equalization. there is nothing equal about this equation. we are at an existential cross roads in our political and civic lives. this is a choice that could not be clearer. remember what lewis brandeis said. the most important political office is that of the private citizen. vote. please. our ken ship with each other when you do. good luck and god speed. >> strong words from the soft spoken and great ken burns. on that serious and somber

note, i wish you a very good night. from across the networks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late with me and i'll see you at the end of tomorrow. tonight, the defense makes its case for reasonable doubt. >> the real argument was michael cohen cannot be trusted. >> michael cohen is the goat. the greatest liar of all time. >> the judge's sharp rebuke to trump's attorney. >> he was livid. >> he was livid as he should be. >> reporter: and the prosecution tells the story of a conspiracy to corrupt a presidential election. >> steinglass says the value of this corrupt bargain cannot be overstated. trump was overtly discussing the story to avoid it being

published. this scheme could very well be what got president trump elected. tonight, rachel maddow recaps the closing arguments with lawrence o'donnell, alex wagner, jen tsaki, and all in the courtroom. plus nicole wallace, chris hayes, ari melber, stephanie ruhle. as trump on trial begins. now. thank you for joining us tonight. we know you have every option in the world for where to follow the news of this remarkable moment in american history. it makes us all the more glad you are here with us. i'm rachel maddow. i'm here with the great chris hayes and nicole wallace. the one and only lawrence o'donnell who was in the courtroom for closing arguments in the new york election interference hush money trial of former president donald trump. lawrence will be joining us any

moment. he is still down at the courthouse. he will join us as soon as he can get to a camera. onset with us, ari melber is here. and katie phang is here. she was in the overflow room at the courthouse as well. we'll be joined over the course of these next two hours by joy reid and alex wagner. jen tsaki. we will be joining lisa rubin. this is all. there is a lot to get to. we know that even know you know this is important news, you have a life. you have a job. child care.

as the days in court get longer tonight. we know it is hard to follow it all in realtime over the course of the day. we will talk about the big picture of what happened. where we are in the process. we will talk about the main points made by both sides in their closing arguments and we will talk about how the points are landing legally and broadly and we will try to answer the questions that came up at trial. like why did the judge yell at trump's defense lawyer as soon as he was done with his summation right when the jury went to lunch. why did he say i think that statement was outrageous mr. blanche? we will try to answer that question tonight and more. but we need to start with what has just happened in the last few moments because the

summation from the prosecution literally just ended within the last five minutes so i will just read you, we do not have an official transcript at this moment. we will read to you the way the summation concluded. this is the best we have. joshua steinglass is the prosecutor giving the summation. he said listen carefully to the judge's instructions. it is a crime to willfully create inaccurate tax forms. post election, an effort to conceal preelection as part of the same conspiracy. and to pro vent the catch and kill scheme from going public. any single one of the things mentioned, the unlawful means, is enough for you to conclude

that the trump tower conspiracy, the conspiracy that trump hatched with the company that owns the national inquirer, the trump tower conspiracy violated new york state election law and the judge will tell you, you don't have to agree. meaning you the members of the jury do not have to agree with one another which unlawful means. the defendant's attempt to defraud in this case couldn't be any clearer. they devised this elaborate scheme. secret fedex packages. an effort to conceal the truth. he didn't want anyone to find out about the conspiracy to steal the election. everything was cloaked in lies. lies in the invoices, lies in the bank paperwork.

former president trump benefited the most. steinglass is getting fired up at this point. he says to the jury, quote, you have been a remarkable group. i know this has been a really long summation. boy, has it. i apologize for trading brevity for thoroughness but we only get one shot. the defendant has a constitutional right to a fair trial and he has the right to make us prove our burden. there are contracts, emails, and texts that corroborate every bit of testimony. in this case, the prosecutor said, the evidence is quote literally overwhelming. so now he has gotten that trial. he has had his day in court. and remember as the judge will tell you, and as mr. blanche told you, trump's defense counsel, the law is the law. there is no special law for

this defendant. donald trump cannot shoot somebody on fifth avenue at rush hour and get away with it. >> objection! judge merchan, sustained. prosecutor, you the jury have the ability to hold the defendant accountable. remember. you are the ones who had the opportunity to hear every witness. and see every document, focus on the evidence and the logical inferences that can be drawn from that evidence. use your common sense and follow the judge's legal instructions. steinglass says pointedly to the jury, come back in here and say guilty. guilty of 34 counts of falsifying counts to cover up a conspiracy to corrupt the 2016 election. and he concludes in the interest of justice, and in the name of the people of the state of new york, i ask you to find the defendant guilty. thank you. judge merchan told the court,

told the jurors, we will get started tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. now why would they be getting started tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. after the closing arguments just concluded in it is because a very, very, very important thing is about to happen. we know it will happen tomorrow. 10:00 a.m. with the jury. it will with the judge instructing the jury about how to deliberate. and that sounds like oh, that must be a boilerplate thing. that sounds like that must be, you know, the sort of do your job, don't be biased kind of generic patriotic instructions they always get. no. the instructions to the jury is very much a contested matter. it has been hotly fought over by both sides. judge merchan started today's proceedings by saying essentially to the prosecution and into the defense, he had heard them out in terms of what they wanted from his jury instructions and he had made his decision. he asked them if they had further comment on what his instructions should be. neither of them said they did. and so, he announced at the beginning of today's

proceedings, okay then, effectively. you know what my jury instructions will be. it is final. that will happen when you are done with the summations. he said that at the startover what ended up being a very, very long day. lisa, thank you so much for sticking it out for the whole day. thank you for joining us from outside. i want your take on how the two sides did with their summation and the way this trial concluded today. >> reporter: the way the trial concluded was with a very

exhausted group of people upstairs. let's start there. not only the jury, but for example, all the court officers who have been protecting us, protecting this trial. they work as long as the judge says the jury, the trial is going on. the people of the jury are all a little tired. that said, if one was light, the other was the opposite. four hours of excruciating detail. where he ping uponned between call records and text messages and every single contact that could be used to corroborate the witness that hay they didn't want this to rest on. michael cohen.

