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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win.
This is a special show. I've got Eli Honig in the Puck headquarters in downtown Manhattan. We managed to grab him in between his rush to the Situation Room on CNN, where you see him as a legal analyst there. But, you know, he also works for us at Somebody's Gotta Win as a legal... I work for free for your time. Yeah, exactly. He's got a much heftier contract with CNN, but we're very lucky to have him. I am honored to be here inside Puck.
So we might as well talk about these debates. There's going to be a CNN debate in June now. And so for a while, Biden and Trump were sort of like taunting each other about like, oh, I dare you to do a debate. You won't do debate. Trump was like, he can't handle it. He can barely speak. Biden's like, he's a mess. He's going to hijack it. It's going to be a disaster. So for a while, I don't know. I thought,
you know, last time it was a complete shit show. I wasn't sure what they were going to do. I did feel like Trump was goading Biden and Biden has really tried to stay away from mainstream media and really take on any, like, he wouldn't even sit down with Norah O'Donnell over the Super Bowl weekend. So I was like, talk to Aaron Burnett the other night.
Okay, fine. But, you know, I don't know. Maybe he is doing mainstream media again. I just felt like maybe that they would say, oh, he won't dignify himself by, you know, having a debate with Donald Trump. With a liar and an election denier. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it turns out he took the bait or the challenge and sounds like it's happening. It's a good thing that they're debating. I agree. I mean, we have to have presidential debates and it's good that there's two because let's get a chance to size these guys up, you know, right next to each other and
it was looking like it was both of them were sort of, it was a chicken fight. They were both talking big and I felt like in their heart of hearts, neither of them probably wanted to, but it's like in elementary school where it's like, you know, we used to say, I'll call you out, meaning I want to fight you. Oh, I call him out. Well, he called you out. Well, okay, then you got to do it. And eventually like the crowds gathered around and you just got to do it. Right. So it's good that they're doing it. I'm glad they're doing it. I mean, it seems to me, I was asking you before, so this is not under the presidential commission on debates. They're doing this on their own.
I guess...
and RFK will be excluded as I understand it. That's the thinking that the reason that they decided to do this is that they were trying to get ahead of RFK. So the rule is that any candidate who gets in a poll as much as 15% of the general electorate vote is allowed to be on the debate stage. Was he going to make it? Yeah, he got 16% already. So the thinking was that they had to do this. They had to get a debate on their own terms. And part of the terms that the Biden administration put out
or at least the campaign was that they wanted the candidate to be in enough states to win 270 electoral college votes. And clearly RFK will most likely not get there. So yeah, the terms were set and Trump was like, Biden doesn't want a big audience. So I just read that the plan is they're going to do the CNN one at our headquarters in Atlanta with no studio audience. Yes. Which to me, if...
If I'm Trump's side, I want a studio audience. Exactly. That's why he was saying that Biden can't handle an audience. That was how he was taunting him, of course. But I think we'll probably have... I mean, knock on wood, we'll have a better, more substantive debate when you're not playing to the crowd, right? I mean, when you're not getting laughs and you're not getting hoots and hollers, I think you'll probably get a little more substance. I'm so interested in, like, how do you prep for this? Like, how do you prep Joe Biden to debate Donald Trump? How do you prep Donald Trump to debate Joe Biden? I mean, like, is Trump... I suspect...
given what we've seen about Trump in past debates, it's going to be all about projecting image and not nuances of debate. He's going to have one line or two lines on each debate, on each policy issue, build a wall, et cetera. Right. And for Biden, I think it's going to be, I mean, the policy will matter, but I think if Biden's team, if I was advising Biden, it's all about just appearance. You have to appear strong and calm, but strong and sort of stable,
and not out of it. And you can't get over-talked by him or bullied by him. I mean, Joe Biden's not some kind of wit. You know what I mean? Joe Biden has held his own in the bare-knuckled arena of Washington for 50 years. I felt very uncomfortable watching the debates though last cycle. Did you? Yeah, I did. In what respect? I almost had to shut the TV off. It was just so aggressive. The first one was outrageous. Oh my God, the shouting. It was just gross. Then they had the one where Trump probably had COVID-19.
and didn't say anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The mudslinging. It was just like, it was very uncomfortable. Do you have any hope that these will be better? No, I don't. I really have zero hope at the end of the day. I think when people get up there, their nerves set in and they just are who they are. Yeah, the adrenaline. They are who they are and it's going to probably be a mess. But I guess the bigger fear of all this is RFK. Yeah, but let me just say, in an odd way, I don't have particularly strong feelings for or against RFK.
I'll tell you a quick story about how I met him. It's sort of a funny story. But I would rather see just the two of them. I know RFK is a legitimate candidate. I know he's getting 10% of the vote, whatever, 12% is substantial. But let's be real. It's going to be one of these two. So I want to see them one-on-one. And when you throw a third person into the mix, it just changes the dynamic. So I do want to see the two of them straight up, head-to-head.
Fair enough. I met RFK, by the way, real quick in a gym. Oh, it seems like the kind of place you would meet him. Well, it was Texas Tribune Fest in Austin, Texas last summer. And I noticed sort of out of the corner of my eye, this guy like working out really hard in jeans and like a tight t-shirt. And he's sort of, I learned later, he's sort of famous for this. Like there was videos of him. And he comes over to me and he says something like, I don't know who you are. I don't remember your name, but why won't CNN book me? And I was like, okay.
