The Megyn Kelly Show - Stormy Daniels Testimony Backfires, and Michael Cohen's Credibility Issues, with Arthur Aidala, Mark Eiglarsh, and Phil Holloway ｜ 789

00:00:00.640 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:12.320 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and a bonus episode this Friday night.

00:00:17.700 All right, we're going to get to everything that happened in the Trump trial in two minutes.

00:00:21.500 But I have got to start by telling you what just happened to me. OMG.

00:00:25.300 So I was traveling this week. As you know, I had to go out to LA. I was a couple different places on business.

00:00:32.040 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.

00:00:40.520 It was offered to us and we said, okay, great. And so Abby, who oversees everything and micromanages everything in our lives,

00:00:47.960 she wasn't in charge, but of course she flew back with me. OMG.

00:00:54.620 This just happened like an hour and a half ago. My adrenaline is still flowing. I think I speak for Abby too.

00:01:02.360 I don't think it's too far a stretch to say like, we almost went down. Like, yeah, we almost went down.

00:01:07.500 Um, she and I were the only passengers. It was like a six seater. It was a small plane.

00:01:13.100 And I, I, it was kind of a rough flight right from the beginning. Like there was no weather,

00:01:18.100 but it was very like halty, you know, start and stop. You could almost like feel the pilot,

00:01:22.120 like pressing the brake. That's how it felt. And then firing it back up.

00:01:25.800 And I'm not a great flyer to begin with in his defense. Um, but it didn't, it just didn't feel good.

00:01:31.180 And then out of nowhere, our small plane does a hard bank onto its side, like a, like a top gun

00:01:38.980 maneuver. And Abby and I are looking at each other like, Oh my God, what's happening? And it starts

00:01:45.340 beeping. The plane starts beeping and beeping and beeping. Like there's an emergency situation.

00:01:49.680 And you know, we're like saying hail Mary's like what, what in the ever loving, no idea what's

00:01:54.880 happening. And, and it starts to do the like fast acceleration thing. And then like it's turning,

00:01:59.960 it's clear. We're not, this is not, we're not on course. Something bad is happening.

00:02:04.300 I just don't know exactly how bad or what it is or why it is. And clearly Abby doesn't either.

00:02:10.760 And so then it gets back upright and things start to calm down and we lived and we started like

00:02:17.140 starting to reclaim our natural breathing. And finally the pilot turns around, starts explaining

00:02:22.860 what happened. And all we hear is another plane, a commercial airliner, um, almost hit. We're like,

00:02:32.920 what? Something like that. We're like, what, what? Right. Cause you can't hear in these planes.

00:02:37.820 He's got his headphone. We're like, what could you know? This seems important to hear. So he finally

00:02:43.540 gets up and he comes back to us, um, and starts explaining what he was just saying.

00:02:49.540 And the explanation is as far as, and there was a bit of a language barrier. So it was like,

00:02:54.020 forgive me. I don't, I wouldn't testify to these exact words in a court of law,

00:02:57.260 but he said there was a commercial airliner above us that we were on path to either hit

00:03:06.380 or come very, very close to. And, uh, sorry, this is loud in my ears. I don't know what's

00:03:12.560 what I'm hearing anyway. Um, and so he, the, the automatic pilot on our plane took over and

00:03:20.160 that's what made us go on our side. So we could avoid that plane's turbulence is what he said,

00:03:26.920 right? We could avoid that plane's turbulence. And Abigail, do you want to come over here and

00:03:32.440 show us what he did with the finger? So he said, so he goes, we had to, so the automated pilot came

00:03:39.420 over and turned us on the side because if we hadn't done that, show him what he said we would

00:03:43.540 have done. Okay. So he's in front of the plane talking to us. Okay. And he goes, if we hadn't done

00:03:48.220 that, we would have gone. Ooh, I'm sorry. Ooh. What does that mean? You mean we would have gone

00:03:56.420 down? What pilot, what kind of bedside manner is? Ooh, no, not. Okay. Okay.

00:04:03.660 My only part. We were like, what? No, no one wants to see their pilot making that finger motion

00:04:16.580 on the plane. We honestly, like Abby went to the bathroom where she prayed. I prayed in my seat.

