the final witness for the prosecution. >> i have wind, i'm not a liar. >> michael cohen back on the stand. >> we went through all times michael cohen has led, his legal troubles, the fact that he has been disbarred. >> under cross-examination from the defense. >> he is obsessed with revenge against donald trump, that is what they are saying. >> as donald trump roles and with a full entourage, including the speaker of the house. >> president trump's is a friend and i wanted to be here to support him. tonight, chris hayes and alex wagner break down what happened inside and outside the courtroom, with rachel maddow, lawrence o'donnell, katie phang, and msnbc legal and political experts when special coverage of trump on trial begins right now. good evening from new york, and chris hayes along with alex wagner. thank you for joining us for

our special coverage of day 17 of donald trump's criminal trial. we will be joined by rachel maddow and lawrence o'donnell in just a minute to become what we heard from the most pivotal witness in the case, michael cohen today. in my case, the experience was first-hand, as i watched michael cohen testify life in the courthouse. the question looming over today, particularly today because cross-examination began, how did michael cohen do? the morning began with michael cohen finishing his direct testimony with the prosecution before a much anticipated cross- examination from the defense in the afternoon. from the stand, well he told the jury the story that is, by now, a from there one, at least in the broad outlines. michael cohen's transformation from a loyal, conniving, energetic hustler on behalf of donald trump, who both admired and emulated his boss, to a fierce trump critic, who has now spent years cooperating with various investigations into him and occasionally during the midnight tiktok railing against him. the transformation from trump acolyte to trump critic

effectively destroyed that previous version of michael cohen's life, a life you get the since he quit enjoyed in many ways. today, he said 10 feet away from the man responsible for all of that while he outlined what a prosecutors say is an illegal scheme to falsify business records in order to hide the hush money paid to stormy daniels. the problem, of course, is that, much like his former boss, michael cohen is a guy who's got a long record of not telling the truth. of obligating them of avoiding, aligning. at least from where i was sitting today in the courthouse, when it came to the core allegations at hand here, we will discuss this throughout the next few hours, michael cohen did seem sincere. for at least like he was on the level. the major central question, one that might well decide the case is what the jury makes of the man that they saw on the stand today. >> i have a lot of questions

for you. >> great. >> i do want to say, though, i was very much struck over the course of the last few days and it came to a head today that a certain essential part of the strategy for the defense seems to be predicated on the assumption that people are no bigger than the jobs they do, right? and that stormy daniels would reveal herself on the stand to be a sleazy bottom. here and under withering cross- examination, she would just fall like a house of cards. the same assumption seemed to be made for michael cohen. as it turns out, stormy daniels was incredibly strong, really sort of resilient witness that seemed incredibly credible, in some ways humiliated the defense in the cross- examination. michael cohen, who they tried to prod into being like a rage machine, to reveal that he was nothing more than a bottom feeding grifter ended up

keeping his composure, right? throughout the trial, they would sort of give, they would give the jury these statements that he made, these outlandish statements and he would say sounds like something i said. he was unapologetic. you could tell he took pride in the work that he did and, i don't know, he seemed really credible, at least on paper. what was it like in the courtroom? >> i will say throughout the day, you start with the direct and then went to the cross- examination after the lunch break. generally as my first time in that courtroom unlike tommy tuberville, i cannot find it particularly depressing. on the scale of the visible buildings for a civic purpose, it is probably a 7 or 8 out of 10. when i went to school in the 80s, probably like him before. this is like a 7 or 8. judge juan merchan , the presiding judge, has tremendous and culpable equanimity with which he orders the proceedings. it feels like the epitome of judicial temperament exuding from the bench. everything that is happening is orderly and moving along. in

terms of michael cohen, i agree with you that, again, lisa rubin had this point, we will talk to her later in this hour, we got the best version of michael cohen yesterday. the question today was what they're going to be some blowup moment or was there going to be a moment of colonel jessup and a few good men where he slams the podium and says like yes, i'm lying. whatever, i don't know what the fantasy was. you are right that it kept computer the entire time and he maintained that kind of more quiet, chastened version of himself. a few plumbers of the other michael cohen. >> like to do: a cheeto faced dictator? i'm matching up all the assertions together. he had sort of relinquished like his rage in a lot of ways, for the most part. and, that seemed really powerful to me. >> i will say, and we will talk about this more throughout the evening, i will say on cross, there were moments where he seemed nervous, shifty, a little cottonmouth, going for