they said it many fewer times than the defense did. if you listened to john steinglass, the star witnesses here were david pecker, hope hicks and all of the records from business records meaning the 34 business records. call records, emails. josh did a thorough of the time line here. starting in august 15th. going all the way through the end of 2018. with michael cohen's plea to two counts of election violations. one involving ami's payment to karen mcdougal, the other to stormy daniels. in between, you got everything from madeline westerhouse talking about how trump signed things in the white house. details about the trump organization in terms of how

they processed business records. and anything and everything you can imagine in between. so i feel a little bit whiplashed right now. having witnessed both of these closings, because one was so remarkably short on details and evidence. and just all about sort of poking little holes and cherry picking evidence. including some really obvious cherry picking of the testimony that the prosecution was able to refute. then you have steinglass who went through every possible piece of evidence and maybe didn't make the sort of selective choices that somebody who has a little more disstance wouldn't have made. just to underscore to you how detailed the closing was, at one point, i looked up at the slides he was showing. in the bottom right hand corner, they have numbers on them that i noticed were

ticking up each time their trial technician pressed a button to further animate the slides. at last count, they were on slide 420. so, that might give you a sense of how much detail was packed in there. and, why it is hard and in many respect to see that forest from the trees because we were just right in the woods with him today. >> lisa, thank you for that. >> : i know we will be speaking with lawrence as well who was also just in there. i want to put what you just said to our lawyers who were here in the panel with us. katie and ari, you were in the courtroom. what lisa is describing there about two very different approaches to closing, mirrored in a little in some ways by the openings. i was there for opening statements and my feeling about the prosecution's opening statement versus the defense was that the defense's opening statement was hard to follow, very emotional. sort of emotionally unpredictable like why are you

yelling now? and also just not very linear. where the prosecution's was calm, linear, and not as exciting in part because it wasn't as weird. it sounds like there was a little bit of that in the closing. it might just be the style of these two legal teams. but, how do as a lawyer, i don't know how to translate that style into effectiveness for the jury. what lisa describes has me worry for the prosecution's sake. did they give them too much to chew on? >> it was a strong day for the prosecution. it was volumous. it was so thorough. that helped them deal with the cohen issue. but if you are asking me straight up, it was too long. it didn't need to be this long. that may or may not matter in the end. bit was longer than it needed to be. that's a fair statement.

>> was the defense also too long? too short? that was three hours roughly. the prosecution went four plus hours. what did you think of the length of the defense? >> the defense could have been shorter because it still meandered but it still hammered what it wanted to about cohen. i thought the prosecution reminded everyone why you don't need cohen. i know we are sometimes repeating ourselves but if this were a cooking show, it is not like both contestants have to make a great meal. the prosecution has to have a five course perfect meal. if the defense is able to serve an edible hot dog, that might be reasonable doubt. i remind everyone at home, we talked about this. it is sort of like wait, why are we being so nice to the defense? we are not being nice. the defense has to do less. if they can poke reasonable doubt for one juror more, they could get a mistrial. >> reasonable doubt for

something that matters. >> yeah. reasonable doubt an element of the crime. but being down there watching, i think it was clear to the extent that anything changed, it is clear that the prosecution realized we may have a bigger cohen problem than we even thought. even though we prepared for it and the sign of that was they opened their big closing arguments and you reminded everyone how important it is. let's talk about cohen. we already told you, he can lie. here is more than one way to interpret these things. here is the other things that support what he said. they basically said if you want to throw this guy out, you can still convict. that is fine. those are all true legal statements. but it showed you that by at least the end of the defense's summation, they were at least concerned enough to want to punch back on that and they did their business. >> lawrence has walked out of the courtroom. so i want to go to him next. and katie, i want your take as well. we hear from him. lawrence, you had a very long

day in the courtroom. so i want tot get your take. your overall take on what you saw, how things went today. and what you think was important for people to understand about how the summations unfolded. >> longest day i ever had in a courtroom rachel. thanks to the prosecution closing. which i think everyone will agree was much longer than it had to be. he is very easy to listen to. he had some really really powerful moments. he did his own imagined version of the 90-second phone call in dispute in this case where according to michael cohen, he

called keith schillar. he spoke to keith schillar about some harassment he was suffering and he spoke to donald trump for the remainder of the 90 seconds. and, we saw the da come up with an entire version of that conversation. it was one of those moments in a courtroom that was very impressive. he is the kind of student who really fills up the exam paper. doesn't leave anything out. it did not feel that competitive. it was in fact a reimbursement. all of the reasons why this was a reimbursement to michael cohen and not a big paycheck.

and at the end of it, all the big reasons he gave, going to the trump position it is not a reimbursement. his loudest moment in the courtroom today was saying does anyone believe that? and i think he is right. there's no one on the jury who does not believe that that was indeed a reimbursement arrangement for michael cohen. and the question here for this jury is just is donald trump guilty in a falsifying business records scheme that was entered into in order to affect a corrupt election? that may be a complicated question. >> lawrence, can i just ask you in terms of todd blanche's summation. a lot of reporters described that as hard to follow. as being because he wasn't

going chronologically the way the exhaustive summation from the prosecution went. that blanche's summation, it was sometimes hard to know what he was getting at. was it hard to follow? >> well listen, i have watched an awful lot of criminal lawyers in my life trying and struggling to defend a guilty client. that's what it looks like. there is no good way. no easy way. i don't know how todd blanche could have done better. given the facts that he is loaded down with. given the complexities he failed to deal with and the da pointed out this point i have

been making steadily. it is an argument in conflict with itself. because, the defense argument is michael cohen was paid this big paycheck in 2017 and it had nothing to do with reimbursement to stormy daniels but we know and the defense knows that the calculation of how much he would be paid was based on a document handwritten by alan weisselberg that includes the $130,000 to stormy daniels. that has never been explained by the defense. not at any point did that get explained. and then the da made this point when he got up to speak saying you can't accuse michael cohen of stealing in the reimbursement scheme if you are also saying he was never reimbursed. and so, that is the central

problem the defense has. it has theories crashing into each other. michael cohen was reimbursed. in the formula for the reimbursement, he managed to steal $30,000. so you cannot accuse him of stealing and then say he wasn't reimbursed. you can't have that both ways. so that was one of those things as a trial develops, you sit there and you wait. when there is something really tough for one side, you just should sit there and wait to hear that side address the most difficult thing they have. the most difficult thing the defense has is the number. $130,000 written in his handwriting on that document. the defense has never explained it. hate have never come close to

explaining it and the prosecution made that very, very clear today. that they have never explained that difficult thing. the difficult challenge for the prosecution today was michael cohen is a liar. you cannot convict donald trump on the testimony of michael cohen. saying he knew about the payments to stormy daniels before the election. that only comes from michael cohen and the defense insisted you cannot, you cannot find donald trump guilty based on that testimony from michael cohen. and so the prosecution did a lot of work on that very point. a lot of work on corroborating him as much as he possibly could. the prosecution was not afraid to go after the most difficult challenge posed by the defense but the defense never came close to the most southeast

charges posed by the prosecution. >> it was clearer to me in the transcript than anything else i have seen in terms of the heart of the case and the heart of the prosecution. the prosecution is able to say here are two documents that are smoking gun documents and yes, they have something to do with michael cohen getting paid. but we have the documents because they have been corroborated by other trump organization personnel. that is why they are in evidence and there is no contrary evidence from the defense. and that just feels to me to be the sort of unassailable core of where we are. for all the time he spent talking. >> the defense doesn't have any comparable so-called smoking gun. there is no, there is nothing comparable to that on the