00:04:24.760 We held hands and we lived, but then he took out a big three ring binder that he seemed to be

00:04:32.280 referencing in the midst of like what was a very dangerous flight apparently. And we were thinking

00:04:38.420 like, what are you looking up? Near misses, you know, what to do so as not to hit a plane,

00:04:44.240 how not to go, woo. Casually flip through it. Casually. Yeah. Is there something we could Google

00:04:54.020 for you? Is it, can we help at all? Anyway, it got to the point where we were like, just land the

00:04:59.860 plane anywhere. We don't care. We'll get a car back. It's fine. We don't, you don't need to drop

00:05:03.560 us, you know, at the scheduled airport. I've never been so happy to be in an SUV, you know,

00:05:09.400 when we got on ground and I thought about kissing the ground, but I thought it might be offensive.

00:05:14.460 Like it might be aggressive. I didn't want to offend him. I'm sure he did his best. It just was not a

00:05:18.480 great flight. Okay. It was not a great flight. Doesn't seem like you should be that close to a

00:05:22.500 commercial airliner where woo is a possibility. Okay. Now it's funny. I didn't feel like I could

00:05:31.280 start the show without telling you this. It just seemed like, so like near death might be too

00:05:35.580 strong. We felt near deathy. No, it wasn't. We're laughing now. It wasn't. No, it wasn't.

00:05:40.280 Abigail. Abigail, fine. It does not always drop the F-bomb, but I agree with her. Anyway, back safe and

00:05:46.180 sound on this Friday and I hope you are too. Okay. Let's get to Trump. Porn, porn star and director.

00:05:53.380 What she really wanted to do was direct. Stormy Daniels was back on the stand yesterday, Thursday 0.93

00:05:58.500 and Friday for fiery cross-examination by the former president, Donald Trump's defense team.

00:06:04.680 No, it didn't. Her piece ended yesterday and today's witnesses worked to set the stage for the 0.99

00:06:11.140 key prosecution witness who has glaring credibility issues and that's Michael Cohen.

00:06:16.620 So while he may not be as salacious as Stormy, although you could make the case,

00:06:20.740 he's the most important witness of the case, which is a disaster for the prosecution because he has no

00:06:25.300 credibility. This is make or break time for the entire criminal case against Donald Trump.

00:06:30.060 Will these witnesses seal the guilty verdict against him or could they turn the jury, even a single juror,

00:06:36.020 firmly into the camp of not guilty? We're going to get to it with some of our Kelly's 0.98

00:06:40.520 court all-stars today. Arthur Idalla is partner at Idalla, Bertuna and Caymans and host of the

00:06:45.840 Arthur Idalla Power Hour. Mark Eiglarsh is a defense attorney at Eiglarsh Law,

00:06:51.080 which you can find at speaktomark.com. And Phil Holloway is a legal analyst and host of

00:06:56.620 Inside the Law on YouTube. Guys, thank you all so much for being here.

00:07:02.700 Great to be here.

00:07:03.480 It was the first time I saw Abigail in so long until he said hi.

00:07:07.060 I felt like it was a little reunion. I'm sorry. A plane crash is what almost caused that from

00:07:12.700 happening, but it was great to see Abby.

00:07:15.560 Who would like to take our case?

00:07:17.020 Great to be here, Megan, as a pilot for almost 30 years. I'm sorry to hear you had that experience.

00:07:21.020 I promise you general aviation is not always like that.

00:07:25.000 Phil, what happened? You can get sucked in another plane's turbulence and go down? What? This is brand

00:07:29.860 new information to me.

00:07:30.680 It sounds to me like you crossed or were about to cross into the path of what's called

00:07:35.020 wake turbulence behind a heavy aircraft. And if your aircraft is really light, wake turbulence can

00:07:41.000 cause real big problems. And we have to go to great lengths to avoid it because it's a very

00:07:47.680 serious consideration. It doesn't happen a lot. And that's why planes are supposed to keep their

00:07:52.280 distance from one another. But it sounds like today your pilot did the right thing and kept you safe.

00:07:57.220 That's good.

00:07:58.640 Oh my, I guess. So do you think this is an air traffic control problem?

00:08:02.280 Oh, I wouldn't want to begin to speculate, but if you're going in and out of a congested area,

00:08:06.280 air traffic control is responsible for keeping adequate separation. So, um, sounds to me like

00:08:11.520 somebody got their wires crossed somewhere.

00:08:14.220 There was not adequate separation. That's exactly right. There clearly was not adequate separation.