water. his eyes were darting. there were a few very long pauses. when you ask someone a question, that paz doesn't make you think like now i'm going to get the truth, right? there was a little bit of that. again, all of that i think is atmospheric because none of that pertain and i think we will talk about through the next few hours one of that really drilled down to the sort of core questions at issue for guilt or innocence of the defendant, who sat there, i will say, with the phalanx of friends, family members, the person, his buffer zone, the person that puts together the word document that has all the nice articles about him. >> we will talk about that. you had an eagle's eye view. >> edited get to see the sausage getting made, the sausage that gets fed to donald trump's ego being made. and, this was, that is a good example, i think. sort of capitalizes a little bit of the cross, which is the

defense lawyer saying we know the conversion story. i don't know how much the jurors know, todd blanche saying "in your view, president trump's speaks from the heart ." michael cohen, i said that. this is when michael cohen is still working with the campaign you said that. michael cohen, sans right. todd blanche . at the time, you weren't lying, right? michael cohen, at that time, i was knee-deep into the court of donald trump, yes. >> that was the store that got told today was we watched under direct the trajectory of michael cohen in the fold and outside of default and that fema continued in the cross examination of is there something the jury should suspect about michael cohen because he went from in the fold to outside the fold? we are joined by rachel maddow and lawrence o'donnell, who was also at the courthouse today.

>> the simple scorecard reporting is not a single point, relevant point was scored against michael cohen on cross examination. to everyone's surprise, the demeanor held up. that was the suspense of last night. the suspense was well, that is the most remarkable version of michael cohen we have ever seen, those of us who have watched him in the courtroom yesterday. can he do it on cross when he is challenged, he such a defensive guy, he such a combative guy in every other environment. but he was contained, as most people are, by the pressures of the conference of the courtroom, especially the witness stand. you have to remember that when lives end up in a criminal court room and you are the key witness for a criminal prosecution for yours is a broken life because you are here as the eyewitness to your friends murder, you are part of a tragedy yourself.

michael cohen's life was broken by all of this. what you saw on the witness stand was this broken man. i love some of what we saw from the courtroom art. the capturing of michael cohen's mournful face, which is what this was. this was someone morning for his own mistakes, morning for his own terrible mistakes that he's made in his life and then describing, eventually, it was a family intervention to get him to turn away from what was literally his life of crime with donald trump and save what could be left of his life by the simple course of telling the truth to prosecutors, doing time in prison, it turns out, will be a consequence of this. chris, one thing i would say about michael cohen's pauses on answering questions is i took every one of those to actually

be a smart moment. that just might be the jury won't be thinking the way i am about it but having seen a lot of witnesses, especially lawyer witnesses, what he's doing is he's listening to every word you just said and deciding how to answer it, whether he should answer it, whether he should ask for clarification, and it never felt to me like there was something weird about the paz but it could, to a jury, who doesn't know that that is what i see going through his mind. >> there was a little bit of this, there's a little bit of this having been through depositions, there's a little bit of this, a question is asked and you sort of quibble the characterization so you brushback a little bit. 25 comes back. at one point, there was a big stand off, was that a lie? it wasn't truthful. was it a lie? if you want to call it. not asking if you want to call it a line. there's a few of those standoffs. i guess that was intentional on michael cohen's part because he

is a lawyer, he is being careful and he does understand the weight and i think that last thing, the weight of all of this, which, again, we were talking yesterday, everyone was talking like is this going to last ? it was very clear the spectral presence that he had, the gaunt, broken guy who, that remained throughout. rachel, obviously you were following closely today, i'm sure. what was your big take away? >> my big take away was, is this all there is? from the defense. i think that the defense is under no obligation to put any witnesses forward at all. lawrence has been very taken with it and persuasive in saying there is 0% chance that they will put the defendant, that they will put their own client, donald trump, on the stand in his own defense. we don't know if they will put anybody. so, if they don't do this is to their defense. the cross examination of michael cohen is of the case for the defense. to get what todd blanche was