defense side of the case. >> lawrence o'donnell, i know you need to leave in order to come sit with us. so please travel safely. we'll see you as soon as you get here. all right, katie, on that point, in terms of the overall scope of what each side tried to do, but also, the points the jury will be able to remember and maybe decisive to them. do you agree with lawrence's take there? >> i want to disagree with everybody's take to some extent and i want to kind of bring everybody grounded back into what the realities are. this jury never stayed past 4:30 until now and this trial has taken a lot. it has taken less time than before. so this was a long thing. but this is real life. this is how real trials go. when you have closings, they go long. that said, trump is a style over substance guy. so i'm not surprised that his lawyers are style over substance. and you would think that somebody like todd blanche

having the experience that he does, would be able to deliver something that was more compelling so it would be irrelevant if he took two hours or ten if it was going to be compelling and that is where he loses out to the prosecution. so the prosecution not only has the style from joshua steinglass. but he also has the substance. when you have todd blanche saying michael cohen is the mvp of lies. the greatest liar of all time. maybe he was the greatest lawyer of all time? but when you hear that, you're like yeah, you snicker a little bit. maybe you chuckle but that's all you got? that's really what it is. so i take umbrage with the idea this was too long. the prosecutor made it clear this was his only shot. if you are the prosecution, you get the sandwich. you go prosecution, defense, prosecution rebuttal. you don't get that here. here you get the defense, then

the prosecution. so you know steinglass had it prepared but he also had to pivoter a little bit based on what he heard or didn't hear. during the defense's closing argument. so that is why you saw it a little bit longer. you saw it in the openings. and lawrence quickly when he noted that 49 second reinactment, there is a power in standing up in front of a jury. when timing is in dispute. and there is no way you could id defendant victim because you only saw the defendant for 15, 20 seconds. what you do is stand there in silence for 15, 20 seconds. and so, when you had joshua today reinact, and not in a rushed manner, blanche spent so much time on this october 2016 call. and steinglass got up and in 49 seconds, he dismantled the

entirety of. that is the substance that will no pun intended trump any style that will come from the defense. >> it was also their choice to stay. the judge kept giving them off ramps. if they were tired. the length of the day was not merchan's decision. it was the jury's decision. i bring zero expertise to the legal. i had ken burns on today and i'm just so sort of hostage to the story piece of it. and i think to steal ari's analogy. i don't even think they did that. what the prosecution had going today was take the sex. sex happened. why do you think they paid for it two weeks before election day? on every element, what they are trying to prove. they said there are only three.

the three were, if the records were fraudulent. if the election was an additional criminal element, they are asking them to decide three pretty narrow things. >> was this about the election, were the records false, and did trump. >> and i think as a story, that was told, that was told through every witness. and look, i have no idea what the jury is going to do. we have no idea how they experience any single witness, any single day or cross. if they have to process a story, i don't know what story they were told about trump's experience. and i don't know what they stitched together. based on the fact that the one witness trump side put out was an absolute home run for prosecution. >> uh-huh. >> chris? >> the phrase that steinglass closed on when he said two things. listen to the instructions which suggests a little bit of a tip of the hat there.

that they have seen the instructions and he is happy with them. listen to the instructions. and use your common sense. following this all day, it's like to me, again, not as a lawyer, it is, is want exactly what it appears to be? based on the testimony and all of the evidence, or was there some magical other thing that happened here? and that magical other thing that happened was that donald trump was just out of it and didn't get in the weeds of like who he is paying money to? boy. i don't know. and again, this is maybe overly literal for me. but i have found myself if i'm looking for reasonable doubt as a juror, in good faith, i do need some alternate theory that i could hang on a little bit.

>> the thing that links him is the testimony by michael cohen. if you zoom out a little bit. there is a lot of paper on this. and a lot of testimony. and again, i don't know what the jury will do. but in the end when he says use your common sense, it does come down to and the copious rehearsal of the testimony in evidence. is this exactly what it looks like? yeah. probably. >> and we will talk about this in terms of the defense's gamble to put its own credibility with the jury on the line by saying trump didn't have sex with stormy daniels. and the access hollywood tape was no big deal and michael cohen was an esteemed lawyer for donald trump and that is why he randomly was paid this weird way for that one year and never otherwise paid. thigh didn't have to make any

of those claims. none of this is central to disproving the prosecution's case or provoking a sense of reasonable doubt. they nevertheless made the case to the jury. they are very much in contrast with what you think would be a common sense take on the matter. question be they will talk about why they did that. the phone call that the defense made central to their case. we have so much more to cover tonight. we will have that moment from the transcript for you coming up next. stay with us. coming up next. stay with us. an alternative to pills, voltaren is a clinically proven arthritis pain relief gel, which penetrates deep to target the source of pain with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medicine directly at the source. voltaren, the joy of movement. slowing my cancer from growing and living longer are two things i want from my metastatic breast cancer treatment. and with kisqali, i can have both.

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prosecution summation. it hung a big part of its case that michael cohen was lying about a phone call he said he had with donald trump about stormy daniels because that phone call was very short. it was only about a minute and 36 seconds long. cohen also in that time says he spoke to trump's bodyguard. he had to speak to trump's bodyguard and say hey, will you put trump on and he spoke with trump about stormy daniels. the defense claimed that if it was only a minute and 36 seconds, that wasn't enough time for cohen to have had any substantiative discussion with trump about stormy daniels and about this alleged hush money plot. they said the length of that call they had from phone records effectively disproved that that conversation between

cohen and trump could have gone the way cohen said. this is from today's court transcript. that is the prosecutor joshua steinglass recreating that call and timing himself doing it so the jury could experience in realtime how long it might reasonably have taken for cohen and trump to have the conversation that michael cohen says they had. joshua steinglass, the prosecutor. that brings us to the phone call on october 24th at 8:02 p.m. in which cohen testified he called to talk to mr. trump. at first he was speaking to keith schillar about getting harassing phone calls. defense says aha, that is perjury. the only interpretation of that is that he is lying. to them, that is the big lie. but that's not the only interpretation. he says forgive me for a minute, but let's try a little experiment. i will be cohen. hey teeth keith, how is it

going? it seems like this prankster might be a 14-year-old kid. if i text you the number can you talk to his family? uh-huh. yeah. all right. thanks pal. hey, is the boss near you? can you pass him the phone for a minute? i'll wait just a couple of seconds. hey boss, i know you're busy but i wanted to let you know this other thing is moving forward with my friend and the other party. it is back on track, i will try one last time to get our friend david pecker to pay. but if it is not, it is going to be on us to take care of it. uh-huh. yeah. all right. good luck in tampa. bye. and then just steinglass says 49 seconds. so, katie was just describing this having been there in court with this type of a moment. when the defense has said oh, minute and 36 seconds. that's so fast. you can't get anything done in that time. and you walk through the jury through something that takes

significantly less than that time and say that didn't seem like it was me screaming through it. that seems viable. doesn't it? >> it is so impactful because it leans into the sentence that the judge will read as part of a jury instruction tomorrow to them. that they can rely on their common sense to be able to make decisions in this case during the course of the deliberations. so when you have them get up in a relatable way. have this reinactment. i will put it quotes. it wasn't a transcript but it sounded credible and only took 49 seconds. that's the real life application of what makes it grounded in their sense of common sense. when you have a myriad examples during the course of the closing arguments, lawrence talked about it as well. how can you say he didn't get reimbursed but he stole it because it was legal services rendered. you can't steal your legal fees can you? as a jury, you're like oh yeah,

you can't do that right? >> for me, if you are the jury, the defense has offered a few alternate explanations for the fact pattern that has been presented. one of the most compelling, surprising, memorable moments was when the defense said hey. you know, that call that michael cohen described where he said he had to get keith to get trump on the phone? let me tell you what else is in cohen's phone records. let me tell you about this 14- year-old child harassing michael cohen. you didn't know about that. this is a rabbit i'm pulling out of the hat. this is a whole new interpretation of the fact pattern and the reason this is important is not only because it is memorable and it will stick in your mind as something the prosecution didn't tell you, but it also disproves that the call with trump ever could have happened. so even if that was the one most compelling most memorable thing the defense produced, josh steinglass essentially said wipe that off the balance

sheet in terms of whether or not you think you have got a contrary explanation of the facts. >> yeah. i mean, and i always thought the refutation of that seemed excessive. the totality of the evidence. >> the one phone call isn't the most important thing. >> you take it away. but to the point ari was making, it is all about, are they giving enough? what about x, what about y, z? as ammunition for a hung jury. and i'm not going to say what you said to me during the commercial break. you should make it on air, it was a smart point. how is that for a tease? i was tempted to steal it.

but the point you made about the strategy for acquittal versus hung jury. >> i think it actually helps me to make sense of what they are trying to do. there is no alternate theory for what happened. so then what? >> that is why this sounds like a lot of silly arguments. many people have observed that the trump approach from his lawyers during the case and in today's closing were meandering. i think they are meandering because it is only a strategy to get a hung jury. you don't get a verdict and they probably don't retry the case. that is different than an acquittal strategy. if you remember oj, there is bad evidence, dna evidence. the acquittal strategy is an alternative theory. some might call it a conspiracy theory. but it is one that touches all the evidence. and you say yeah, there is bad dna evidence of blood because they planted his blood on the scene and you have this full theory. there is nothing like that here. there are way too many open questions and obvious things that they have not even tried

the defense lawyers for trump to explain. they haven't. all they are doing is this strategy of questions, reasonable doubt, hung jury, get one or two people and so, earlier, we were talking about it is pretty bonkers, not believable to say the access hollywood tape was not a problem for the campaign. we checked. many of us have done our homework. it is the only time we could find a public apology ever uttered by donald trump. literally. the only time he said i'm sorry you feel bad. i'm sorry you are terrible. he said if you go back in the tape, i said these things. i was wrong. i'm sorry. >> that is the only time the jury heard him speak in the trial. so he doesn't testify. one of the only times they saw him on camera speaking is in the c span entry. they entered the tape of trump to camera at a podium. saying this will cost me thousands of female votes. this will poison me in the mind

of the voters so the only thing the jury has heard trump say in five weeks is that the access hollywood tape will kill him with the women voters. >> i wouldn't call it believable but for a hung jury to say i didn't remember it all that well. people say all sorts of things. i don't think this was for the campaign. i think this was all about his family. a person projecting their own life might say i could understand that not wanting that to come out. now what are we talking about? the reasonable doubt of theories about family. >> so we will take a quick break and talk about this point. this was a really important moment. especially for those of us who are not lawyers watching this. because, you get to a point which is not about the law. and it is a little bit about history about what actually happened during the campaign.

but it is also something that all of the jurors will personally remember. so when your defense counts on telling the jurors what you think you lived through, what you think your remember didn't really happen that way? let me tell you a different way it went? that is when you are playing with people's psychology in a way that was very unsettling to the non-lawyers among us. and we will talk about that when we come back. stay with us. when we come back. stay with us. ( ♪ ♪ ) start your day with nature made. the #1 pharmacist recommended vitamin and supplement brand. ♪ limu emu... ♪ and doug.

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todd blanche, trump defense lawyer. the access hollywood tape was released october 17, 2016 a month before the election. the tape itself was from 2005, 11 years earlier. as you heard from witnesses, this was an extremely personal event for president trump. nobody and again, i'm just going to state the obvious. nobody wants their family to be subjected to that sort of thing. but the government wants you to believe that the release of that tape from 2005 was so catastrophic to the campaign that it provided a motive, a motive for president trump to do something criminal. again, this is trump's defense council. but there is no evidence of that. president trump did not react to the access hollywood tape in any way the government is suggesting. you heard the politicians reacted negatively to the access hollywood tape. they didn't testify. you heard there was talk about something consequential for president trump who was a nominee. but none of that happened. you heard that president trump

and his campaign got ready for the debate, responded to the allegations and continued campaigning so, there were a couple of days of frustration and consternation, but that happens all the time in campaigns and we know that. the access hollywood tape is being set up to be something it is not. it was one of many stressful stories and issues that came up during the 2016 campaign. it was not a doomsday event. president trump as you saw addressed it in a video that was addressed to the video released to the american public. he addressed it in a debate. he never thought it was going to cost him to lose the campaign and indeed, it didn't. it was not a doomsday event. that was from todd blanche in his summation to the jury. claiming the access hollywood tape was no big deal. obviously, you can argue about whether or not it makes sense for trump's defense to try to make this claim that there was no new sense of urgency about

trump's various creepy sex scandal ins 2016 right before the election. the strategic importance of making this claim is not particularly obvious on its face. but this is a factual claim from the trump defense. the factual record about whether or not that tape was a big deal. that is an imperically observeable thing. did it matter at the time? we were all alive and sentient when it happened. we can remember. we can check. >> trump tape bomb shell. trump caught on a hot mic months of marrying melania making vulgar comments about groping women saying when you're a star, they let you do it. >> notice the hurricane graphic at the very beginning of that. going away. no, it's this thing. when the access hollywood tape came out, it did knock hurricane news out of the news cycle.

it was what nbc news' lester holt described at the time as a bomb shell. not only did trump's comments about grabbing straight for women's genitals make front page news across the country, the news really did lead to an avalanche of republicans to call for him to drop out. here is the local view from swing state michigan. state republican leader ronna romney mcdaniel says trump's talk about women is disgusting. this was the headline in mo politico. republican women are done with trump. that happened not that long ago. today, trump's defense tried to argue that the access hollywood

tape was just. well, that can't really be right. because trump had no reason to worry about the impact of that tape. it had no impact. why make an argument like that? that is so easily disprovable. even by people's own living memories. they were all old enough in 2016 to have lived through it and remember it. and even if they did forgetly living through it, in testimony, hope hicks described the release of the access hollywood tape saying this. i had a good sense to believe this was going to be a massive story. i think there was a consensus that the tape was damaging and this was a crisis hicks went onto describe how it pushed hurricane news out of the news. making this came to the jury that what you live through and

what you thought about this moment wouldn't happen. >> that is why the prosecution has reason to feel decently confident they made a strong case on the underlying piece. if you are a student of trump's social media post, you can smell his panic. i think that blanche's need to address access hollywood speaks to the strength of the prosecution case. what they have established obviously in a way that made todd blanche nervous enough to say something on its face ludicrous, the only way this jury has seen him talk. the piece lost to history because they pay stormy daniels to stay quiet ahead of the 2016 election is whether that would have tipped it over.

right? whether access hollywood plus stormy would have done what trump was afraid it would do. the other piece is sex happens, stormy doesn't get a dime until two weeks before election day. >> they are not interested in paying to make this go away until access hollywood happens and the election is about to happen and they know that's the fatal moment. >> the other piece about the time line and what the jury saw before michael cohen was introduced is a walking talking human being who didn't blow. there was a sideswipe from pecker who said he couldn't do anything. hope hicks said he wouldn't do anything. before he takes the stand, what you know is that he was instrumental. he helped hope hicks write the denial in the access hollywood tape. >> because they needed to. because it was catastrophic for them. >> yes. >> much more of our recap of today's closing arguments in the trump trial ahead. many more questions to get to, tonight. stay with us. to, tonight. stay with us. by simply brushin?

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welcome back to our recap of the criminal trial of donald trump on what was a critical and very, very long day in that trial today. closing arguments from both sides. i'm joined now by my colleagues ari and joy. great to have you here, joy. also, alex wagner and jen psaki. you have had an enormously long day. i appreciate you being here. you just finished your show, ari, jen, alex, you guys were all in the courtroom today. we have so much to talk about. but let's take the big picture of you just so we can situate ourselves in context here. with the closing arguments concluding let's take a look at where we are. what will happen next. in terms of the overall scope of this criminal proceeding,

trump was indicted 14 months ago in march of last year. he was arraigned a few days after that. it took a year before jury selection started. jury selection started six weeks ago, april 15th, 2024. opening statements were a week later. april 22nd. and then, we were off to the races. the prosecution took 15-and-a- half days in court to present their case. the defense took a day-and-a- half to present theirs. and, that is how we arrived today at summations. at closing statements. we are not at the end, but we are getting close. the defense gave its closing statement first. that's the rule in new york state criminal proceedings. todd blanche said hid summation today would take two-and-a-half hours. ended uptaking three hours. then the prosecution started to give its closing statement. they said it would be four to four-and-a-half hours. by the time they took a break around 5:00, the prosecution was already two-and-a-half

hours into it. the judge asked to keep going until 7:00. he was apparently hoping to keep both summations on the same day in their entirety. prosecution was still not done by 7:00, they ended up staying until 8:00. they both just went on and on and on much longer than expected but both are finished and judge merchan had said strategically as a matter of the way he likes to run his court. he likes both sides to get their summation in on the same day and made the day extraordinarily long, he was able to do that today. what will happen next is the court will reconvene tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. eastern. can we put that graphic back up at the time line? all right. now that both sides are finally done with their summations, there is still more to go. when they convene tomorrow at 10:00 a.m., the judge is going to give his instructions to the jury as to how they are supposed to deliberate. now, this is technical and sensitive. it can often be sort of inpenetrable to onlookers and non-lawyers and people who have not followed every second of the trial. but it is really an important

phase of the trial. it will be a long process, judge merchan says to expect that those jury instructions will take about an hour. and that is just the judge speaking to the jury about how they should think about the evidence. judge merchan opened today's proceedings by noting he has notified both sides. they are done arguing about what the instructions can be. the instructions are set. we will hear him deliver them to the jury tomorrow. now, that the closing arguments are over, the judge will give the instructions starting tomorrow 10:00 a.m. to roughly 11:00 a.m. and then the jury gets the case. they deliberate among themselves. they have taken this information from both sides. the jury is not allowed to talk among themselves about ha they have been seeing until deliberations officially start. that deliberation will only start after they get their instructions tomorrow from the judge. he will tell them what to consider. and whatnot to consider. as for how long the deliberations are going to take

before we get a verdict, we have no idea on earth. we will watch and wonder and bite our fingernails and pace around the office and eat weird and wait. and that is where we are in this case. in terms of the big picture for the overall scope of things. your mileage may vary. it is a subjective thing. your perceptions of who did well. and who didn't. the only audience that matters is the jury in the broad strokes. there were big stylistic differences. keeping with todd blanche's style from the start of this case. it is fair to say most observers described his closing argument as some version of hard to follow. scatter shot.

not a coherent story. it was not chronological. it did not tell a single tale or an alternate version of who dun it that explained this conspiracy and this pattern of facts. as if somebody other than donald trump participated in this conspiracy while he didn't. we should note in keeping with todd blanche's style throughout the trial thus far, today's summation did involve quite a bit of unpredictable showdown. and again, your mileage may vary as to whether or not you find that persuasive. in contrast, the prosecution summation has been largely described as pretty nonemotional. linear, chronological and coherent. it did tell a story and walked the jury through the beginning of the case through to the end but it made every single local stop along the way an exhaustive treatment of the evidence. it went on and on and on and

on. now, who knows which style the jury will prefer? the transcript reflects most observers have said that the choice that the jury had stylistically between the two sides was sort of random and very all over the place and somewhat confusing from the defense. or methodical and exhaustive and exhausting from the prosecution. i think to be fair, it is hard to say which one of those does a better job on 12 jurors. neither one of those sounds like a good time if you ask me. this is what it comes down to. the special coverage we have been talking about, some of the major points, we still have some of these to get to, the prosecution describing these two documents as the quote smoking guns of this alleged crime scene. they write down in their own handwriting what michael cohen was going to be paid and for what. and it was not that he was being paid a legal retainer. he was being paid back for the