00:08:19.840 And then, you know, Abigail Feinan and I were not, we were glad that we weren't separated. I have to

00:08:24.800 say we were holding onto each other like old ladies, like, Oh my God, this is it. We're thinking 0.99

00:08:28.360 about our kids. It was cray cray. You guys, um, I still have the adrenaline flow. Like when something

00:08:33.480 big happens to you and you're like, Oh God, Oh God, you know, I don't, I don't, I shouldn't operate

00:08:37.380 heavy machine machinery right now. So forgive me if the show is not as on point as it normally is.

00:08:41.920 Okay. Back to stormy. We had our own stormy day. Um, she wrapped it's over. And I think

00:08:48.800 my impression is I didn't get to see her in the courtroom as you did Arthur, but my impression

00:08:54.580 was she was a disaster. She has no credibility. She was thoroughly embarrassed on the stand. 0.99

00:08:59.180 And I don't even know anymore whether this jury is going to believe there was a sexual interlude.

00:09:03.460 I actually think the defense did a pretty good job of suggesting she made the whole thing up

00:09:07.780 to make money and to wind up extorting Donald Trump for something or to just threaten him.

00:09:13.080 So I'll start with you, Arthur, cause you were in the courtroom, set the scene for us. And I know

00:09:16.500 you spoke with team Trump after the fact, what do you think? Well, you know what I think is it's

00:09:22.780 funny because there are people who are sitting two seats away from me who are like, Oh, stormy did

00:09:28.180 great. They didn't lay a glove on her. And then this guy, a former judge who's on my radio show every

00:09:33.200 night, he's been in the courtroom every day. And he's like, it's the best day the Trump team ever

00:09:37.700 had. So it's kind of depends on who you speak with, but the criminal defense attorney who

00:09:42.320 conducted the cross-examination for president Trump is a woman named Susan Necklace. She's

00:09:47.100 very well known in New York and she's very experienced. And I thought she was very good.

00:09:52.760 Then we get, she started on Tuesday with her cross-examination and that was really all about

00:09:56.680 money, money, money, money, money. Uh, because on direct, she said, stormy said, Oh, I really wasn't

00:10:02.340 in for the money. You know, I didn't answer your appropriate question. You said, set the stage.

00:10:06.980 Let me set the stage for a second. Cause I was in the courtroom for the first time and

00:10:11.540 maybe the only time the jury, the jury, I always look Megan on, on how jurors dress. If they're not

00:10:19.360 told by the judge how to dress, cause old school judges used to say like dress like you're going

00:10:23.860 to Sunday services. They don't do that anymore. But the jury dressed in a very appropriate way. Like

00:10:30.500 you could tell they're going somewhere that's serious. There's no jeans. There's no ripped clothes.

00:10:36.400 There's no hoodies. They're all dressed in like, we're down for business. And when Susan Necklace was

00:10:43.160 really hitting it, it was a tennis match. I looked at the jurors. They're looking at stormy. They're

00:10:47.300 looking at the, the, uh, defense attorney. Stormy was dressed in a black jacket with a bright green

00:10:54.040 top. She's a big woman, you know, coming on and off the stand. She's tall. Uh, no one would ever use 0.78

00:10:59.160 the word petite to describe her. And at times she was there, uh, especially towards the end when

00:11:05.200 she was kind of figuring out like what this is all about. And she was, she was angling her body

00:11:11.060 towards the jurors answering the question. But I think-

00:11:14.260 You're crossing your arms. You're for the listening audience. You're crossing your arms.

00:11:16.640 Yes. I'm sorry. Yes. So I'm crossing my arms and cheating towards the jurors and starting more to

00:11:20.940 talk to the jurors than to Susan Necklace. Um, but the real, I thought the highlight of the cross

00:11:27.280 examination was towards the end. There were kind of two highlights, but she said to her, the question

00:11:34.740 was, and you've written 150 adult film scripts yourself, haven't you? And, and Stormy was proud.

00:11:41.840 Oh yes, I have. Yes. I wrote them all myself. And those are all fiction. Correct. Correct.

00:11:47.080 Those are stories that you've made up about men and women having sex in different scenarios.

00:11:52.520 Correct. Correct. So you're an expert creating fictitious stories that never happened that aren't

00:11:58.380 real. And she goes, well, the sex is real in those stories. Like the sex was real here. And if I was

00:12:04.240 making up this story, I would have made up a better story. But the point came across that like,

00:12:10.080 she's done this 150 times she's made up these stories. And then the other highlight kind of

00:12:15.080 was just at the very, very end. It was a question that Susan Necklace wasn't looking for an answer

00:12:20.200 was, you don't know anything about how Donald Trump writes his checks, right? You don't know how

00:12:25.460 they're logged in the books back in New York, right? You have nothing to do with his finances.