able to get out of him today, there was nothing , which it makes me feel like they must be incredibly confident in their ability to try to get a mistrial ruling here or something surprising is going to happen on thursday, or they just didn't bring it because there really was nothing, especially when you consider that when the prosecution laid out their case at the outset, they basically said this is a documents case, we are going to put michael cohen on the stand, he's a controversial guy, and for good reason and you are going to hear about why but everything that we are going to need to prove to you in order for you to come back with a guilty verdict will be bolstered by corroborating evidence by multiple witnesses and by documents. thus far, they spent the last couple of weeks doing that, getting all the documents, authenticating the document, given the corroborating witness testimony, they get to their culminating witness, michael cohen, and he performs perfectly as a witness for them. he doesn't lose his cool, as you guys were saying, he

answers all the right questions, he doesn't seem to, you know, go into weird soliloquies or sidebars that might be picked apart on cross examination. they hand him over to the defense today after lunch. i have to tell you, i was on tender hooks, i thought this was it, this is how we are going to see they keep donald trump out of prison and it was just nothing. so, maybe thursday will be something. but, otherwise, it looks like they are just not making a difference at all. >> i was, i was struck by the same thing. not only that, where is the beef? but also this sort of spaghetti against the wall nature of the line of questioning from the defense, rachel, just they tried to paint michael cohen as a bunch of different things, and unreliable narrator or a grifter or someone who was in it for himself, selfish. >> a spurned lover, basically. >> someone who was obsessed with donald trump and when he was cast aside for not getting a position in the white house, not getting the job he was intent on destroying donald

trump. did you find any of those characterizations regularly effective? >> i might have found anyone of them effective at the prosecution not laid on them out in advance to tell us to put them all in context and tell us what they mean. i didn't know that michael cohen had called the defense lawyer, todd blanche , a quiet little swearword for the very first thing he led with, i didn't know he had complained about trump's defense lawyers in a tiktok video or something. that was new, okay. is that going to change my view about what michael cohen brings to this case? no. the prosecution did a good job at eliciting from all of the other witnesses, i couldn't stand michael cohen, michael cohen called himself a lawyer. michael cohen, a fixer, he only fixes things that he broke. we got all of this stuff, all of the ad hominem anything you could want about michael cohen we've already had. then they put it all in

context. here's what he wants when he served donald trump, here's when he stopped serving donald trump, here is what he has done since, here are the since he has committed and the way he has atoned. it has all been out there in advance. for todd blanche to be out as donald trump's defense lawyer saying michael cohen, didn't you like to congress ? the jury must be sitting there yes, we heard the expiration for that already, we know what that is, why are you picking it up again? >> the thing that struck me today on that point, on the cross is i do think, i mean, there are plausible stories to tell here. for instance, right, and they are spending a lot of time on his podcast and the fact that there was a moment, all the

different merchandise you sell on your website, your associated websites that show donald trump in prison and send them to the because, the white house, if that about president trump's? yes it is. okay, there's a story that tells this guy is so out for revenge he will do whatever it takes to put him behind bars, which is what is being implied. that part at least was legible to me. there were large parts of the cross today that i could not follow. and, i think i'm pretty good at following this stuff, generally. i followed most of, i followed the direct. part of this i will just say is like a small color thing, this is something we can talk about with our legal experts. in the direct, all of the evidence is being put up for all of us to see, which is extremely helpful because you can see the documents. here is the paystub. during the cross, and they would present a document to michael cohen to refresh his memory, it was not admitted into evidence broadly, which meant he's looking at a screen. you don't see what the document is. this is intentional. it means that it is really hard to follow the whole thing. there were long lines of questioning where i was like i just lost here. >> what are you talking about questioning >> what are we doing with the phones? why are we on the phone still?

i don't get the phones thing. >> michael cohen is looking at a document of us can see and he's assigning you are misrepresenting what is on this document. it is not working on any level. hey, welcome to the representation of a guilty cleaned. this is what it looks like when a criminal defense lawyer has a client who did exactly what stormy daniels says he did. this is what it looks like when you are presenting a client who did indeed conspire to create false business records. i don't have, if they had something better, you would have heard it in the first 10 minutes. they don't have anything better. you are not going to hear anything better. and, the game is, and it is a legitimate legal game, is they are going to try to create not just reasonable doubt but presidential level reasonable doubt. they don't want you to bring a higher level of reasonable doubt. this man was president so you can't possibly convict him on the word of that man. >> rachel, lawrence, stay with us. it was a combative scene in the courtroom. the scene outside was somehow just as wild. we will talk about the