hush money payment to stormy daniels on trump's behalf. the prosecution also today focusing on this tweet from donald trump in which he admitted they were reimbursements and not income. according to the prosecution, trump knew when the payments were booked on his files as if they were income and not reimbursement. trump must have known that was false. we will also be talking about these exchanges between two people involved in the scheme. to hush up negative stories about trump. they were finalizing one of the hush money payments on trump's behalf. june jokes good, throw in an ambassadorship for me. lol. i'm going to make australia great again. another on the night of the election when it became clear trump would win. this is among people involved in the hush money scheme to

help trump. what have we done? these two exchanges showing that the people who were involved in the hush money payment schemes knew that what they were doing had as its object the election of donald trump. we will finalize this payment to karen mcdougal? can i get my ambassador ship? oh, he has been elected. we were the hush money team. what have we done? we got this guy elected. they are not talking about how happy they were to save melania trump from marital upset. we will talk about trump's defense lawyer saying it would have been crazy to enter into an agreement with the national enquirer to help us get elected. preposterous, they didn't think it would have any effect what they were doing. that's why they spent so much time doing it. we'll talk about the

prosecution's direct opposite assertion against that. the value of this corrupt bargain cannot be overstated. it turned out to be one of the most valuable contributions. when you put all of these components together, this skim could be what got president trump elected. we need to try to determine why they went out of their way to praise david pecker as truthful. when david pecker testified that in fact, he participated in an illegal hush money scheme with donald trump to influence the election. why would you praise that witness? we will try to answer why the prosecution didn't opt when trump ear laws claimed that trump wasn't the bad guy here. he was the victim here. of an extortion scheme. they did not object to that

being used over and over again. and why the defense claimed that trump did not actually have sex with stormy daniels. is there a legal reason why they felt the need to say that? and, whatever they are getting for making that repeated assertion, does it balance out what it is costing them in terms of their correct with the? we will try to answer. there is so much that was covered today which is why we have so glad you are here with us. but as i said, joy and i are joined here by three of our colleagues at the table who were all in the room today. those were the moments that stood out to me. as big points. in the summations. what stood out for you? >> many things. first i will tell you is having gone to court today for the first time and hearing the voices of the lawyers was

actually something. hearing todd blanche who had a scatter shot defense and closing arguments. he does not vocally command the room. >> he looks like a tough guy, but he talks like jared. like jared kushner. >> when he finally finished his argument, he sat down and he is sit thing right next to donald trump. next to him. and trump is looking that way. and blanche is looking this way. trump is looking that way. that is not the body language of someone who is necessarily happy with the job their lawyer as done. there was a lot of back and forth about his plea to the your not to send donald trump to jail. that was stricken from the record. it was kind of a whole kerfuffle. in addition to a series of wild

assertions. one of my favorites was the excuse there was no way to categorize the invoice other than a legal expense. it was a drop down menu. it was the only choice that they had at the trump organization. that is all they could do. their assertion that every campaign is a conspiracy here in the united states. something i did not know. it is a group of people working together to help someone win. all campaigns are conspiracies. the access hollywood thing was no big deal. quote, this stuff happens all the time. it is not a doomsday event. sure felt like it. of course, catch and kill is business as usual. the national enquirer is just a zine. nobody really reads the thing. it has no effect on the

election. who reads it? >> these sophisticated men, it would be propostrows for them to think that the national enquirer would have the effect on the world. that's why he owns it. he knows it is pointless. >> it is in every grocery store you go. this was my first time in the overflow room as well. and judge merchan has described this very calm. he is a very soothing voice. when he was telling todd blanche he was out ragous. this is way out of the bounds of what you are supposed to do. as a lawyer, he was very calm. what struck me, not a lawyer. kind of the story telling you have been talking about the last hour. it reminded me of trump and the democrats and how they

communicate about things. todd blanche's closing was very trumpy. everything you think is wrong is totally normal. every election is a conspiracy. everybody is working with media to pay money to people who have bad stories about the candidates. everybody is doing this. this is just, he said retainer is just a word. the drop down menu. >> it reminded me of crooked joe. and crooked hillary. in message of everybody is bad. whether or not that will work with the jury of 12 men and women, that is a question. none of us knows the answer to. on the other side, you had josh steinglass who was like i want to be in a study group with him. but it was very methodical. it was very meticulous. it was very maybe too detailed.

there were moments where sitting in there, you were zoning in. >> are we still there? >> are there moments when he looked at this material and was like let's skip this part? >> it was longer. >> four hours and 40 minutes. >> but he was on the top end of that. >> tell about when he said it is only a third done. >> that's when i fainted. >> one of the interesting things was so many legal experts was that when he said four to four-and-a-half hours there was an audible gasp in the room of the length of that. now they can be as long as you want. and when he said i'm a third of the way through, there was another gasp in the room as well. >> going for hours.

>> he had been going two hours. >> i'm stuck on the dropdown menu. >> i was obsessed. >> it is hard to tell from the transcript. so my impression was they were saying effectively, yes, we may have booked these expenses at the trump organization in a way that was technically false. but we had no choice. because, the software was designed in such a way it made us. >> our hands were tied. conveniently. i think the line, and so, this was all happening toward the end. we kept reading on whatever was coming through the google doc we are so blessed to have. and we are reading it in realtime with the wonderful katie phang there. and the line that stood out to

me, this was really a strong prosecution team. we can all agree they each were really good at the story telling piece. joshua steinglass says use your common sense. >> uh-huh. >> the dropdown menu thing is use your common sense moment. the challenge, todd blanche is all over the place. he is all over the place and doesn't seem to be satisfying donald trump. >> what does muppettizing mean? >> flailing around like kermit the frog. it doesn't make sense. the prosecution to me has done a good job over all telling you a simple story.

that micro managing donald trump, just give him $35,000, because there is a drop down menu that says the only way he with explain that is it is a reimbursement. not know any of that is happening and be completely unaware of it during a campaign to become president of the united states. that he nothing about it. and they have never really explained that other exhibit which i think is the most damning exhibit. how do you explain how the numbers are on that paper? >> there is no defense explanation for this. >> and they never tried and the thing that is shocking to me, as a defense attorney, they never even tried to explain that. >> there is this power point. they have handwritten notes and the power point slides which

they didn't explain. you didn't, they kind of flashed through so you didn't see what was in each of them. but some of them had a few handwritten notes on them as they went through the slides of the presentation. >> and he asked the jury to digest them? >> i think you are explaining how he was explaining each slide. >> the jury was not walked through. >> and i have never, obviously. i have never gotten. i want to be in the jury so badly. judges don't want me. but i have been on a grand jury. and in that kind of situation, it may feel overexplained but i feel even in that kind of a process, the more detail the better. your feelings about michael cohen, he was respectable to the judge.

