exactly. All of that just comes back to like, oh my God, this woman is so full of crap. Like,
00:40:02.940
oh, she was afraid. She fainted when she saw him. Dinner in her world means the time of day,
00:40:09.200
not whether there's food or not. And, you know, don't forget, because I was on a panel last night on CNN and they were
00:40:14.380
ragging on the defense team and I'm fighting back because, number one, I'm friends with Susan,
00:40:18.920
but number two, I thought she did a very good job. The judge is going to instruct the jury in New
00:40:23.340
York. If you believe a witness is lying about one thing, you could discount all of their testimony.
00:40:30.600
You could disregard all of their testimony. And he's going to say that about every single witness,
00:40:35.100
including Michael Cohen. And I will say, since I threw CNN in there, one of my colleagues on CNN,
00:40:41.320
and I was very happy he did this, said, if today the prosecution rested after Stormy Daniels,
00:40:48.540
there would have to be, or today there was a couple other witnesses, today there would have
00:40:52.700
to be a trial order of dismissal, meaning the case never gets to the jury. Because at this point,
00:40:57.860
the prosecutors say they have two witnesses left. There has been zero, zero evidence that Donald
00:41:04.320
Trump knew how these checks, they've proven he signed the checks, they've proven he knew what
00:41:10.360
the checks were for. That's not the crime. Crime is how it was recorded five blocks from where I am
00:41:15.620
in Trump Tower, in his office, in the logbooks. And after that proof, they were logged in that way
00:41:21.600
to commit a secondary crime. There has been no evidence of that whatsoever. To date, they are
00:41:28.620
putting all their faith in Michael Cohen. And if you're putting your faith in Michael Cohen,
00:41:33.580
you better do what I just saw my seven-year-old do and say the rosary in English and in Italian.
00:41:39.340
Megan, I got to ask, I got to ask, I got to ask Arthur and Philip a question. I've been dying to
00:41:44.600
know what they think about this. Okay. Let's say Trump came to you for advice around the time,
00:41:51.240
and he's saying, okay, we're going to pay off Stormy Daniel, either because I had an affair with
00:41:55.440
her or because she's making this up and it's a money grab. Either way, we need to pay her off.
00:41:59.580
What are we going to write as the reason? I'm thinking legal fees. Would that work for you guys?
00:42:06.860
And I'm asking you this. I mean, put aside your politics, put on your lawyer hat. Is it legal fees?
00:42:13.140
Is it a campaign contribution? I've said publicly that it's less of a campaign expense,
00:42:20.940
excuse me, than it is legal fees. It's more legal fees than campaign. It's payment in consideration
00:42:26.340
of a contract because that's what these non-disposure agreements are. They're contracts
00:42:31.020
and they're used by people all the time. And it's not a valid binding contract unless there's what
00:42:36.300
we call consideration. In other words, you got to have-
00:42:39.160
But Phil, let me just add one tweak before you finish your answer. It's even more clear because
00:42:44.400
he didn't pay Stormy directly. The allegation is that Michael Cohen paid Stormy $130,000. Michael
00:42:51.220
Cohen was Trump's lawyer. And then Trump reimbursed his lawyer. So now we're even closer to legal fees.
00:42:57.820
I'm paying my lawyer. And it wasn't fees. It was expenses, legal expenses. Go ahead, Phil.
00:43:03.300
Yeah, in any event, so when he writes that check, if he's making it to Michael Cohen or whatever,
00:43:08.900
you know, he's not necessarily, he doesn't know if he's paying, say, the bill that is for services
00:43:15.620
or whatever. It's the amount that he owes Michael Cohen for whatever reason, who was his lawyer.
00:43:20.500
He's the president of the United States. He's signing checks that are just stuck in front of him.
00:43:24.980
It's not his job at the Trump organization to characterize things in a certain way. That's
00:43:32.120
somebody else's job to do that. And so if I'm representing him, I'm not going to, I'm not going to
00:43:37.880
probably say you need to characterize it in this way or the out of the out. It's the accountant's
00:43:42.020
job. That's a good point. Arthur, where's that evidence? Where is that evidence of the accountant
00:43:46.760
saying, Mr. Trump called me and told me, you know, or Weisselberg, who was the CFO, saying he called
00:43:52.660
me up and he told me to mark this down as a legal expense. Well, answering your direct question,
00:43:57.880
Judge Kelly, you know what that evidence is? Literally, literally in Rikers Island.
00:44:03.900
Weisselberg is sitting in Rikers Island right now. He's in Rikers Island.
00:44:07.380
If you want to know a little more breaking news, sitting next to Harvey Weinstein in Rikers Island.
00:44:13.860
No, it's the 12. They're two old guys. They're two guys in their 70s.
00:44:17.040
They don't put him in general population with everybody else. But anyway,
00:44:20.520
that's my kingdom to be a fly on the wall of one of those cells and listen to the conversation
00:44:28.240
Let me put let me throw a little fly in the ointment, because obviously what Phil and Mark are saying is
00:44:33.440
correct, right? A normal NDA goes that Donald Trump, he's the recipient of the non-disclosure
00:44:39.700
agreement. He would write the check out to my law firm. I would then write the check out to my escrow
00:44:45.920
account. I would then write the check out to Stormy's lawyer, and then they would give it to
00:44:51.500
Stormy, which is what Stormy testified to. She goes, I didn't get any check from the Trump organization.
00:44:56.020
I got it from my lawyer. Here's the fly in the ointment. It's not like Donald Trump wrote a check
00:45:02.580
to Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen, on his own, took out a home equity loan for $130,000. So that was
00:45:11.640
one piece of the payment. Then there was some other $50,000 technology fee that I still don't know what
00:45:18.740
that is. So that's $180,000. That was to make him whole on the taxes that he was going to be charged
00:45:25.400
on the fee. That's not what the $50,000 is for. They then double the $130,000 and make it $260,000.
00:45:32.100
They double the $130,000 and make it $260,000. And then they add $50,000 for this technology fee. And
00:45:37.640
then they add $60,000 for a real legal fee. So that's how we get up to this $430,000 number.
00:45:43.860
So I think what the prosecutor is going to argue is that what it really should say in
00:45:49.980
the ledger book is exactly what I just said, $60,000 legal fee for Michael Cohen, and then
00:45:56.520
$130,000 and $132,000, a $260,000 reimbursement to Michael Cohen for laying out the money for
00:46:05.000
Stormy Daniels and then the technology fee. That's insane. Go ahead, Mark.
00:46:09.420
Let me explain something to you. I have never been a Trump supporter. So what I'm saying is
00:46:17.220
extremely objective. I am overwhelmed with frustration at this criminal prosecution,
00:46:24.320
because if you're not standing up against this, then just wait. You've now lowered the burden of
00:46:30.360
proof to get somebody that you want to get. You've got to stand up for this. At a minimum,
00:46:36.060
hindsight's 20-20. Okay, that's how you want us to handle this prosecution? All right,
00:46:41.060
in the future, we'll make sure we dissect and all. But it's not a criminal act. That's what's
00:46:48.560
There's no criminal intent. Donald Trump is not the person who made the entry in the ledger at the
00:46:53.880
Trump organization. He has no criminal intent to do it. There's not even a showing that he did the
00:47:01.280
things that he's accused of. But at a minimum, he doesn't have the mental state that is required
00:47:07.280
for a crime. This is all so far attenuated now when you've got just a piece of a larger payment
00:47:13.400
to Michael Cohen and you've got the home equity loan and all this stuff. It's so far attenuated
00:47:18.480
from anything that can objectively show criminal intent. And if you don't have criminal intent,
00:47:24.280
you don't have a crime. All you've got is the act. You've got to have the act and the criminal
00:47:28.440
intent together before it's a crime. And that's why all these prosecutors in the Southern
00:47:32.980
District and even Alvin Bragg in the beginning, I think, declined this prosecution because they
00:47:37.660
knew that it could not be proved. You cannot prove that Donald Trump had a guilty intent
00:47:43.620
when any of this all happened because it was so buried in a much larger, I guess, book of
00:47:50.060
business with Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen is the one, if anyone, who is responsible for causing
00:47:55.940
it to be misbooked in the Trump books if that's what happened. It's not Donald Trump. It would
00:48:02.080
probably be Michael Cohen, but they have not shown anything near criminal intent. And that's why other
00:48:07.340
prosecutors have. They're having they're trying to show that Trump was a micromanager. I think in
00:48:11.420
the absence of proof that he actually saw how it was recorded in the books or told Weisselberg or
00:48:16.480
somebody put it down as a legal expense, they're trying to just show in general Trump's a micromanager
00:48:22.080
and the defense is trying to say, no, he wasn't. That's not going to get them there. In general,
00:48:26.940
he was a micromanager and therefore he must have seen this line item in the accounting books.