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>> i do have a lot of surrogates and they are speaking beautifully and they come from washington and they are highly respected. >> donald trump loves renting about the prosecution against him and the witnesses and the judge and the judge's daughter and the jurors that had to do

it without running afoul of his gag order. have thursday republican proxies to it for him. that we, it was united states senator rick scott, yesterday, it was j.d. vance. outside the courthouse today, trump's entourage and sycophants and the vice presidential wannabes swelled to include the ranks of governor of north dakota, multiple backbench congressmen, that guy, vivek ramaswamy, and even speaker of the house. >> all of us are here as front donald trump supporting him in or personal capacity. >> president trump's is innocent of these charges. >> the american people have already acquitted donald trump. >> the judicial system has been mobilized against president trump's. >> this trial is a joke. this thing is a farce. >> it is one of the most

depressing places i've been in my life. >> there's no crime here. >> wears the crown? there is no crime. >> we have a biden donor judge. >> the real book keeping we accounting of is judge juan merchan's on the family member collecting millions of dollars as a democratic operative. >> it is corrupt and everyone knows it. >> he couldn't say this things himself, a lot of them. some of which he could but they said them for him. so with us tonight, rachel maddow and lawrence o'donnell. i want to say one thing about this, because i was sitting in the morning behind that roe of folks so it was eric and larry trump, it was the staffer who puts together the papers that donald trump holds. i got to watch her paste articles into a word document throughout the day that were compiled. >> that is a job in trump world. >> the portfolio of that. then it was, guzman, former republican presidential candidate doug bergen. here is michael cohen on the stand being like that me tell you how it goes when you devote your life abjectly in the motivating possible way, where you give up your own sense of

core self, of who you are and devote yourself to serving this man. here is what it looks like and they are there in the front roe doing the thing, all auditioning to be the next version of michael cohen or, more specifically, the next version of mike pence. at least michael cohen never had a mob running through the capitol trying to literally murder him as mike pence did. it was so striking that these people, rachel, have decided that this is what, doug bergen, he is worth $400 million. what are you doing there? listen to the guy on the stand. this is not the only person that has this story. i have news for you. >> i have to say that i, just as television is a visual medium, it is not my area of expertise but i feel like i could do a little bit of analysis here, which is that one thing that has changed in the republican party is that there being in the tank for donald trump over

the last five years has changed and become so much more tanked that they all now dress like him too. they were all wearing the exact same outfit. it was like they were the rockettes. it is a little bit, i don't, i don't know if they do a routine but just to see them lined up because micah johnson is the speaker, he gets a straight but all the rest of them, it is the exact same thing and they are dressed up like him to praise him. they all use the same language, they all describe him as their friend. i don't know if donald trump has friends. i don't think that vivek ramaswamy is one of them if he does have friends. this is a display of sycophancy and a job interview, as you say, chris but it is also, it is also a serious thing because what they are doing is they are showing up and attacking the judicial system. there's more to say about that. the initial just seeing them all show up together dressed like a squad to call him there

dear friend when he doesn't know what any of their last names are, i just found it sad. it is an interesting snapshot of the republican party. >> that we squeeze in a fact check on the judges that are making millions of dollars. the judges daughter has never made $1 million. so, this is all part of the propaganda going on down there. here is the most important thing that happened politically in america today. it is an historic turn. the republican party has risen boldly and bravely defense of what they call adultery with adult film stars, paying off the film starts secretly, altering the business records to cover up thing off the adult film star secretly so that you might more successfully run for president. that is the position they took today. it will be fascinating to see what their position is at their

churches on sunday about why they were at the trial in another state where they don't live. but, for them to be now the party that is completely and 100% in favor of sex of any kind with adult filters but opposed to any abortion option that might result from the republican candidate having sex with an adult film star, they've come down very solidly against that end of the whole story. the kid what the story and that way. but, they will defend every other thing that donald trump did in that room with stormy daniels and everything he has done about it since. >> never forget that donald trump is the man that had the miss universe pageant. this, rachel, it is the swimsuit competition for the