I don't really do booking. This was a year ago. Yeah, it was just about a year ago, this past summer. Yeah. But we have booked him since. I didn't have anything to do with it. Yeah, I don't think you're in the booking department. But we're so lucky to have you to talk about the defense and the prosecution because you have worked with both the prosecutor on this case and the defense when you were in the Southern District of New York as a prosecutor. Yeah, it's bringing back memories because there...
This is a Manhattan trial, which I did many of them in my younger years. And I know Alvin Bragg and Todd Blanche, both of them. We were all three of us were at the Southern District the same several years, five year stretch or something. They actually started a year or so after me, but I know them both pretty well.
It's interesting to see the strategy play out. And one of the things that's so surprising about this trial is how normal it is. Aside from the fact that it's Donald Trump sitting there in the defense chair, this is what trials are. This is what they look like. The things that are happening happen in many or all trials. And it's gone pretty smoothly, shockingly smoothly so far. So...
This case, as we've been saying for a long time, all hinges on Michael Cohen, the consigliere, right? The longtime fixer to Donald Trump, someone that we both have had experiences with. I've been on the wrong side of him when he was defending Donald Trump. It was very intense. It is definitely a loose cannon. And now he's portrayed a much more subdued Michael Cohen on the stand, not the guy you're watching on TikTok as he comments on the trial. How do you think he's done? So,
First of all, you are right that this trial will ultimately hinge on Michael Cohen. There have been some who've argued, well, the jury can still convict even if they don't believe Michael Cohen. I disagree with that. They need Michael Cohen to link the charges. So let's remember what the charges are. First of all, it's not paying hush money, not a crime. It's not even election interference. It's falsifying business records. And so
Michael Cohen's really the only one who can say, we came up with this whole scheme to pay Stormy Daniels. And by the way, the way it worked, this is bizarre. Michael paid $130,000 of his own money. He drew down on his mortgage without telling his wife. So weird. I mean, it's... I would be furious if my husband did that. Can you imagine?
Yeah. That's the part of it that gives me like the most, the most stress. Like what is he doing? $130,000. To pay porn star. Yeah. He pays her. Then he goes and gets reimbursed by Trump for what amounts to $420,000 over the next year. They pay him in a series of monthly retainer checks, installments. Exactly. And that's the alleged crime that they
falsified these records to make them look like attorney retainer fees when they were really just reimbursement for hush money that violated campaign finance. What was the extra $300,000 for? So here's how the 420 breaks down. It was $130,000 to pay him back for Stormy Daniels. He apparently laid out $50,000 for something called Redbird. Do you know what that is? It's actually, I learned yesterday. No, it feels familiar though. It's the company apparently that like pays people to show up at rallies. You know what I mean? Like, I don't, there's,
probably a word for it, but like protesters or no, like to go to Donald Trump's announcements, like they're a political staging firm or something. Oh, right. Yeah. Staging firms. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, whatever you would call it. So that's 180. They doubled the 180 to cover his taxes, which gets to 360, his income taxes. And then they added a $60,000 bonus. So he ends up getting paid $420,000. Got it. So as for Michael Cohen, how's he doing? Pretty good so far.
The direct exam when prosecutors were questioning him was really smooth. And I thought the prosecutors did a nice job. It was efficient. You could follow it along. The way we're covering this on CNN, the way everyone is, is we're just getting like little what look like
I don't know what you call them, like Twitter updates, like one line or two line updates that pop up every minute or two and we comment on them. But I was able to understand where they are. Okay, they're going through it. They're walking through it. You have to front the bad stuff with Michael Cohen. You lied. You got convicted of a bunch of stuff. You used to do horrible things for Donald Trump. You asked for a pardon. You spent some time in prison. All that stuff. All the baggage. You were held in contempt of Congress. You said you would take a bullet for Trump and now you say that you wrote a bullet
called revenge. Yeah, exactly. There's so much on him. The test was always going to be cross. And as we sit here now, they're about to resume cross on Thursday. I don't think the cross is going well so far. And I say that as a colleague, former colleague and friend of both again, of Todd Blanche and Alvin Bragg. I was surprised. And by the way, it made me cringe a little bit because we prosecutors, especially we SDNY types tend to think highly of our trial skills. You may be shocked to know
But the thing that defense lawyers always say to us is you guys don't know how to cross because we don't cross that much because usually 90% of the case is us putting our own witnesses in.
And I felt like Blanche's cross, I mean, how easy is it to cross? I'm not saying easy. That's not the right word. But there's so much ground to cover with Michael Cohen. You start with all the lies. Right. Who has he not lied to? Congress, the FEC, DOJ, Mueller. His wife. The SDNY, his wife, his banker, the media. I mean, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, probably to you at some point, right? Of course, yeah. I mean, so you start with that. And then you go to the fact that
Hate is not a sufficient word for the way Michael Cohen feels about Donald Trump. It's Shakespearean. It is. Michael Cohen is single-mindedly possessed and obsessed with his hatred for Donald Trump. And we've all gotten used to it. It's like it's built into what we think of Michael. But to have a star witness who is openly fantasizing about and selling T-shirts about this defendant going to jail is a real problem in a normal case.
But Blanche hasn't really hit on that. He's kind of been brushing by some things and he spent this whole long jag in the cross like, well, you used to love Trump. And it's like, okay, do that. Do three questions on that. He does like 20 pages on, you worshipped him, you thought he was great. Okay, but like, I don't know where that goes. Does that sway you if you're a juror, Tara? No, I don't think I really care about their history. It was already established. I'd rather know more about the rejection you felt when Trump didn't make you chief of staff. I thought that was interesting. Or attorney general. Yeah.
We almost had A.G. Michael Cohen in his mind. Oh, geez. Or, you know, the way that you said that you would take a bullet for him, but like then it switched to, you know, what you really want. You're upset you didn't get the bonus that you really wanted. Right. Or there was a few other things. Oh, there's so many things. Yeah. But I mean... Oh, that he didn't get a pardon. Like I would have really leaned into that. He blames Donald Trump for ruining his life. Right. I mean, here's how I would argue it to the jury. I'll do this with you.
imagine if you, Tara Palmer, think of the person who hates you most in the world. I know nobody hates you, but like, whoever that might be, don't say the name, but like think of the person, right? If somebody wronged or like an ex or whatever, who knows? Okay. Now imagine your Liberty was in that person's hands.
Would you feel comfortable? Would you feel like that person would give you a fair shake? No. Right. Like, I mean, that's your pitch to the jury right there. Right. I mean, again, Michael Cohen hates Donald Trump more than anyone hates you or me, I think, or more than I hate anybody or probably more than you hate anybody. Right. And,
Look at the guy's Twitter feed. He does all day long. He's made millions. He testified yesterday. This guy's like a Trump hate merchandising mark. Well, there's a lot of money in Trump hate, as we've seen from Polana. Can I give you some of the details? Because I found this really interesting. You know how much Michael Cohen made off his two books, which are both totally just Trump books? Yeah. $3.4 million. Good for him. I made a lot less off my two books. He's doing something right.
He's selling TikTok. So apparently TikTok works in subscriptions. Yep.
He sells $5.99 monthly subscriptions. Wow. By the way, this is not a plug. They're not a sponsor of Tara's podcast. Those t-shirts, you know that t-shirt he was wearing that shows Trump behind bars? Yeah. How much would you pay for that t-shirt, Tara? I mean, maximum $15. $32. It's like Taylor Swift concert prices. Wow. And then what was the other thing? Does he sign them or wear them first? I don't know. Does it smell like Michael Cohen before you get it? That's extra. Yeah, exactly. Okay.
And so the guy is just making a minute. And by the way, like his financial fortune will turn on some to some degree on what happens here. Right. I mean, if the jury rejects my, by the way, let me say this again to you, because we talked about this beginning. I still think a conviction is likely here more likely than not.
But if there's not a conviction, where does the market for Michael Cohen spewing hate at Donald Trump go? If there is a conviction, that market shoots up again, right? He does a round of TV again and he does another book. You think so? You think that Michael's profitability hinges on this? Yeah, I do to some extent. Okay. I mean, think about the market for a third book, right? Let's say this jury convicts Donald Trump and this ends up being the big one. And what if he calls himself the star witness? Of course. Yeah. Of course. Yeah.
So, okay. He's a one trick pony. It's like, it's like, but there are a lot of people out there who hate Donald Trump, by the way. Well, that's why he has, I mean, look, he has a massive following and he makes a lot of money. That's why. Yeah. Well, we'll see if he gets his own TV show next. So we think he's doing okay though. I do. I mean, there's a little bit of a narrative out there of like, well, he hasn't lost his cool. He's not going to, let me spoil this for you. He's not going to lash out. A, he's too smart to do that. B, it's not about that. It's not about like, is he going to,
This isn't Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men. He's not going to admit that he ordered the Code Red. The question is just, does the jury believe him? And again, I don't think Blanche has yet done an effective enough job of
showing the jury what a habitual liar Michael Cohen was, and to an extent still is. And by the way, the counter narrative is from prosecutors is yes, he lied. He used to lie a lot for Donald Trump. Now he's cleaned up. Not quite true though. I mean, he told plenty of lies that had nothing to do with Trump. He pled guilty to tax fraud and bank fraud that has nothing to do with him. He's committed perjury in court since he broke from Trump because he now claims he lied when he pled guilty.
And a judge just hammered him two weeks ago and said, either you lied when you played guilty or you lied now when you said you lied. I mean, it's like lies layered upon lies. Who can keep anything straight with this guy? You know, I got to give Abby Lowell a lot of credit. He's like a rock star. Yeah. He's Hunter Biden's lawyer now. Defense lawyer. Exactly. He's Hunter Biden's lawyer. He was John Edwards' lawyer when I covered that trial. He was Jared Kushner's lawyer. He is the lawyer to the wealthiest people involved in high political scandals.
And the way he tore down John Edwards' aide, who was the go-between between him and the mistress, it was the same thing. Like you idolized John Edwards and then you turned on him because you hated him. And I thought he did a really good job on cross in terms of like establishing that relationship of feeling out in the cold, like living from the warmth of John Edwards and then being betrayed by him and why he wasn't a trustworthy witness because of that.
I mean, who's more angry than a person who's been scorned, right? Exactly. It was like a lover scorned. Right, exactly. I mean, there is a weird even undertone of like you were upset. Michael says I was, he testified I was knee deep in the cult of Trump. He said he would take a bullet for him. Yeah. At one point Blanche asked him, you were obsessed with Trump. And Michael Cohen says, yeah, more or less. So I wonder if Blanche even maybe studied that.
cross and is trying to emulate it here. Yeah. I mean, to me, that was compelling. That was a hung jury, 15 weeks. And then DOJ threw the case out. Totally. I believe Jack Smith was some part of that prosecution. I don't think he did the trial, but it was his public integrity unit that tried the case. But Jack Smith was like the supervisor. Jack Smith has a fun fact.
He is 0 for 3 in his three biggest cases before this. He did the McConnell case, the governor of Virginia, which was a conviction, but the Supreme Court threw it out unanimously.
He was, again, not directly, but he was the supervisor on Edwards and the first Robert Menendez case. Right, which he lost, obviously. But here's the thing. It's really similar to the John Edwards trial, and yet the Federal Election Commission did not try this. It's such a strange wrinkle. I mean, the FEC, people say, is politicized. I think it was 3-3 to whether they should do anything about it.
But yeah, I mean, there's really two parts to this case. There's the did it violate campaign finance law, which it's one thing that's very clear from the evidence is there definitely was a campaign motive. Like there's no way, I'm sure he was maybe thinking about Melania in some back of his mind or maybe 10% of his mind. But as long as there's some substantial campaign motive, that's enough, right? I mean, John Edwards, it was much more questionable, right? Didn't he keep paying afterwards, if I remember right? Well, they had a child together. He had to. Okay. Oh, that's interesting. That he wanted to keep quiet. Yeah.
But here it's like, it definitely had to do with the election, I think. But the problem is campaign finance law, as you saw in the Edwards case, is so messy. And one of the things that the defense has said they want to do is call an expert in campaign finance law. If they get to do that, that's a real problem for prosecutors. Because you know what every campaign finance expert tells you when you ask them any question? The answer is always, it depends. It's subjective. It depends on the circumstances. Like, you don't want that as a prosecutor. It's really hard to nail anyone for a campaign finance violation. Totally.
you've probably seen all the hypotheticals. Like, well, what if a candidate decides that he wants a Rolls Royce and he thinks it's going to help him in the campaign and he spends $130,000 on a Rolls Royce? Does he have to report that? Is that an expenditure? It's like, who knows? Nobody knows. Right, right. That's why you hear about violations all the time or they're written about or talked about
in real time during a campaign. But once the campaign is over, like say they lose in the primary, it never really gets revisited. They get worked out or the FEC does something or the FEC dismisses them. But it's, I mean, those kinds of cases are really pretty rare. I mean, Edwards is the most famous one up to now. Trying to think of others. I mean, it's, they're hard to win because
because there's always that gray area. But to me, the harder part of this case is tying Trump. The crime is in the accounting, as we laid out before. And there's a lot of evidence that Michael, clearly Michael was part of setting up this accounting mechanism along with Allen Weisselberg, the CFO. But the only thing that really ties it directly to Trump is Michael's testimony standing alone. Right. And we think that events is not doing well. And how many more days do you think they'll have with Michael? So they've said that they will probably finish up Thursday, which is
Maybe the day this comes out. Tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. Yeah, whatever day this is. And then it's on to the defense case, which, look, Trump's not going to testify. I mean, like, that's just... Right now, he's doing the whole... And neither did John Edwards. They never do. It would be... There's two reasons he won't. One, he'd get annihilated. And two, he doesn't need to. It's not about who has a better story. He doesn't have to prove his case. It's a reasonable doubt. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So he's not going to take the stand. They've said they... The defense has said they may call this...
expert and Alan Garten, who's the general counsel of Trump org. And I would guess what they have in mind from him is I'm sure he's a Trump loyalist, I would guess. Yeah. And I guess he would say something like all this internal accounting that we did, it was perfectly fine to call these things legal fees. That's what we would have done anyway. And Trump wouldn't have been involved in it anyhow. Something like that, like normalize it. Right. Like, look, we had there was testimony when we were doing our expenses. Somebody
earlier testified, we had a pull-down menu. And it was like, wow, what is it? Are we buying real estate? Are we doing maintenance? Is it lawyer's fees? Is it, you know, whatever else? They're like, I don't know, lawyer's fees. It's to Michael Cohen. So like, you know, we didn't have a pull-down menu for hush money to porn stars. Just like kind of explain that the way the company works was a little bit like haphazard, almost like a family business. It does. I mean, it almost felt to me like it was a family business, but in like a small mom and pop way. You know this, Tara, because you've covered him. The Trump organization has this veneer of like,
you know, skyscrapers and country clubs. It's really merchandising, right? It's a branding. Yeah, marketing. And it's a mom and pop, really. Like they have, yes, they have thousands of employees if you count everyone who, you know, the greenskeeper at Mar-a-Lago and the pool guy. But in terms of actual Trump org employees, it's like 15 people, give or take. Yeah. And it's all like family and, you know, Alan Weisselberg, who's like family. People have been with him forever.
basically. And they understand how it works. Yes, exactly. It's a little bit like mobbish, I hate to say. It's family. It's family. You're family. You're part of the family. Okay. So you called the case middling when we talked last. This was at the beginning, right? Yes. I think it was right after jury selection. Yeah. Do you still stand by that? Yeah, I think it's middling. I don't think it's...
an outrage. I don't think it's, you know, I don't think it's a completely meritless case. It's definitely not a strong case. There is, there has to be a, like we, we in the media always tend towards like strong or weak, good or bad. Like there's a middle, like most things are in the middle. To me, it's like a, it's like a, you know, a C minus case. You can still get convictions on C minus cases. Don't get me wrong. But I mean, just starting with the fact that Michael Cohen is your star witness. And I mean, right there, it's, it's, it,
Look, there's definitely plenty of cooperators. God knows I've cooperated guys who've done much, much worse things than Michael Cohen has ever dreamed of. I've put multiple murderers on the stand. But it's a credibility issue, ultimately. And I don't know that I've certainly never dealt with a witness who has...
as much of a history of lying and of personal hatred towards the defendant as Michael Cohen. So all in all, I think it's a medium-ish case. And I still, like I said, I still think a conviction's likely, largely given the jury pool. And I think prosecutors have done a good, solid, workmanlike job of presenting their case to the jury. I get it.
And you also think the jury's in Manhattan and there's a likelihood that they'll convict because of that. It's definitely a factor. I mean, look, as we talked about, I think last time, Manhattan voted 12% for Donald Trump. So 88 in 2020. So 88% of New York County, Manhattan doesn't like the guy, at least politically. And as we talked about last time, it does not, the jury pool does not come from any of the county of the boroughs. No Staten Island, no Brooklyn, no Queens, no,
no Bronx even, which used to be Southern district. We'd have Manhattan and Bronx and Westchester and on up. So it's, it's a very unfriendly venue. Of course it matters. Like people say it doesn't matter. I mean, legally it's, it's a fair trial. Legally, this is not an unconstitutional trial, but real world,
hell yeah, it matters. I mean, what if this case was tried in a county in Missouri that Trump got 88% of the votes? 0% chance of conviction, right? If he was tried in the middle in a county in Mississippi- He would have a hard time being convicted in Georgia, don't you think? Yeah. I mean, even if it was 50-50, even if your jury pool was half people who'd voted for Trump, half not, you'd never get 12-0 against him, right? Now, part of that is a comment, I think, on, if I step out of my zone and into yours a little bit, on the intensity of Trump's
political support, right? Fifth Avenue thing. I can see someone who dislikes Trump voting not guilty if the proof isn't there. I have a hard time seeing someone who loves Trump voting guilty. You
You know what I mean? Totally. So how much longer do we have? We're almost there. Really? Like a week, two weeks? So let's look at the next week, which is the week leading into Memorial Day. It's only a three-day trial week, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. People are going to want to be done before their holiday vacations. Right. So the way this is going to play out is there's going to be this moment of truth Tuesday afternoon where the parties are going to look at where are we. And if...
If they are ready to close, if all the evidence is closed, and that includes defense case, and then prosecution can put on a brief rebuttal case.
If it gets, let's say, midday Tuesday and they're ready to close, the judge may say, okay, we're going to close Tuesday and then the jury's going to start deliberating Wednesday. Even though it's typically a closed day, judges will still have juries deliberate even while they're doing other stuff. So they'll go, jury, you go in the back, in the back room. I'm going to be handling other cases. If you have a note, send it out. So anyway, either they'll close Tuesday and the jury will deliberate, start deliberating Wednesday, in which case I think we'll get a verdict Thursday because...
They're not going to want to be in there Friday before Memorial Day. Right. They've already actually told the judge they don't want to work. There's not going to be court the Friday before Memorial Day. Although sometimes if juries are close, they may go, can we just stay a little longer? Can we just come in tomorrow and finish so they don't have to go through the weekend? Option B is they get to this moment of sort of critical import on Tuesday. They go, okay, what we don't want to do is give closing arguments on Thursday and then have a five-day layover until the Tuesday after Memorial Day. So if that's the case, they'll probably just say, everyone go home.
clear your heads, work on your closing jurors, go get some rest. We'll come back Tuesday, the day after Memorial Day. We'll have closings, jury instruction, right into deliberation. Closings will be in one day, don't you think? Oh, yeah. I mean, both sides, each side should use two hours, maybe. What do you think the closing will be for prosecutors? Well, so defense is going to go first, the way it works. Defense, then prosecutors. Prosecutors are going to be weaving together all the evidence. I mean, one thing that you see in this trial, a lot of times there's a little thread that'll come up and you'll be like, what is that?
Or I might understand it because I've been following this case, but the jury's probably like, what does that do? It's your chance. Now you weave together all, right? There's been several times when they've called a paralegal and put in like stacks of phone records. What they're going to do at closing is pull those out and go, see this phone call right here on September 14th? Right, exactly.
But their theme is going to be this is a straightforward crime. You don't have to only rely on Michael Cohen. You can rely on all the corroborating evidence. You can rely on the testimony from more reliable witnesses. You can rely on the calls and that kind of thing. And Trump's theme is going to be
But the fact that you have to rely on Michael Cohen alone is a reasonable doubt. He is Mr. Reasonable Doubt. You will never see more of a reasonable doubt than Michael Cohen and you cannot convict based on his word. And if you've made the decision, as you should, that you can't rely on him, your job is easy. Check not guilty and go home. That'll be the basic pitch on defense. Got it. Was there anything surprising to you? Like, did you think any of the witnesses were surprisingly stronger than you anticipated? Oh, good question. Um,
I'll tell you one surprise. They were going to call Karen McDougal, the other woman who was paid off. They actually, prosecutors got a little bit embarrassed because they argued hard beforehand. We want permission to call Karen McDougal. Trump's team said, no, that's improper. Judge said, I'm with you, prosecutors. You can call her if you want. And then in the middle of the trial, they were like, we're not going to call her. Right move, though. You don't need this case to devolve further into sex.
Stormy Daniels was enough, arguably more than enough. Yeah. So I thought, I was surprised that we had McDougal. We were expecting to hear from McDougal, but I think it was the right move. Plus, if you drag this on for too long, it's probably going to annoy the jury. So I am, I was paranoid about this. Like,
I have a short attention span and I think most jurors do as well. And when I would be on a trial that would drag into week six and seven, I'd be like, oh, I can feel them getting bored and antsy. And juries will blame prosecutors for that because you're the one who's running the show. It's your case. Right. Like no one even wants to be there anyway. Right. Right. So I think they've done a good job to move it quick. Let me think. I mean, Stormy Daniels to me,
She held up pretty well on cross, I think, better than I thought. I didn't think that, I thought the cross started good with her when they showed he hates, she hates Trump and she's made contradictory statements in the past. Then they took a break overnight. We had reporting at CNN that Trump was pissed and wanted a more aggressive cross. And then they came back the next day and it was a mess. It was like all about the sex again. And it was like, you don't want to go back to that. The last place you want to go is the back, that hotel room in Tahoe or wherever they did it.
But Stormy Daniels, I think, went okay for prosecutors in all. I thought some of the tangential witnesses were okay. I thought Pecker was fine, given what he does for a living. I mean, the guy's...
sleaze merchant essentially, but he, he held up. Okay. Um, I don't think anyone's really called Keith Davidson was a, was a mess to me, the guy who was the lawyer for both Stormy and McDougal. I mean, this guy, his whole niche is he basically shake, I won't say shakes people down, but they asked him about like, he's been investigated for extortion. He's never been charged, but that came out in his testimony. Like he basically pressures famous people to pay off his
clients to keep them quiet. It's like a really seedy business. That is disgusting. Yeah. And they did a good job crossing him because they got him to admit that it's a gray area with where is the line of extortion versus negotiating a contract. It's somewhere in the middle, right? So yeah, I thought he was a bad witness. He works in compromise, as they would say. I mean, think about it. There have been famous cases where people have been prosecuted for extortion. Before Bill Cosby became
known as the sexual predator that he is. There was a case that a woman was basically shaking him down saying, I'll come out with negative information about you unless you pay me. That woman was prosecuted for extortion of Bill Cosby. So it's like, where's the line? It's hard to define. Right, well, we know what he was really up to. This episode is brought to you by Experian. I don't know if you've ever looked in your subscriptions on your phone and noticed that you...
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So any final thoughts or predictions? So I'm going to stick with my prediction. I think a conviction is 60% likely. Here's my final thought. I don't have any personal stake in the verdict. I'm very interested in what it's going to mean and it's going to be really important. I don't have a rooting interest here. And to anyone who does, either way, take this from me.
This trial has been fair and normal and efficient. Like, this is a fair trial, what we see happening. I know what I said earlier about the jury pool slanted against Trump, but
And this is the only place that case could have been charged. This is the right place to charge it because this is where the alleged crime happened. So constitutionally, this is a fair trial. And Judge Marchand, I've been critical of in some respects. I think he should have recused, by the way. I wrote a whole piece about that. Because of his daughter? No, I don't care about the daughter because he donated, it's a ridiculously tiny amount of money. He donated 35 bucks to defeat Donald Trump in 2020. How can you sit on a case? First of all, as
several other judges said publicly, he broke a rule right there. You're not allowed to donate to any political anything. It just tells you where his head's at. Think about the opposite. What if he had donated $35 to Trump 2020 Make America Great Again? People would be going, live it, right? Yeah, they would. He can't. Anyway,
There's a difference between having a conflict of interest and being a good judge. And I think both of them apply to him. I think he does have a conflict of interest. I don't think he's compromised. And I think he's done a really good job. So my bottom line is this has been a fair and well-run trial. And I will willingly accept, granted, again, unlike a lot of people, I don't really personally care what the verdict is. Everyone should accept this verdict. And we shouldn't get into the like,
if it's not the verdict you want and are hoping for, claiming things were corrupt or unfair or a witch hunt or Trump got lucky or whatever. This is our system. These are 12 normal Manhattanites. Let them do their thing and let's respect their verdict. Would you have ever brought this trial forward though? I would not have charged it. No, I would not. And I report in my book, my second book about... The funny thing is when I wrote this part of my book... I'm talking...
untouchable, how powerful people get away with it. It was before anyone was charged, Trump was charged with anything, but we knew he was going to be. And so I write in the book, by the time you're holding this in your hands, he'll probably be charged. But I report on what happened inside the SDNY in 2021. And I broke that story. And the short version of it is DOJ, SDNY is part of DOJ, was able to punt on the dip. So they prosecute Michael Cohen, he pleads to this and others.
several other crimes. And they're able to put off the difficult decision of do we charge Trump because he's president. You're not allowed to charge the sitting president. Now, fast forward is January 2021. They're like, oh crap, like he's not going to be president. We're going to have to make a decision. They have a series of meetings. I think it was three or four meetings internally by totally non-political, just the people who've been there for 20 years. And the consensus that they reach is
If we had to charge him or the world would end, we could charge him. There's barely enough here to charge him. They were never going to use Michael Cohen. They never found Michael Cohen to be reliable enough to use as a witness. So who are they going to use? They were going to use a combination of like David Pecker and the documents and Stormy Daniels. This is part of the reason though, they didn't have that, that core witness. And they ultimately decided the proof wasn't quite strong enough to,
to Merritt being the first ever charge against a sitting president. And they also, frankly, they were under the impression that Trump would get charged pretty quickly for January 6th and ended up taking two and a half years thanks to Merritt Garland. And now probably won't get tried before the election. So I agree with that. That would have been my take as well, which is like, could you have rammed through an indictment? Sure. You can get a grand jury to indict anything. Like, would you have been able to put a case in front of a jury? I guess. But
I would not personally have brought this case in an exercise of discretion. And prosecutors do that. I mean, this is what happens all day behind prosecutorial doors. You go, is it worth it? Is our proof strong enough? Do we feel comfortable going to the mattresses on this? Yeah, because you want to have a good rate of return on your prosecution, basically. Like, if you're going to pick this fight, you better have it. And they decided not to. And Alvin...
Trump decided that he was willing to bank on Michael Cohen. And that changes the calculus if you are willing to make that leap. I think at one point you said that there's a very strong chance that Trump could win on appeal. Do you stand by that? There were various variables that could have happened that would have given him a stronger appeals case. I haven't seen too much happen in the trial so far that jumps out at me as like, whoa, that's going to be an appeal issue. I think the best appeal issue right now is just the way they charge this case. Sort of
piling a federal campaign violation on top of a state law misdemeanor. It's almost like two nickels don't equal a quarter. You know what I mean? So there's an awkwardness. And frankly, they don't know whether it's constitutional to charge this federal...
campaign violation in a state court. There's a tension there with some of the federal law out there. But gosh, wouldn't that be the worst scenario for everyone involved? For Donald Trump, for the DA, for the American public, if you have a conviction now...
And if there's a reversal on appeal, it won't happen until after the election. Because imagine if he gets convicted now, loses the election, and then an appeals court says that conviction was no good. That would be horrible for just democracy. Right. People would go nuts. Right. Or imagine he, you know, I mean, there's just, I don't think anybody wants that. So, um,
But I will say there's nothing. Usually you can spot things happening during the trial. You go, well, that's going to be a problem. That hasn't happened as of this point. And that's a credit to the judge. Okay. And do you think he'll actually go to jail? I don't. Again, he's not going to be in prison before the election. I think that fantasy has even passed by the resistance crowd. So, okay, here's this, here's what all that has to happen for Donald Trump to actually physically end up behind bars. A,
he has to get convicted on a case. B, he has to lose the election because if he wins the election, the federal cases go away. They're not going to lock him up while he's president. I even think like if he's so, when he leaves office, he'll be older. Right. I mean, if he wins, when he leaves office, he's going to be 83. What are you going to do? Lock him up in 2029 after, I mean. Right. He's got a service term. So he has to be A, convicted, B, sentenced to prison, which in this case, even if he's convicted, if you look at similar cases, something like 70 to 80% of them do not get prison. They get
probation, fines, that kind of thing. House arrest? Yeah, probation, house arrest, fines, that kind of thing. So he has to get convicted, sentenced, then everything has to stand up on appeal. And then there's, I guess, a theoretical part. What do you think of my pet theory, which receives very different responses from political reporters like you? I have a theory that it doesn't apply to this case, but if Trump gets convicted on one of the federal cases...
And he loses all his appeals and he gets sentenced to prison. And it's the year 2028. And Joe Biden's in his second term as president. And it comes time for Trump. He has to surrender to Otisville Federal Correctional Institute to serve his sentence. Does Joe Biden commute that sentence?
an 85-year-old second term Joe Biden? I think so. I do too. I mean, people go crazy when I raise this. I mean, I don't know. At the same time, like maybe he just sees Trump as like a roach that won't die. And he feels like he needs to completely vanquish him to end movement. Right. But I also think that makes him a martyr if he goes to prison. I could see the statement already, like Joe Biden saying,
Look, Donald Trump has been held accountable. He's been found guilty by a jury of his peers that's been upheld on appeal. I'm not pardoning him.
This conviction will remain on his record for all time for history. However, I do not think it's necessary to take a man who's run against me twice in presidential elections, who I've defeated twice and ended his political career, who's 82 years old. Well, would that really be the end of his political career? You're saying Trump again in 2028? Biden's running right now and he's 81. He'll be 82. I guess you're right. That is, now you've blown my mind. Could Trump run again if he loses? Would he run? He can. I bet it comes down to the political viability of Trump. Oh my God.
Wow. What percent? Give me a percent. I give you a percent. I say 50%. Really? Yeah, I do. Maybe even more, like 70. At what point does the Republican Party just bait with this guy? They won't. Because look at him. He's winning. He's beating Biden in various battleground states. No one came even close to him in the primary. I know
No, he destroyed everyone. Are different than general election voters. But I mean, listen, if he loses a second election for them in a row, I would think that they would have to cut bait. Who's going to tell him? Right? I don't know. I mean, you saw Vivek and those guys go down to the courthouse yesterday with their matching outfits. Yeah, they all look like Trump in their wide...
oversized blazers. Alyssa Farrah had the best line. You know Alyssa, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She just retweeted a photo of the four of them and it was something like the fraternity party that no one goes to. It was the four of them looking like forlorn outside the courthouse. Oh my God, it's amazing. Yeah. I mean, he's really been using that media attention because he really can't get on TV the way he used to. I mean, when was the last time he really had a sit down interview? Well, he...
Oh, no, I was thinking of Biden. I was going to say. No, no, Trump. Biden doesn't want them. Trump wants them. Yeah, I mean, listen, we're on this at CNN gavel to gavel. And we have stopped taking his pre-court ramblings because it's just the same thing and it's filled with
falsehoods and lies. And so it's like, why even take it? But yeah, he's getting a ton of publicity. Now they're all, all the VP wannabes are pilgrimaging down to lower Manhattan instead of Mar-a-Lago. So yeah, I mean, you and all the political experts have said that
that this trial will not hurt him and might even help him. If it's a hung jury or he's acquitted, this would be the best thing to happen to him. But if he gets convicted, wouldn't, even if one thinks like, okay, the charges aren't that serious, wouldn't just the stigma of convicted felon turn off some voters? Like some,
persuadable voters. I think people already think of Trump as a felon. In some ways, it's baked in. Like, somebody who, like, cheats on his wife at the porn star and, you know. Not a felony, Tara. Yeah, not a felony, but means that you're not really a person of the highest moral upstanding. Well, impeached twice and we all saw January 6th. Yeah, so I don't know that it really changes much. And I think a lot of people equally think that this is politically motivated, this charge and others. So I think it's all getting mixed together. Yeah.
and convicted felon. I mean, what does that really add to it? Yeah, it's not a great title, but I hear you. I think you're probably, I'm trying to think of like,
I don't think there's anyone... If it would impede on his ability to be president, I think that would have a big impact. Right, which it really won't as a practical matter if he wins. I mean, like, I don't think there's anyone who's like, you know, not quite sure about this Trump fella. Let me see what 12 people in Manhattan say about whether he falsified business records. Like that can't be. But it could be that there's someone who's like, I kind of like Trump, I'm not quite sure.
But I just don't want a convicted felon in the White House. There's got to be one half of 1% of the population that thinks that. But if you're not thinking that deeply about it or don't know as many details, you're just like, wait, he's running for president and he's being charged. Well, listen, people think that you're disqualified if you get convicted. We had a, there was a morning like a year or two ago on the morning show where I was on air and I did like one of these magic walls. And I was like, he can still run. There's nothing prohibiting him from running if he gets convicted. And all the crew guys were like, you're,
you just, that was, how did you, how could you say that? It's wrong. And I was like, no guys, it's right. And they were like, no, that can't be. I'm like, he can't vote. He can't vote. Right. But he can't pardon himself in this case because it's a state case, right? It's a New York state case. Only the governor of New York can pardon him. Oh, I don't see Kathy Hochul doing that. I had fun fact. I had a case of mine pardoned by Chris Christie when he was the governor of New Jersey, when I was at the New Jersey AG's office. Wow. It kind of sucked. The great Chris Christie. Who I like, by the way. It was a high school friend of his who we convicted of, uh, of,
He was ripping off his workers, basically. And then on his last day or one of his last days in office, we got a notice. This case has been pardoned. Wow. Yeah. That's how it works. Happens. That's how it works. Last day in office. It's in the Constitution. Yep. Yep.
Well, thank you so much for being on the show. That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. Of course, we need Ellie back to break it all down. I'm sure he's going to be in high demand, though, on CNN on the day of the verdict. I'll come in the day after for you. Okay.
We can talk about it. We can do a little like hangover session. I want to thank my producers, Christopher Sutton, Connor Nevins. If you like this show, please share it, rate it, subscribe. If you like my reporting, please go to puck.news and sign up for my newsletter, The Best and the Brightest. You can use the discount code Tara20. And I'll see you back on Tuesday. Bye.