00:12:29.880 Correct. Correct. And she sat down. Um, it was interesting. I mean, you know,

00:12:34.180 sometimes courtroom scenes can be very boring. It was not a boring day.

00:12:37.380 Uh, no, I mean, this is her testimony was anything but boring. Mark, you do this for

00:12:44.980 a living as well. And you're not wrong. Like ask a different person, you'll get a different

00:12:49.840 take. And it tends to come down to politics. You know, we're trying to keep it out of that.

00:12:53.940 We're trying to give sound legal analysis. Like what actually, how did she objectively do? I don't,

00:12:59.440 maybe you can't take politics out of this because you're in New York, the jury probably isn't in love

00:13:03.940 with Trump. There might be a couple, but if you can be objective about it based on what we've read,

00:13:09.280 how do you think she did? Okay. I think that the prosecution jumped the shark by getting into the

00:13:18.440 areas that they did. And for those not familiar with that, the same cringy, bizarre feeling you

00:13:23.520 got when Fonzie was water skiing over sharks. We got when Stormy Daniels in a fraud trial testified

00:13:32.700 to the former leader of a free world laying in his boxers, posing on a bed about to allegedly commit

00:13:40.620 an extramarital affair. We shouldn't have that image in our head. It was problematic for the

00:13:46.880 prosecution to get into those kinds of details. When I say to you in response to how does she do,

00:13:54.340 it doesn't really matter. And by that, I mean, any good defense lawyer would get up and say,

00:14:01.000 look what the prosecution did. They wanted to show bad character like they did in the Harvey Weinstein

00:14:08.240 case. And they wanted to focus on something other than the issue of whether he knowingly

00:14:14.280 committed fraud. Why else would they bring her in? There's proof that she was paid. It wasn't

00:14:20.580 necessary. Look at the lengths that they're going to, to, to, to, to try to prove this case when they

00:14:26.700 don't have any direct evidence. So how did she do? She looked horrible as she should the same way 0.64

00:14:33.280 Cohen's going to look. And I think that, that the defense could make a lot out of it in closing

00:14:38.460 argument if they do. So interesting. So Phil, here's just an example of what, uh, Susan Necklace

00:14:46.240 tried to do on cross-examination of Stormy Daniels. Uh, she got into, for example, and there's a lot we

00:14:52.640 can go through, but it will start, start here. How Stormy Daniels missed, you know, I wasn't in this

00:14:57.140 for the money. That's not why, you know, I, I, I sold my story. Yes. But, um, you know, I, this wasn't

00:15:04.560 an attempt at extortion and so on. She zeroed in on the number of ways in which Stormy has made

00:15:09.860 money off of this and has touted it. And here's one example. Um, she showed tweets beginning March

00:15:15.240 30th, 2023, the day Trump was first indicted celebrating the criminal case against him per

00:15:20.440 Katie Fang of MSNBC, who, you know, we were reliant on the reporters for exactly that wordage

00:15:25.220 that happens, the verbiage inside the courtroom exhibit, a photo of Daniels's online store with a

00:15:32.340 candle that is titled Stormy Saint of Indictments candle. Necklace, you're saying you are the saint

00:15:40.000 of the Trump indictment. Daniels, no. Okay. So already you're not saying that your candle is

00:15:47.380 Stormy Daniels indictment, patron saint altar candle. Like what indictment are you talking about

00:15:53.500 on the day after anyway? So she denies that she's saying she's the saint of the Trump indictment.

00:15:58.360 Necklace, you are selling team Stormy merchandise, making $40 each. Daniels, no, I was making about

00:16:05.240 $7. Okay. But the point's taken, right? You are selling team Stormy, team Stormy merchandise.

00:16:10.780 Necklace, do you plan to continue selling your story? Daniels, I plan to continue to do my job

00:16:16.040 and find my extra and fund my extraordinary legal bills. Necklace, you have an online store. You are

00:16:22.860 bragging about getting president Trump indicted. Daniels, I got president Trump indicted. Necklace,

00:16:28.080 aren't you bragging about that? Daniels, no. Just look at the damn candle. Here's the last bit of

00:16:34.500 it. Pardon the New York Times. Necklace, you're celebrating indictments by selling things from

00:16:39.620 your store. Then Daniels goes to not unlike Mr. Trump. So it's no longer no. Now it's yes,

00:16:46.240 I'm doing it. But Trump cashes in on things too. And so that's it on the candle and the money.