00:48:30.840
But I want to go back to a couple more points. Number one, just to finish up on Stormy, a couple
00:48:35.660
things. Miss, I blacked out. All my blood left my extremities. The room was spinning. That's her
00:48:42.360
current testimony. The defense necklace pointed out very effectively that in Stormy Daniels book,
00:48:49.200
she describes part of the encounter encounter with Trump writing that she made him her bitch.
00:48:57.260
Miss, it was so traumatic. I blacked out has written. He was my bitch. So per the New York
00:49:03.540
Times necklace is suggesting there may be an inconsistency between those two positions because
00:49:08.660
Daniels wrote about being aggressive with Trump when they were first together. Andrew Giuliani,
00:49:14.980
who's been doing great tweeting from inside the courthouse. This is Rudy's son, the Trump's
00:49:18.840
defense team. In your book, did you say that you made him your bitch? Daniels, yes. Made him your
00:49:25.060
bitch in your sexual encounter? Yes. Defense lawyer. But now you claim that even though you made him your
00:49:32.480
bitch, now you're saying that the room was spinning and that you passed out on the bed after sex.
00:49:37.400
Daniels, I maintain that he never physically threatened me. She's trying to have it both
00:49:43.540
ways. She's being too cute here, you guys, right? He never threatened me, but I blacked out. He never
00:49:50.780
threatened me, but I lost the blood flow to my extremity. He never threatened me, but I couldn't
00:49:55.840
leave because the bodyguard was out there. He never threatened me, but I couldn't get past him to get out
00:49:59.980
the door because there he was in his underwear on the bed. It's all being fed to the jury like he never
00:50:04.540
threatened me, but he did because I'm a woman and he took advantage of me. Go ahead, Mark. What were
00:50:08.740
you going to say? Yeah. All right. First of all, to Arthur's point, we love the instruction as criminal
00:50:13.060
defense attorneys that if someone makes an inconsistent statement, you could disregard all
00:50:16.820
of their testimony. If that were to happen in this case, it wouldn't actually hurt the prosecution.
00:50:22.220
They can disregard Stormy Daniels because the check was paid to her and that's really the only
00:50:28.980
relevant issue. They can't say the same when it comes to Michael Cohen. That guy has to be the
00:50:34.460
linchpin. He has to come up with such garbage to suggest that Trump told him certain things
00:50:40.420
that then makes the link to prove what's missing in this case, the beef of this case.
00:50:46.540
In that case, when he starts to say things that are just preposterous, that's when the defense
00:50:53.940
scores huge points because he has to be eviscerated. Stormy Daniels, not so much.
00:51:00.400
Another point I want to raise. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead.
00:51:04.460
I'm just going to say what they've set up so far, what the, what the prosecution has proven
00:51:10.140
beyond a reasonable doubt are a couple of things. Number one, there is this meeting in the White
00:51:15.360
House with Michael Cohen that he's going to testify to. They showed law books. They had
00:51:20.480
witnesses saying, you know, he came in on that day. So they're going to, they, they're going to,
00:51:24.740
they've shown there's the meeting. Oh, this meeting. I think he said this beating. There was a
00:51:28.520
meeting with an M I'm from Brooklyn with an M. Right. So, um, you never know with Cohen and
00:51:34.740
Trump, who knows? You're right. They've proven Trump signed. I think it's a dozen checks for
00:51:40.000
$35,000 each made out to Michael Cohen. They've proven that beyond a reasonable doubt with different
00:51:45.200
witnesses, with documents, et cetera. They've proven that he's cheap, that he doesn't like to spend
00:51:50.580
money. His main secretary at the White House yesterday testified about a back and forth between
00:51:55.820
the secretary at truck tower in Manhattan and the secretary in the White House when he's the
00:52:00.680
sitting president of the United States, who's a billionaire, allegedly about a Tiffany frame,
00:52:05.980
a picture frame as a gift and whether $650 was too much to spend on a gift from Tiffany's. So,
00:52:14.100
and they've given many examples of that about his, does he want to cancel his golf club, um,
00:52:19.100
dues while he's the president? He says yes as soon as possible. So they've, they've proven he's a
00:52:25.200
penny pitcher who signed checks to Michael Cohen, who had a meeting with Michael Cohen. They've proved
00:52:29.520
all of that. The only way they could tie him into this crime is, or any criminal act, is that Michael
00:52:36.160
Cohen's got to come in on Monday and say, we had this meeting and two things happened. Uh, he, he told me
00:52:43.080
make sure nobody knows, um, I don't know how I gave you the money, et cetera. Of course, to Mark's point
00:52:48.940
before, they're not going to write in the ledger book, $130,000 to keep Stormy Daniels quiet about
00:52:55.220
me having sex with her in a hotel room. I mean, that defeats the whole purpose.
00:52:59.280
For the purpose of the election, to interfere with an election.
00:53:03.580
Right, that's right. The next, right, the next point.
00:53:05.840
You, Arthur, you and George Conway, big Trump critic, uh, were on CNN together and had a fight
00:53:11.540
about Michael Cohen and his credibility because he's up Monday. Michael Cohen's next up. He's coming up on
00:53:16.240
Monday and he really will be the star witness. Let's show, show the audience a little bit of
00:53:19.700
that. Look, at the end of the day, what's a reasonable doubt? I think it's going to be hard
00:53:25.360
for the jury to believe that Donald Trump didn't know that these payments were for-
00:53:29.860
George, at the end of the day, an experienced lawyer of your magnitude, you know what you would
00:53:35.960
say? If you were trying this case, you know what you would say to the jury? Ladies and gentlemen,
00:53:39.480
the jury, one of the luckiest juries around, because you got to meet Mr. Reasonable Doubt.
00:53:44.520
You saw him walking here. You saw him take this stand. If there's any human being on the planet
00:53:49.260
earth, that should be, his picture should be next to the definition, reasonable doubt. It's Michael
00:53:59.260
Why? His history of being a liar, of being a fraud, he just got in trouble.
00:54:03.840
He just, the defendant, the defendant's credibility, unless he takes the stand, is not on trial.
00:54:09.480
So my first question is, you were sitting next to Jeffrey Toobin. Did he keep his pants
00:54:17.960
Megan, you know, I'm always straight up with you, and he's been so nice to me. And the last
00:54:24.220
Oh, stop. I don't care. That was a joke. I don't want to open up the Toobin.
00:54:26.860
No, no, no. He's very, he's very sweet. He's super loving, especially to himself.
00:54:30.860
He's actually, he's actually made, he, the last three weeks people have noticed, he's
00:54:35.660
actually made a lot of the points for the defense. When I first went on the first week-
00:54:39.240
I couldn't give a shit. I don't care whether he's pro-Trump. That, unlike all of the hard
00:54:43.520
right, I don't make my assessments of people based on their love or hatred for Donald Trump.