vp. instead of swimsuits, they are wearing matching suits and they have their turn at the microphone to say, it is the interview portion where they are auditioning. i think you are absolutely right, and, to point out the shameless hypocrisy. beyond that, micah johnson, speaker of the house, second in line for the presidency, telling the country that of the judicial system is a shame it seems like a problem for this country, right? but, again, i go back to chris, they have a cautionary tale, michael cohen sitting on the stand telling them what it is like to cash out in the moral bankruptcy court and it makes a difference. >> the last thing on this, just to see this quickly, which is that there's also this, there is something comedic about it and deeply pathetic, pathetic in a way that i find it almost breaks my inability to mentally model what they are doing. i really feel like if someone asked me to do this kind of thing, there is nothing you could offer me that would make me desire to humiliate myself in that way. honestly, that is just pure vanity, it's not an ethical objection. >> is kind of ethical. >> it is ethical but it is so

pathetic but it also has something really menacing about it and it is this. they are trying to shoot the moon. they are making a high leverage that and that is the high leverage but michael cohen made, which is i could be the counsel to the president of the united states and i could make $4 million afterwards and to be adjacent to power and i could have people do what i want them to do. they are making a high leverage but they could be adjacent to power and they can be adjacent to a particularly unconstrained kind of power that is worth the self negation that is on display in the swimsuit competition on display at 100 center street. >> i would also say, just as a last point here, that the rule of law is a concept but it is also a really specific thing. to have, to your point, alex, to have the speaker of the house say don't listen to this witness and this prosecution is a sham and this is a

politically motivated proceeding and this court proceeding is a joke and should be paid attention to, the rule of law is a specific thing. it is a concrete process where there are people who work in the court system and they have families and there are people who have who serve as witnesses and jurors in the system. to have every leading light in the republican party lining up and assigning our judicial system doesn't count and our judicial system is a joke and our judicial system is just stacked against you and me and we should disparage it here, this is an important moment for the rule of law in the united states of america because of that donald trump inveighing against the judicial system which is holding into account, this is the republican party, one of the two governing parties of the united states, lining up and in unison saving our court system, effectively, ought to be dismantled. and, this is a crucial moment for us as a democracy, as ridiculous as this seems. but, we are going to look back on this time as a much more

serious moment than when kevin mccarthy went to mar-a-lago after january 6th and kissed the ring. we will look at all of these republican politicians showing up at the courthouse and announcing the judicial branch of government as a crucial moment in the fall of american democracy if this proceeds to another trump presidency. this will be a landmark thing, as stupid as it feels in the moment. >> one of the great losses of not being able to televise this trial in a new york state court is that america cannot see how completely fair it is. donald trump's lawyers get half of their objections sustained, half of their objections overruled. if we were televising this, if america could see every ruling that judge juan merchan made, if they could see what you described, chris, as his fairness and helpful that fairness is, constantly, you could then say to these people tell me which one of the judges rulings you disagreed with today. which objection do you think he should not have sustained? there is no capacity to do that because we are not televising

this and america is not seeing just how pure the fair this trial actually is. >> rachel maddow, lawrence o'donnell, thank you so much for being with us. we will see you in a little bit. lawrence, we will dive into the legal strategy behind what we heard today and how it might all play out. that is next. is next. after advil: let's dive in! but...what about your back? it's fineeeeeeee! [splash] before advil: advil dual action fights pain two ways. advil targets pain at the source, acetaminophen blocks pain signals. advil dual action.

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allegedly obsessed with donald trump, even since before he became president. here is defense attorney todd blanche. "you were upset with president trump's, would you?" michael cohen, "i don't know if i would characterize the word obsessed. i admire him tremendously." "you described your feelings for president trump as being obsessed in your first book, correct?" michael cohen, "correct." "you admired him before you even started working for him, correct?" "when, "correct. " joining us, lisa rubin and charles coleman, former new york prosecutor, now a criminal defense and civil rights attorney. very good to have some legal minds weigh in on this. lisa, let me start with you. the idea that michael cohen was effectively a single white female character in trump land, is the point of that from the

defense to suggest that michael cohen might have acted on his own to make the stormy daniels problem go away for trump? >> yes. >> did they do that? >> no. i'm being cross-examined now. answering the questions squarely before me. i don't think they did, alec, i think they were trying to show you was motivated to do it alone and he was so obsessed with trump having been spurned by him, he is engaging in a scorched earth strategy to take the man's life miserable in a way that is undeserving of whatever trump has done that could be criminally charged. i don't think they succeeded. i wrote down after reading the cross-examination all the different themes that they floated today and not a single one of them was a winner, at least today on this cross. he's really hungry but he was before too. he's wealthy, yes, he was before to make. he wouldn't take direction from the da in terms of setting up about the case. okay, does that make him not credible? he was a leader, they insinuated he was leaking

information to the press. they never got anywhere with that. unless they can establish that that actually happened and that he was destructive to the case, i'm not sure where that goes. he's an incentivized witness because he dislikes trump. is also a person who was the only person who served jail time for crimes related to the ones that are being charged. and, he was sent back to prison read repeatedly during covid-19 after he was released on home confinement. if he has an ax to grind, and they deserve one. he has a binder to the das office gave him a binder with his plea elocution in it. that is supposed to make him somehow biased ? that is to refresh his recollection about things within his knowledge. the final one is that he messed with his phones before he gave them to the das office. the continuation is the fbi and returned them to him in 2020, the da office didn't ask for them until 2023 and the continuation is either michael cohen or a man named jeremy rosenberg, an investigator in the das office, somehow messed with the phones so as to edit the september 6th, 2016 phone

call through which trump makes the most dimming admissions in the case. >> charles. >> i rest. >> so, the strategy here is that they have no strategy i mean by that is they do not have strong facts. this is clear, we all knew this going in. so, in order to try and get to the point of a hung jury or a mistrial, your strategy is confusion and misdirection. that is everything they have been doing with respect to the different legal theories they have tried to float. i have been one as an attorney who was loose to critique and criticize other attorneys in terms of how they try cases. we are at the point where i can honestly say that todd blanche may be in over his head because this is a state court. i want to point that out. he spent a lot of his career as a federal prosecutor. that is very different than being a criminal defense attorney in state court, primarily because as a federal prosecutor, due to not try many

cases. you settle cases a lot. and, in the cases that you actually trying, many of the defendants do not testify. quite frankly, you are not used to cross-examination as you would be if you were an attorney who practices in state court. that is the value of what we are talking about. i think that in terms of donald trump's federal cases, he might be the guy. in the situation right now, if you like a much better choice would have been susan necheless. >> i watched this, i was there in the courthouse, in the overflow room during cross. i find myself having a hard time following it but also, i am not the median juror. the one thing that was clear to me and it seemed effective is michael cohen seemed shifty. he did. he seemed, he was taking sips of water, he basically seemed like he was, i would describe him as squarely, right, and camino, confronted with things he had done in the past, there

were moments where he felt like he was reluctantly may be getting to the truth but not particularly like forthcoming. does that add up to them eviscerating any of the core fact? no. does it, to my mind, defeat the burden or get at the burden? no. i'm just curious what you thought of someone who was also watching it, whether that, how much that matters, whether that is enough to get you where you need to go. >> i thought michael cohen's worst moment on the the day was on direct but i don't know how many people appreciated it. of the civil front trial where michael cohen testified, he was asked about the plea he took in the southern district and he has insisted since then that while he pled guilty to exhibition, he didn't really commit the crime and he was asked basically were you lying then or are you lying now and he said squarely on the stand there i was lying. when asked to explain that testimony today on the and, michael cohen gave a very different answer and he basically said, well, i'm not contesting the facts but i didn't like the process. that is not going to play well

on cross-examined nation with a will prepped cross examiner. >> to your point, i think ultimately a lot of that depends on the characterization the prosecution tries to put forward about him on summation. are you going to try to sell michael cohen as this reformed guy who really stood up for country at liberty and freedom and truth and justice or are you going to say look, this was a guy who was included with donald trump, he's kind of a guy you may have been a little bit of a slump, now he's finally figured out, that this was not to his benefit and he changed his tune. that is where it all comes into play. i think that is, the way we ended on direct kind of had this sort of like strong stance and i think the defense making him look shifty may have served to undercut that. >> we have a lot more to discuss as far as this legal strategy. charles coleman, thank you as always, my friend. lisa, we are not done with you,