that is his voice. so, i think the challenge is that when you get all that detail, and then the judge explains the law, all that jury will do in that room is they are going to compare the details they have gotten. and, i still cannot tell you what the defense is in the actual legal claims against donald trump. because if the first witness mr. pecker which is the day i was there. i was there for one of the two days of mr. pecker, he admitted it was a scheme to impact the election. michael cohen is on tape and admitted it was a scheme to impact the election and went to jail for that scheme. there has been no explanation with how donald trump could not have known that. so the problem is when they look at the law and the facts, i don't know where the defense is going to. they just need someone to

nullify. >> is this a hung jury approach rather than an acquittal? they just need to get somebody to get stuck on one piece of the evidence? as a legal matter though, there was really a dramatic moment right before lunch. where the judge, i just lost it. where the judge said i think that statement was out ragous mr. blanche. somebody who has been a prosecutor as long as you can, it is simply not a loud period. we have andrew weissman joining us next to talk about that. to

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so this was the moment when the defense lawyer was ending his summation. so basically, the climax of trump's final case to the jury. judge merchan seemed to get quite mad at trump's defense counsel. he is not easily ired. but what happened in front of the jury was an objection from the prosecutor at tend of trump's closing statement. the prosecutor objected judge merchan sustained the objection. then the jury was sent out of the room. what happened after that was a thing. it was a notable confrontation to trump's lead defense counsel and it led to the jury being told something sort of unexpected after they were brought back in after lunch. so, it was kind of the big

drama involving judge merchan of the day. here is how it went. todd blanche, i'm going to end the summation the same way i told you a few minutes ago. that you know you cannot rely on him meaning michael cohen. which is that all those lies, lies under oath, lies to his families, lies when it matters and doesn't matter, put those aside for a moment. that's a loan. enough to walk away. but then, he came in here, again, meaning michael cohen, he raised his right hand and he lied to each of you repeatedly. repeatedly. you cannot send somebody to prison. you cannot convict somebody. steinglass, the prosecutor, objection. judge merchan, sustained. trump's defense counsel, blanche, you cannot convict somebody based upon the words of michael cohen. so, thank you for paying attention. i knew it was a long morning and we went through a lot of evidence but it is important and i meant what i said in the beginning. it is clear that you all have been paying close attention the past five weeks and that

matters. this isn't a referendum on your views of president trump. this is not a referendum on the ballot box. who you voted for or who you plan on voting for. the verdict you are going to reach has to do with the evidence and nothing else. nothing else you knew or thought about president trump or about any of the other folks that testified but just the evidence that you heard from the witnesses. the recordings and the documents. if you do that. this is a quick easy not guilty verdict. that is the conclusion of donald trump's case to the jury. the judge says thank you jurors. the judge said after the jury is gone, the judge says, you may be seated. meaning, nobody else is going anywhere even though the jury

is. and then the prosecutor says we would like a curative instruction for that ridiculous comment mr. blanche made about sending the defendant to prison. punishment is something the jurors are told not to consider. that was a blatant and wholly inappropriate effort to cull sympathy for their client. judge merchan then says to trump's defense counsel, let me hear your comment about prison. todd blanche. pardon? the judge. let me hear you about your comment about prison. todd blanche, i mean, your honor, there is already an instruction that you are going to give as part of the charge on that so we don't think there needs to be a curative instruction. judge merchan, i'm going to give a curative instruction. and then judge merchan says this. quote. i think that saying that was outrageous mr. blanche. please have a seat. for someone who has been a prosecutor as long as you have,

and a defense attorney as long as you have, you know that making a comment like that is highly inappropriate. it is simply not allowed, period. it is hard for me to imagine how that was accidental in any way. i will give a curative instruction. i will ask the people to draft one up. and i will give it. see you at 2:00. prosecutor, thank you. then the lunch recess is taken. then this is what happens after lunch. so the defense is finished, they have stopped their case. this is it. they are done. prosecutors are about to start their closing argument and this is how it starts. the judge says let's get the jury. jury enters. the clerk says case on trial continued. all jurors present and properly seated and the judge immediately says this. jurors, before we hear the

people summation, there is an instruction that i wanted to give you. you heard mr. blanche asking in substance you not send the defendant to prison. that comment was improper and you must disregard it. in your deliberations, you may not discuss or consider or speculate about matters related to punishment. if there is a verdict of guilty, it will be my responsibility to impose an appropriate sentence. a prison sentence is not priored for the charges in this case. in the event of a guilty verdict. and he says people meaning prosecution, it's time to get started. the prosecutor says thank you your honor, counsel, members of the jury. good afternoon. what did todd blanche do so

wrong joining us now is andrew weissman. what happened there? >> so, this is totally taboo. you do not and everyone knows you do not raise as jen said the issue of punishment. you do not raise the issue of going to jail. and i think one of the best ways to understand what is going on here is the reality of the fact this is the former president of the united states. and what todd blanche was doing here and what josh steinglass did. this was a way to try to raise the murder on the state to really say are you really sending this person to jail? the former president and maybe the future president of the

united states? totally improper argument. it was so clear the defense agreed and made no objection to it. they were given an opportunity to object and they didn't. it is because the bell was rung. the jury heard it. getting the curative instruction reinforces it. they are trying to raise the bar for the state. where the end of josh steinglass' summation. he said you know what? he cannot shoot somebody as he has famously said on fifth avenue an not be held to account. i think what he was getting at was the concern the jury will hold the state to a higher burden than beyond a reasonable doubt because he is the former president. he is just like everyone else.

he has to be held to the same standard. that is why you saw both lawyers try to figure out a way to play that to their advantage or raise the burden or lower it to what it should be. so that is really a reality that is going on in the courtroom. >> can i ask you about whether they are taking a level of risk in doing so? as you say, in both of those cases, objections were sustained in the first case when the defense did it. there was the judge told the jury do not consider what he just told you. when lawyers do things like that in the room, are they taking a risk? just being told you shouldn't have said that, having the jury say you shouldn't have heard that, kind of doesn't feel like

enough of a fix. >> they are taking a risk. the best thing i have heard a judge do, the name may ring a bell because he was the special master in the judge cannon case. when a lawyer did that the first time, he brought the lawyer over to the side bar and said to him, with counsel, only present saying you do that again, and i am going to cut your knees out from under you in front of the jury. meaning if you think there is no cost to you in terms of the effect of ring that bell, there will be a cost. unfortunately, lawyers will do things like that. i think it is worth noting that what josh did, it is a very different category. i don't think it was going to be something where he sort of suspected there would be an

objection. but, it is not in the same category as talking about punishment where everybody knows that is absolutely off limits. >> andrew weissman, very, very helpful. thank you very much my friend. all right, much more ahead in our recap of trump's criminal trial in new york. closing arguments very, very long day in court today. a lot happened. we have more ahead. stay with us. we have more ahead. stay with us. prevents heartburn acid before it begins. get all-day and all-night heartburn acid prevention with just one pill a day. choose acid prevention. choose nexium. oh, why leaffilter? it's well designed, efficient, i appreciate that. leaffilter's technology keeps debris out of your gutters for good, guaranteed. what more could you ask for? call 833.leaf.filter today, or visit leaffilter.com.