00:54:49.600
He wasn't pro-Trump, I just made him pro-defense. Okay, well, okay, that's your opinion. I'm not
00:54:53.340
going to go there. Mark, I'm listening to you, Mark. Yeah, let it go. Mark, I'm listening
00:54:59.680
to Mark. Thanks, Mark. Yeah. Okay, so now wait. I got to make one other point, because
00:55:04.320
this is a point, zooming out, about journalism. When David Pecker took the stand, you guys
00:55:10.500
remember this, the former guy who ran the National Enquirer, he talked about how he's
00:55:14.800
the one who was paying off women or doormen to try to protect Trump. He didn't actually
00:55:19.640
cut the check for Stormy, which is why Michael Cohen stepped in and did it.
00:55:23.340
The media started to sneer at the National Enquirer's tactics. And I'm not defending
00:55:30.180
their tactics. We all know what the National Enquirer is and what it does. But I made the
00:55:34.180
point at the time that their sanctimony was a bit misplaced, because I knew very well from
00:55:40.280
my time over in broadcast news and cable, for that matter, that these networks, especially
00:55:45.620
the big ones, also pay for stories. And they may go out there on the air and act holier than
00:55:51.360
that. We would never do that. We would never pay for a story. But they do. And I said at
00:55:56.380
the time, you know how they do it? They pay licensing fees for somebody's exclusive photos.
00:56:02.820
And it's just a backdoor scuzzy way of doing what you're not allowed to do through the front
00:56:07.580
door. Okay, and here is one example of one MSNBC or Alex Wagner talking about this disgusting
00:56:14.880
checkbook journalism at the time Pecker took the stand. Number one, for all journalism students
00:56:20.020
out there, checkbook journalism, not a thing. It is not a thing. This strategy from Trump's team,
00:56:25.900
at least as I understood it today, seems to be to normalize outlandish things, which is the arguing
00:56:30.440
that NDAs are just a common practice, that lots of wealthy people do them. This is nothing abnormal.
00:56:36.520
Everybody has NDAs. You guys may not have heard about them before, but it happens. This is the thing
00:56:41.380
that is done. Just because Trump had a bunch of people signing NDAs doesn't mean there's anything
00:56:45.540
that I suspect about that. Catch and kill. It happens all the time. There's nothing illegal
00:56:50.480
about this scheme. This sort of thing happens all the time. This is from Todd Blanche's mouth to the
00:56:55.680
jury. And then my favorite, there is nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It's called
00:57:01.260
democracy. That is not how the world works. Okay, she is completely clueless. All right, number one,
00:57:08.560
as you guys know, NDAs happen all the time, especially at NBC. Some of the people on this
00:57:14.060
panel may have had to sign one, I'm just saying. And I could give you a long list of women who have
00:57:19.360
been silenced by NBC News, her news organization, because of what her male colleagues have done.
00:57:26.400
All right, so wake up, sweetheart. Read a newspaper every once in a while instead of struggling on a
00:57:31.080
teleprompter like you always do. That's one thing Keith Olbermann was right about. Secondly,
00:57:36.000
nobody ever does catch and kill. NBC is the poster child for catch and kill. You caught and killed
00:57:42.700
the beginning of the Me Too movement and the Harvey Weinstein story to protect Matt Lauer.
00:57:48.840
That's what Ronan Farrow posited in his book. You denied it. He proved it. Beyond a reasonable doubt,
00:57:55.000
you guys are the inventors of catch and kill. And third, checkbook journalism and your sanctimonious
00:58:01.700
denial. She's so clueless. This is what Stormy Daniels testified to, per Katie Fang, who works at
00:58:08.980
MSNBC. So you should pay attention to her. Necklace. And you also participated, Ms. Daniels,
00:58:14.760
in making an NBC documentary about yourself, which aired on television just recently, right?
00:58:20.200
Daniels, yes. They gave me $100,000 for back footage. But I wasn't paid for the interview.
00:58:28.960
It was for footage. These people are disgusting liars. They wouldn't know themselves if they saw
00:58:37.520
themselves in the mirror. They are guilty of all the things. They now pretend make them so disgusted.
00:58:44.840
I'm disgusted with them. Who wants to take that one?
00:58:48.240
Megan, listen, MSNBC, they live for all of the sort of the drama and the seediness of all this stuff
00:58:57.080
that's come out. And it goes back to what is relevant at this trial. Yes, of course, it makes
00:59:02.980
for good TV. It makes for interesting discussions on MSNBC about checkbook journalism and NDAs and all
00:59:09.040
that. But they're getting so far afield from what's actually relevant in this trial, which was, did Donald
00:59:14.680
Trump commit a crime by causing the ledger at this Trump organization to be fraudulent? And did he have
00:59:22.360
criminal intent? Stormy Daniels wanted to make money. She wanted to be paid. She wanted to engage
00:59:28.820
in this checkbook journalism. So quit trying to make her out to be some victim in all of this because
00:59:34.920
she was doing it to make money. And of course, because she's trying to earn money, it goes directly
00:59:40.280
to her credibility. MSNBC and all the other folks that want to make this about the habits of the
00:59:48.680
National Enquirer and all of these things, it's so irrelevant that it's just maddening because
00:59:55.660
the Trump trial should have been over in about five minutes. Stormy Daniels' testimony should
01:00:01.220
have been limited to how and under what circumstances she received a check from her lawyer. But instead,
01:00:07.280
it's been allowed to grow and morph into something that is so far afield from what Trump may or may not
01:00:13.280
have done, that it's an embarrassment, quite frankly, to the legal system and the legal community.
01:00:18.800
This is not how trials are supposed to work. This is not how justice in America is supposed to work.
01:00:24.460
And because it's come down to this, it's absolutely the kind of thing that I wonder if we'll ever be
01:00:30.820
able to have faith and confidence in the objectivity and reasonableness of our justice system again.
01:00:37.140
And I punish the prosecution in closing argument, less Stormy Daniels, because again, whether she's
01:00:45.300
believed or not, is only about the affair. I punish the prosecution in closing argument. I undermine
01:00:50.980
their credibility that they're so desperate, they're willing to do whatever it takes to get Trump
01:00:57.260
void of the evidence that they need, that they put this woman on solely for the salacious details to
01:01:04.000
make Donald Trump look bad. How dare they do that in a criminal case? You all should be offended.
01:01:10.860
And I think people need to remember, they need to remember the media is complicit in all of it.
01:01:16.240
That media is who large numbers of the populace are relying on for their facts about this case,
01:01:23.680
for what's really happening inside. NDAs are an abomination. Who would ever use them?
01:01:29.260
This from NBC, right? Who would ever do a catch and kill from NBC?
01:01:33.340
NBC and checkbook journalism. He's disgusting. They do it all the time. That's what Trump is up
01:01:39.840
against. All right, wait, before we go, because I know we're short on time, we got to spend a minute
01:01:43.580
on Arthur Idalla's huge win. My God, speaking of Harvey and Trump, Idalla won his case. We talked
01:01:51.400
about it right after you argued it with Mark. We talked about it the day you won the reversal in a
01:01:57.740
tight, tight decision by the highest court in New York state. And I haven't had the chance to have
01:02:03.120
you on the air. We've spoken privately to say congratulations. It's a huge win, not just for
01:02:08.900
Harvey, but for any guy, frankly, woman accused. And so put it in perspective for what it means in
01:02:15.140
general and maybe even in the Trump case. He worked so hard. He worked so hard on this case.
01:02:20.100
That's true. Thank you, Mark. I actually think it's to Phil's point a little bit. And, you know,
01:02:25.920
I was quoted that day that we got the reversal where nobody was more surprised about than I was
01:02:30.580
because of how hated Harvey is. You know, you could say Trump is hated. Harvey was much more hated.
01:02:36.560
I mean, half the country voted for Trump almost. You know, no one was looking to help Harvey Weinstein
01:02:42.120
out. And what took Phil's point about how the criminal justice system is being weaponized to
01:02:49.140
go after politicians or just people we don't like, like Harvey Weinstein, the fact that the Court of
01:02:55.600
Appeals says, no, we're not going to let you throw the law books out the window because we've targeted
01:03:02.800
one individual. I mean, Megan, at the intermediary court, the appellate division, the first time it
01:03:08.660
was a five-woman judicial panel, they went five-nothing that all the law and all the decisions
01:03:15.220
were good. So I was like, how am I going to get the four of the seven judges on the highest court
01:03:20.060
to agree with us? But they did. And here's my point, and I love this point. I really do.
01:03:25.040
After we were reversed by those five women, I know I do. You'll hear it. The woman, the person from my
01:03:31.100
office who wrote to the Court of Appeals asking for leave was Diana Fabi-Sampson, a woman. The judge
01:03:37.240
who gave us leave to the Court of Appeals was Janet DiFiore, the chief judge who retired because she
01:03:42.540
felt like it on her own afterwards. The woman who wrote the appeal, who wrote the judgment for the
01:03:48.240
court was Jenny Rivera, who was a very strong women's rights person. And three of the four judges
01:03:54.440
were women who agreed with us. So it was women who really repaired the injustice that was done,
01:04:01.620
again, not just to Harvey Weinstein, but to the whole system. And it does tell Judge Mershon,
01:04:07.380
like, we have the guts to do what we think is right, no matter who the defendant is. And I think
01:04:14.580
Arthur, is there, I know that they say they're going to retry him. And I know he's still got
01:04:21.960
the LA sentence hanging over his head, but I've heard you doing some saber rattling about
01:04:26.880
him possibly becoming a free man. Do you, I mean, would you put money on that?
01:04:34.180
It's just that there's two things real quick. Number one, you know, Judge Kelly,
01:04:38.900
the jury, besides there already being appellate issues in California, the jury in California,
01:04:44.460
this will make Mark Iglesias really stand up, were voir dire and told this defendant, Harvey Weinstein,
01:04:51.520
he's already a convicted felon on a sex crime in New York. So imagine starting off with that,
01:04:58.160
those three strikes against you. I know you could all be fair and impartial. So that in and of itself
01:05:03.680
should ask for a retrial. But let me just tell you how crazy New York is. Do you know that there's
01:05:07.900
the senator, the same one who chased Amazon out of Queens with AOC, has introduced a bill to change
01:05:16.000
the law in New York that prior bad acts should be able to come in, in sex crimes cases in New York.
01:05:23.540
He introduced that today, just so that they could introduce these women again when Harvey goes to
01:05:29.200
trial in September. Nuts. Wow. So we weaponized the legislature in addition to weaponizing the courts
01:05:36.200
at the expense of the rights of the accused to have a fair trial. It's unbelievable.
01:05:42.580
Well, we're going to continue to watch it. You guys have been amazing. Arthur, congrats. A huge,
01:05:47.080
huge win. And I do believe for due process. Thank you so much. Also not a Harvey fan, but believe they
01:05:51.220
got to the right decision. And Mark and I were privately texting. We're so proud. We're like, you know,
01:05:54.920
your grandparents, like our little boy, he did it.
01:05:58.200
We were. We were very happy for you, Arthur. Thank you.
01:06:01.440
Super happy for you. Okay. Guys, thank you. Appreciate you all being here. And thanks to
01:06:06.680
all of you. We'll see you again on Monday. We'll have full coverage of everything that's happening
01:06:11.600
that day and all the days. And until then, try to keep your feet on the ground. Maybe don't take
01:06:16.120
a flight this weekend. I don't have total confidence in air traffic control. I don't want to blame
01:06:19.580
anybody, but I'm just saying, not for nothing. Go to church, say a prayer, hug your family.
01:06:24.180
Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.