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the possibility of representing him in the matter. and they met, costello told michael cohen that he is incredibly close to rudy giuliani, as close as you can imagine. michael quinn says castillo also told him that the relationship would be very beneficial since rudy giuliani had the ear of then-president trump at the time, in fact was representing his lawyer. it was clear from michael cohen's testimony he felt quite pressured to hire costello to represent him, a man deeply enmeshed in trump world and would ensure anything michael cohen said got back to trump. robert castillo told michael cohen in writing in an email submitted as evidence in the right before the court today about a conversation he just had with rudy giuliani who said, "thank you for opening this back channel of communication." still here at the table, lisa rubin, msnbc legal correspondent, joining us, executive order editor to the national enquirer, now correspondent to the hollywood reporter. i thought the castillo stuff today was really wild and incriminating because it really felt almost like a mob boss parity. >> sleep well tonight, you have high places. it was just this line out of a

mafioso movie. it wasn't for the fact that michael cohen had this look upon him was basically saying you are, there are positive comments being spoken about you in the white house. he's basically putting the screws on him to stay quiet. and, it was this moment that you are like never do crimes in writing. use the signal. it was kind of terrifying that this kind of language is being used by someone who clearly has his, he's just had his home raided by the fbi. >> is representing himself to michael cohen, look, here's how it works, i'm with rudy and rudy is representing the president. if you hire me, you have the back channel and we are on your team, we are on the same team. over the course, the second of these various emails that get introduced, which are really

corroborative, michael cohen is correct within the testimony and it sounds a little hyperbolic. when you read the emails, they are like they were putting the screws to this guy. >> they were absolutely putting the screws to him. one of the things i find funny about it, one of the selling points robert castillo had was i come from the southern district, i know how this is done and yet he's sending him is like this the entire time. people kept asking what is robert castillo want to represent him so badly? partially, it is political. the other part is he wants to secure the bag. he gets very frustrated of michael cohen toward the end because michael cohen doesn't want to alienate him and at the same time, he already has his own counsel, he doesn't want to sign the retainer agreement. that is not about privilege, that is just about money. i was just going to say. >> when i read that exchange, i thought of all other co- conspirators and defendants who are being presented by trump world lawyers and man did it sound like a road map. you come with us, we will pay

your bills and he will do what we say. >> michael cohen even said he found robert castillo to be stingy, which is a funny remark. >> i thought he was sketchy. >> that was alarm bells ringing. >> there is the sense in which, this is something that just suffuses the entire trial is that word, sketchy, it was funny when michael cohen said it but everybody is operating in the daji aswad possible. it is so clear that what suffuses trump world is everyone operating as a modus operandi in the sketchy guest fashion. >> the tabloid publisher who i used to work for, you've got the fixer in keith davidson, the lawyer who was present in both stormy daniels and karen mcdougal. you've got the world of bottom feeders, as you mentioned before, these people that you couldn't even cast them better in a movie. here they are testifying in this case. it is amazing. >> one of the things we saw, basically that robert castillo moment ends up being a pivotal fulcrum.

the make or break moment is does he stay on board? there is the tweet he read", very quickly, when basically the word gets out that he's cooperating, that case applied tremendous pressure on him and unlike michael cohen, he refused to break. make up stories in order to get a deal. such respect for a brave man. basically we, icu, i see what you are doing from the white house, from the president of the united states. >> that is the day after he takes his first plea. it is pretty clear what the connection is. one other thing i will say is michael cohen love to donald trump. the one thing he lived more than that and still does, he loves his family. that tweet in particular really had to life michael cohen. he was a person who took his plea because of his family and still maintained he would do it again for his family. >> the sketchy lawyer line, robert castillo has added, i'm

using michael cohen's characterization, i don't know the man, one of the other thing is, one of the things is lawyers for donald trump, lawyers for trump world to end up in hot water and the line of folks that have been disbarred, that have faced criminal charges, michael cohen has faced both, rudy giuliani know, we have john eastman, who basically said he represented the president, who is on his way to getting disbarred. lisa rubin, lachlan cartwright, thank you both. this is a special coverage of trump on trial. trial. ♪ at each day's start! ♪ ♪ as time went on it was easy to see ♪ ♪ i'm lowering my a1c! ♪ jardiance works twenty-four seven in your body to flush out some sugar. and for adults with type 2 diabetes and known heart disease, jardiance can lower the risk of cardiovascular death, too. serious side effects may include ketoacidosis that may be fatal, dehydration that can lead to sudden

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