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if he gets in, i can tell

you right now. he will never leave. he will never leave. you know that. he will never leave. >> two time oscar winner robert de niro showed up outside of donald trump's manhattan trial on behalf of the biden campaign. it was interesting. he said we are not here for what is going on in that courtroom. we are here because all of you media are here. he spoke alongside former police officers who both risked their lives protecting the u.s. capitol on january 6th. the three of them all talked about the way the trumpist movement and trump himself have used and stoked violence to get their way. near the end of his remarks, de niro was interrupted by a pro trump protester which of course led to the world's most new york city moment possible. >> paid sell-out to the dnc.

you're a paid sell-out. >> let's go. let's go. to the left. >> you're not going to intimidate. that's that trump does is try to intimidate. we are trying to be gentlemen in this world. democrats. you are gangsters. you are gangsters. our friend stephanie ruhle joins us. joined again by alex wagner. joy reid, ari melber. steph, had robert de niro on your show recently.

>> i talked to him about an hour ago. he is speaking out because he truly believes our democracy is at risk. he talked about in 2016 because robert de niro is a true new yorker who has been saying this guy is a fraud. he is a con artist. the fact that america could ever look to elect a guy because he is a successful business guy, he not only went bankrupt six times, look at the way. look at this trial. look at the way he ran his sham business. what is interesting about what de niro is doing, he realizes he will get a huge amount of blowback. but he says i'm an 80-year-old man and i'm worried about the generations ahead. and you heard him say it there. if trump wins, he believes he is never leaving office. when i asked him how did today go? he said if i impacted anyone, if i'm doing one ounce of small good, it's worth it. our future is at risk. >> can i just say that it does appear that maybe the most influential person in the presidential campaign is plize, the rapper. he has been trying to get

democrats there to get somebody in front of that courtroom because trump is putting his props in front of the room. looks like they were listening to him. so well done. well done. and i love robert de niro by the way. got to love him. >> to see him and harry dunn all say we are not here for what is going on in that courtroom. we are not here basically to try to influence the course of this case. we are leer because all the media is here and they talked about trump's legal problems. this was a biden campaign event. this was essentially a biden press conference. but even in so doing, they are doing it carefully to say we are not trying to influence this proceeding. we are only here because all these cameras are here. >> and the thing is this has been the complaint that a lot of people have had about the democratic party is that they don't fight like with like. this is a media event. the reason donald trump is sending his clones out there dressed like him is because the media is there. up until now, democrats have not been playing that game with

them. you cannot find a more new yorkie new yorker or a better foil for trump than an actual popular celebrity new yorker which is everything trump ever wanted to be. >> and he wanted to be flanked by fanone and dunn. he considers them true patriots. it kills him that the republican party has hijacked the word of patriotism and he wants people to remember what happened january 6th and who was fighting for our democracy. it was guys like them. >> trump supporters were yelling at them they were traitor. >> we heard the summation about a 2016 campaign crime. the attempted reasonable doubt is oh, trump had other strange desires other than cheating in the election. but there is a lot of evidence of that cheating. the 2020 crimes as alleged have been punted in the supreme court is likely helping with that. and donald trump's two impeachments were about going after biden who became president. so trump had feelings about who

the biggest risk was. and what de niro referenced. the refusal of a peaceful transfer of power. why would you expect someone who did that once to change gears? he is presumed innocent in every court. but, what ties this all together is we are dealing with the trials of an individual who stands accused of election crimes every time he has been on the ballot and every time he lost. >> the bigger picture, it should be an asset for the democrats' campaign they are running against somebody cloaking himself in criminality. not only in court. but in materials of the way he is running now. for him to be siding with the january 6th defendants while democrats are saying we side with the cops who are trying to protect the capitol from the january 6th defendants. that is a message the democrats ought to be hitting every single day. our recap of this very big day in the trump criminal trial continues. we'll be right back. l continues. we'll be right back. >> he doesn't belong in my city. i don't know where he belongs.

but he certainly doesn't belong here. we make room for clowns. but not a person like trump who will eventually run the country. that does not work. he will use violence against anyone who stands in the way of his megalo mania and greed. this is the time to stop him. by voting him out once and for all. when anyone in this house wears white, it doesn't stay white for long. white? to art class? that's risky. art has no rules, mom. huh. white with coffee? a dangerous endeavor. white? to soccer? i'm not gonna slide tackle. he's gonna slide tackle. but now with tide oxi white, we can clean our white clothes without using bleach. it even works on colors. i slide tackled. i see that. keep your whites white even without bleach with tide oxi white. we got this. (♪♪)

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karen was really paying in 2017 for ongoing legal services. in his closing, however, the prosecutor said claiming 2017 payments to michael cohen were a retainer for legal services, in his words, makes no sense. we don't have the official

court transcript yet of the trial today but these are the notes from our reporters in the courtroom. stein glass says in 2018, cohen continued to do legal work for trump. he probably did more legal work in the first three months of 2018 then he did in all of the previous year and in 2018, he was not paid in oh so if he was still doing legal work, why was he paid a nickel in 2018? quote, he was being reimbursed in 2017 and when the reimbursements were done, the payments stopped. the prosecutor continues the testimony was that cohen did less than 10 hours of legal work in 2017 while he was being paid $35,000 a month. cohen spent more time being cross examined in this trial that he did doing legal work for donald trump in 2017. i wanted to put this moment to you because i feel like this is the defense kind of feebly trying to put forward the case like -- >> at the end, at the 11th hour, too. it was like no time was spent during this trial even trying to suggest to this jury what michael cohen might've done to earn $35,000 a month to a guy who had a problem spending 600 bucks on a picture frame. none of it makes any sense then you couple it with the argument that michael cohen was taking

out his own equity loan because he was going roll in really just wanted to appease donald trump. none of it makes any sense and that was actually a hallmark of the closing argument today. they would argue one thing and then argue it's counter five minutes later. it was wildly logically inconsistent and the strongest part of stein glass' closing today was outlining and three bullet points why michael cohen could not have.gone rogue. donald trump was a micromanager, cohen was a self promoter and the defendant was the beneficiary of this entire scheme. it really just took apart all of this about michael cohen and then he showed on the screen the tweet from trump that he described as reimbursements. unfortunately, our client, the defendant, made the exact opposite assertion but pay no mind. seven hours of closing arguments liselotte to recap.

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