00:16:53.400 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

00:17:16.940 Michael Cohen, which we'll see next week. But look, if she has a financial interest in this case

00:17:23.600 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 0.81

00:17:35.800 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

00:17:54.540 good job, I think, detailing and chronicling those and going through them item by item by item to show

00:18:01.440 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

00:18:12.800 think this whole thing about her being a fiction storyteller in terms of writing scripts about 0.69

00:18:20.380 fictional sexual encounters, I think that was a work of art by the defense team. They did a fantastic

00:18:28.120 job, Megan, in my opinion, with a witness who should not even have been on the stand in the first place.

00:18:33.480 What in the hell does Stormy Daniels have to do with bookkeeping at the Trump organization? Of 0.98

00:18:40.200 course, the answer to that is nothing. And if the answer is nothing, she should not have been on the

00:18:44.620 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,

00:18:57.140 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. 0.85

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, 1.00

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. 1.00

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 0.58

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 1.00

00:31:12.500 cross-examining a woman. Because if I would have done it, Phil or Mark, we would have been accused. 0.58

00:31:17.860 I think it's called slut-shaming or something like that. What Susan Necklace was able to do was she 1.00

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,

00:31:47.320 what was it, over 200? We have that.

00:31:50.320 Photographic movies?

00:31:51.400 Okay, wait, I have that transcript. 1.00

00:31:52.620 And it was just like so obvious how full of crap she was. 0.99

00:31:54.780 It was a great moment. Yes, completely great. Very good moment for Necklace and Team Trump. 1.00

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 0.98

00:32:23.480 women having sex, right? Daniels, yes. Necklace. But according to you, seeing a man on a bed in a 0.99

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 0.95

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 0.98

00:36:42.200 direct, which I had missed, about this is another one of the reasons she allegedly felt so threatened 0.89

00:36:47.620 and couldn't leave and therefore she had to stay and have sex with him. 0.97

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 0.69

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. 1.00

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, 0.95

00:39:39.140 Stormy Daniels sex. I just put in her name and it's all naked, crazy, horrible pictures of her. 0.99

00:39:45.200 They don't have to Google her to learn all that, Arthur. She gave up. 0.57

00:39:48.380 Well, I know. We kind of knew.

00:39:49.400 When you see it, Mark.

00:39:50.040 Arthur's doing his research, Mark. Get out of his case.

00:39:52.500 Yeah, it's recent.

00:39:53.280 Right. Thank you. Thank you.

00:39:54.980 But it really looks like.

00:39:55.720 Oh, the pop-ups on his computer.

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, 1.00

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. 0.95

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.

00:44:12.060 Oh, my God.

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

00:44:25.020 between Trump's CFO and Harvey Weinstein.

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

00:46:47.540 missing here.

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. 0.99

00:48:57.260 Miss, it was so traumatic. I blacked out has written. He was my bitch. So per the New York 0.99

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 1.00

00:49:25.060 bitch in your sexual encounter? Yes. Defense lawyer. But now you claim that even though you made him your 1.00

00:49:32.480 bitch, now you're saying that the room was spinning and that you passed out on the bed after sex. 1.00

00:49:37.400 Daniels, I maintain that he never physically threatened me. She's trying to have it both 1.00

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 0.99

00:50:40.420 that then makes the link to prove what's missing in this case, the beef of this case. 0.97

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

00:53:54.840 Cohen. And if you have reasonable Cohen-

00:53:56.800 You can cross-examine Michael Cohen.

00:53:59.260 Why? His history of being a liar, of being a fraud, he just got in trouble. 0.92

00:54:02.760 As opposed to the defendant?

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

00:54:15.220 on the entire time?

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

00:54:23.000 three weeks that I've been on CNN-

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 0.99

00:54:43.520 right, I don't make my assessments of people based on their love or hatred for Donald Trump. 1.00

00:54:48.680 He's a disgusting pig. 0.99

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 1.00

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 0.97

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 0.94

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 1.00

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 1.00

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 1.00

00:59:40.280 to her credibility. MSNBC and all the other folks that want to make this about the habits of the 1.00

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 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.85

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 0.98

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 0.95

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

01:04:12.920 that was a big message for the whole country.

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 0.60

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 0.98

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.

The Megyn Kelly Show - May 11, 2024

Stormy Daniels Testimony Backfires, and Michael Cohen's Credibility Issues, with Arthur Aidala, Mark Eiglarsh, and Phil Holloway ｜ 789

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript