thinking about the fact that despite the fact that susan necheles tried to bring out this nuts and defense we have seen again and again in our culture. it did not work. this jury believed an adult film star and they believed her story was real enough that donald trump did not want anyone to know about her and their sexual encounter. that in itself is revelatory. it is a reflection of the fact that in 2024, you can be a person that does something that many of us might consider embarrassing for a living and yet you can be believed enough along with somebody who pled guilty to multiple felonies. the two of you can be believed enough along with other people including many of trump's acolytes to help bring him down on 34 felony charges tonight

that 12 ordinary manhattanites believed and convicted him on. the other thing i am really thinking about tonight's -- go ahead, nicole, i'm sorry. >> i'm sorry, lisa. we had a switcheroo involving a lot of audiovisual conduits and i appreciate you going with us on it like it was a flume ride. lisa rubin, thank you very much at the courthouse in lower manhattan. thank you. it is just after 8:00 p.m. eastern time and here we are. hello and welcome to our continued special coverage of today's unanimous, guilty on all counts verdict in the new york criminal trial of former president trump. i am rachel maddow. i am joined by my colleagues nicolle wallace and joy reid and katie phang and chris hayes. also lawrence o'donnell is with us. we are about to be joined by the star witness for the

prosecution in this trial. michael cohen is going to speak with us exclusively, giving us his first reaction. michael cohen will be joining us in one moment, live onset. it was 4:20 p.m. eastern time this afternoon when the jury sent a note to the judge that said, quote, we the jury have reached a verdict. at 5:05 p.m. the jury was back in the courtroom and seated. defendant donald trump was there and seated. judge merchan then addressed the foreperson of the jury. it went like this. without telling me the verdict, has the jury in fact reached a verdict? juror number one, yes they have. the judge, take the verdict, please. the clerk, will the foreperson please arise. have the members of the jury agreed upon a verdict? juror 1, yes we have. the clerk, how say you to the first count of the indictment charging donald j. trump with

the crime of falsifying business records in the first degree, guilty or not guilty? juror number one, guilty. the clerk, how say you to count two? juror number one, guilty. how say you take out three? >> guilty. the clerk, how say you to count for? juror number one, guilty. and so on and so on. the clerk proceeded to ask the same question for each of the 34 felony counts and each time the foreperson replied, guilty. a unanimous verdict on all 34 felonies. that is how donald trump became the first american president ever convicted of a crime. he became the first president convicted of a felony and seconds later, the first president convicted of two felonies. every few seconds for minutes thereafter he kept breaking his own brand-new, old record for the most crimes any american

president has been convicted of. here is the signed verdict sheet filled in by the jury. 34 handwritten checkmarks all in the guilty column, signed at the bottom by the prosecutor and defense attorney and by the foreperson. the foreperson is identified only by a number, not by his name. here was manhattan district attorney alvin bragg. >> first and foremost i want to thank the jury for its service. jurors perform a fundamental civic duty. their service is literally the cornerstone of our judicial system. we should all be thankful for the careful attention that this jury paid to the evidence and the law and the time and commitment over the past several weeks. the 12, every day jurors vowed to make a decision based on the evidence and the law and the

evidence and the law alone. deliberations led them to a unanimous conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, donald j. trump, is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree to conceal a scheme to corrupt the 2016 election. >> live press conference this evening from new york district attorney alvin bragg whose office brought and supervised the prosecution of this case. here is a look at how news outlets are covering the historic news this evening. this is the new york times. trump guilty on all counts. this is the washington post. trump guilty on all counts. this is usa today. trump guilty on all counts. this is the wall street journal. donald trump convicted in all counts and hush money case. here is the tampa bay times. guilty. trump becomes first former u.s. president convicted of felony

crimes. here is the l.a. times. trump found guilty on all charges. there is politico, trump guilty, all capital letters. the boston globe, trump guilty. all capital letters. here is donald trump's hometown paper, the queens daily eagle. queens man convicted. and here is the cover of the next issue of the new yorker magazine. the title is a man of conviction. big handcuffs. you and i were here as the verdicts were handed over, were handed in by the jury and had that first reaction to it. i wonder in these few hours we've had since receiving this information, as we see the republican party and trump and his supporters reacting by declaring this an illegitimate

verdict by an illegitimate court. i wonder if you have a sense of what this night will mean for us? >> to me the trump story has always been about asymmetry. our coverage would have been the same if he were acquitted, right? it would have been respect and reverence for judge merchan. it would've been respect and reverence for the jurors who say pick me, i will do it. and i think if there was criticism it might have been that the process did not yield a result for our eyes. they had the paper and the emails. the republicans, trumps enablers, would have celebrated and they are only condemning the decision because they don't like the result. i think what is important is to not look away from what is broken, and what is broken is one of the two parties does not respect the rule of law. not because they saw something different, but because they don't like the result and it is

a flashing red light for our country. >> chris. >> i keep thinking about the immunity case before the supreme court. >> still pending. >> still pending. one of the things that really got to me during the oral arguments which i felt was shameful was multiple conservative justices basically saying come on, you can indict a ham sandwich. isn't the rule of law used as a tool? here you had, i thought, a process that was run with incredible integrity. basically i think the kind of liberal democratic order we are trying to hold onto rises or falls to our ability to agree to neutral processes we are subject to. >> that is democracy. you're not guaranteed any outcome, you are guaranteed a fair process. >> that is true in courts and true in elections. what we have seen is basically rejecting that notion and that

if you are convicted the system is no longer legitimate, it is rigged. this is a deeply hard day steeply held part of donald trump's view of the world. it goes all the way back. it is authentically held, i think, in his own strange way, but it has now metastasized to take over the party. in some ways when that is the party ethos we are seeing you are removing yourself from the collaborative enterprise we are all engaged in -- in the liberal democratic enterprise. >> thinking about that from both of our points, thinking about our own comfort and all the people we talked to. legal experts, observers, pundits. i don't think, you can go through it with a fine tooth comb, but i don't think there was a moment in our coverage when all of us covering the daily trial, looking at the transcripts, looking at people in the courtroom, getting reporters updates, i don't

think there was a moment when we were like, something went wrong there. there is something that has been decided in a way that seems suspect or that is going to get appealed. there is never a moment like that and that was us not knowing what the result would be. that is to have a non-results driven, honest, fair take on what is going on means you believe in the system. you are willing to accept it regardless of the outcome. >> i will say one more thing. there are times when public officials are convicted of crimes and people rush to their defense. i saw this in providence, rhode island. i've seen it in chicago, providence, and sometimes elected officials will do it. it is the unanimity. if you are a city council member and your neighboring city councilmember gets

convicted and you thought they had a raw deal and you show up to support them, that happens in politics. it is the down the line, complete partyline unanimity that has been expressed and imposed today about this. from the moment it is announced, this is an illegitimate process that i find unnerving and distinguishing from normal politics around prosecution. >> i just wanted to say that what we heard alvin bragg say, what we said at this table and shows and on this network is we are doing, we are reporting, we are doing what we are doing without fear or favor. that is what alvin bragg said. that has been a redefinition of courage, would -- which i think is interesting. courage used to have a different definition, but now things we took for granted in terms of people believing in

the rule of law, we had to redefine what that means. if you think about what alvin bragg did, he took a case with a team of prosecutors. i have empathy for the lawyers, because having been a trial lawyer the amount of work it took to get this across the finish line, it is an incredible amount of time and energy. it is a without fear or favor approach they took. they did not let themselves be skewed by the following analysis. even if you have all of the elements of the crime, even if you have probable cause, even if you can meet all of those elements, sometimes you stop yourself and consider what the jury nullification could be. do you have enough to get the jury to care? i sat here at this table while we talked about opening statements and i said for so long. the first indictment, the first to go to trial, but what they did during the prosecution opening as they made you care. they made the jury care about this case when maybe they didn't care and i think that was the critical moment. >> on the issue of fear or

favor, the fear factor for the people involved in this process at every level, the jurors, obviously, family members, the judge, the judges family members, the prosecutors, their family members and witnesses. we will be speaking in just a moment with michael cohen, the prosecution's star witness. michael cohen's saga is shakespearian. part of the fear in terms of him being a witness is having come to this point in his journey with his former boss and mentor, a man by some accounts the way michael cohen tells it, he basically worshiped for a long time while he worked for him for a decade. the confrontation with trump himself. the confrontation with trump supporters and what he has been willing to bring to bear. it is something that a witness like michael cohen has been contending with and is now an order of magnitude different now that this unanimous, all counts guilty verdict has been pronounced by the jury.

we will be speaking with michael cohen in a moment. i do want to talk to our friend, lawrence o'donnell. you were in the courtroom for most of the trial, including for mr. cohen's testimony. before we speak with michael cohen live, is there a key moment from the witness testimony? from the way this court proceeding proceeded, that led it to this verdict today or did you think to the very end it could go either way? >> i did think it could go either way. look, we now know and we can say definitively that todd blanche was defending a guilty client. defending a guilty client is really hard. it is a really hard thing to do and it is a very hard thing when defending a guilty client to get 12 jurors to unanimously agree to find that defendant not guilty, which todd blanche asked them to do many times in his closing statement and many

times used the phrase, reasonable doubt. you always wonder what that phrase means to every jury and it is very common for a jury to want to hear the instruction on reasonable doubt read to them again, but this jury was clearly unified and they had to be unified most of the way. there could not have been a lot of hard work to get through in that jury room given that they basically got this verdict in nine hours over 34 counts. they were being very respectful, i think, of the size of the indictment. i think, rachel, as this day has been wearing on that the key moment was alvin bragg, alone in a room with his own thinking. after all of this had been presented to him. after more than one team of prosecutors looked at this defendant and suggested ways this defendant could be prosecuted. while some prosecutors in that office were opposing some of

the ideas about the way this defendant could be prosecuted. alvin bragg had a decision to make. his decision and his decision alone to make that decision to go forward with this case. as i was sitting in the courtroom and watching this evidence unfold, i could see why alvin bragg made the decision to do this. when he looked at all of the evidence his conclusion had to be, i can't possibly not bring this case. this evidence can't emerge later and the world can't see this evidence later and ask me why i didn't bring this prosecution. at the very same time, especially when michael cohen was testifying, i could see why the southern district of new york federal prosecutors didn't bring this case. because they were worried about how michael cohen would perform as a witness. what alvin bragg had to do when he decided to bring this case, he had to do one simple thing that is the hardest thing in the world. he had to bring a perfect case.

he had to assemble the perfect team, including, by the way, the paralegals who were standing up there with him tonight at that press conference. it wasn't lawyers only. he had the paralegal assistance with him, too. he had to assemble the perfect team and they had to present the perfect case. there were plenty of moments we wandered -- we wandered about. now we know. the prosecution did exactly what they had to do. they had to present a perfect case and for a case like this you have to think of it as an airplane engine and what doubts you might have about an airplane engine and an airplane engine has to work flawlessly. the prosecution's job is to build a flawless airplane engine and the defense's job is to try to convince you somewhere that engine is leaking a drop of oil. that is all the defense has to do. that is all they have to do.

so it is perfection verses, there might be a flaw, there might be a loose bolt. perfection has to win and that is what alvin bragg saw at the outset, which is there was a way to do this case, a way to try it perfectly. he tried it perfectly. not calling allen weisselberg was the right call, we now know. he had to know it was the right call after the fact. we have to sit here knowing everything that was the right call by alvin bragg in this case. he had to know ahead of time. he could have said to josh steinglass, a 4 1/2 hour closing is too much. i need you to cut two hours. he didn't do that. he built his team, trusted his team and knew his team was capable of doing the perfect job they had to do to get to all counts guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and this is the story and in that room was the story of these two kids who grew up in new york. one, maybe the most spoiled brat in the history of american

spoiled brats, donald trump. across the aisle from him is alvin bragg. alvin bragg grew up on a block in harlem that is called strivers road. his mother and father met in a small town in virginia in the eighth grade. they went to separate colleges. alvin bragg senior went to syracuse university. they came to new york and worked as professionals and they all have high hopes for the kids and on strivers road, the kids learned if you work really hard in school, really hard, really hard, you will be able to do work that you are proud of. so alvin bragg has been named at this point and for reasons that will never make sense in my memoirs, i decided today to spend the day at alvin bragg's alma mater. events surrounding graduation week at harvard. when alvin bragg graduated from

harvard college, the school newspaper, the harvard crimson, ran a profile of him and the title of the profile in his last week of college was, the anointed one. and the article gives you what you think is the most hyperbolic title you can imagine for a college senior, then lays out for you who this kid is who is graduating from harvard college. and on his way to harvard law school. did you finish that article as i did a year ago, thinking that is the right title. that is who this guy is and when he was in this week of his life, that final week at harvard college, that is what people saw here and that is what people saw. the people of manhattan who elected him, that is what they saw. they saw someone who is dedicated to doing this job and doing it flawlessly and so profoundly modestly.

in a country in the trump era that desperately needs lessons in modesty, alvin bragg is that lesson. >> you know, lawrence, it is such a good point that in this moment, when it is remembered in history, yes the crimes will be part of the history. criminals will be part of the history, absolutely. people who are brave enough to take this through the criminal justice system against all the threat they had to face in order to do it and against all of the odds and against the most powerful people in the country, some of the most powerful people in the world to do it. those are the people, a few generations from now i don't know that we will still have movies, but they will be the ones having blockbuster holograms made about them. thank you, my friend. i know we will be back with you in a moment. joining us on set for his first interview since tonight's verdict was announced as the prosecution's primary witness from this case, michael cohen.

he is joined by his attorney. we are thankful to you both for being here. >> it is good to see you all. >> how are you? >> i guess the word is relieved. this has been six years in the making. remember the very first time i met with the district attorney's office, we talked about it when i was on your show. after putting out "disloyal." the first time i met was when i was an inmate in otisville. they came up to see me on three separate occasions, so this is a six-year process for accountability to finally be had. >> were you surprised by the verdict? >> no, i was not. i have spoken. i've been on so many of the shows and i've told you all along that the facts speak for themselves. the documents speak for themselves. i have listened to so many pundits come on the shows including the host talking about x, y, and the. they couldn't be further from

the truth. i would have a conversation with my lawyer and say i don't understand it. how come they don't see the same things we are seeing? i understand that it makes great headlines and so on, but the facts are the facts and at the end of the day the facts are what prevailed here. >> you mentioned the timeframe, what it has been for you, before tonight there was this criminal scheme described by prosecutors. this illegal conspiracy to influence the election. payments to benefit the campaign. booked falsely as funds for something else. it has been described by multiple prosecutors, but tonight there was one person who got in trouble for this scheme. you are not the beneficiary, but the only person who had been in trouble for it. >> as did allen weisselberg. >> trump's attorney general

bill barr told st y to stop the investigation after you were in prison. after you got the sharp end of that stick and to get trump's name out of it. it has been eight years down the road. i have to ask you, you said what you feel about the verdict, but that is justice delayed. is justice delayed is justice denied? >> clearly not in this case. 34 counts, one after another, after another, of guilty. it is accountability. it is exactly what america needs right now. we need for accountability to be had by all those who break the law. because as we like to continuously state, no one is above the law and today's verdict demonstrates that. >> how do you think donald trump is feeling today in light of this verdict? >> i can only go back to when judge polly sentenced me to 36

months. you don't feel good. sentencing is terrible. i have course took the plea that was given to me or they were filing the 80 page indictment that was going to include my wife. it never feels good. i did what i had to do to protect my family. this is different. donald didn't let it go in order to protect his family. he took it all the way and judge merchan, who is an absolute gentleman. to see him on that stand is to see a masterful judge who was quick with decision-making. he was absolutely judicial perfection. the jury had tremendous respect for him, as did i. which is what kept me off my social media. it was really out of respect for judge merchan and the

process that i did exactly that and the jury respects judge merchan and i believe a lot of the antics that went on in the courtroom, whether it was by blanche or by donald himself with the eyes closing, the leaning back, the total disregard for the jury. i don't think he engendered any positive feelings by anyone. >> some people said he was sleeping. some people said he was resting his eyes. there are a lot of different interpretations. your interpretation is that he was disrespectful to the jury? >> yes, but i was not concentrating as much on him as i was trying to keep track of todd blanche's meandering questioning. that was very difficult. 2018, 2019, 2020 and trying to keep track of the dates and events when you have that type of meandering questioner.

it is not an easy process. >> i will put this to you as well. in preparing for that cross- examination for todd blanche, did you prepare emotionally? it seems like for us just watching it for the courtroom and looking at the transcript, it seems like a herculean effort to stay calm and what seemed to be designed to provoke and confuse you? >> a lot of our prep focused on the facts. there is so much prior testimony in interviews and statements. we wanted to be up to speed on that, refreshed. >> that is not an advantage when your client has spoken a lot in public. >> he has. but you know, it was important and i emphasized this to michael. he conducted himself remarkably

well. i wanted him to understand that his demeanor mannered and he needed to -- demeanor mattered and he needed to maintain the same on direct and cross and he did that. i saw a connection between him and the jury. they believed him i think and they were just with him. yes there was a lot of emotion involved. painful for me as his lawyer to watch the attacks on him. 85 times he was called a liar. he is not a liar. he has told lies and admitted to it and the jury believed him and returned a swift and just verdict. i think all of the preparation was put to good use. >> the strategic necessity of you staying cool and having

that same affect and everything, how hard was it? >> not hard at all. it is the media that wants to portray me as a bombastic character. >> we have all heard it from you. >> but you heard it from my podcasts. it is a persona for it. i can't go with intelligence, so i have to go with bombastic, right? it is not necessarily my affect. yes i get hot tempered. yes we have heard that a couple of times here and there when i was working for mr. trump. that is not generally my affect and it wasn't hard. i will tell you though, 51 days of solitary confinement changes anyone and everyone. you start to learn to live in your own head, which is a dangerous place for anyone. it is very easy to turn around and say i need to pull back on myself. i need to pull back on getting

angry at the nonsense of todd blanche. and it was not as difficult as i thought. staying focused with his questioning, that was more difficult. the anxiety and stealing with the anxiety on this was difficult as well. >> what kind of anxiety? >> you know, i am nervous. i was nervous because so much was riding on the result of this and i wanted to ensure my testimony was perfect. afterwards when the whole thing was over, we sat and spoke for a little bit about my testimony. and couldn't understand some of the criticisms.

one minute and 39 seconds, how could you possibly have two conversations? you can, when one is not a status call, just an update. i want you to know everything is taken care of, we are good. that is the conversations that take place with donald trump, not this long-winded -- including the tape i recorded of him, which i told you for david pecker. that was only like a minute and change. but that was a substantive conversation. imagine what you could do in 1:39. i thought josh steinglass did a fabulous job putting that 1:39 out there. susan hoffinger is phenomenal. the whole team, the whole prosecutorial team were incredible as we would go through some of the documents. she knew off the top of her head most of the numbers, most of the exhibit numbers. a very impressive group of

people. >> what did you make of the decision by the defense, and we are speculating a lot of the strategy was driven by trump himself. we are speculating because we don't know, but it felt like it. they made a strategic decision to make the verdict a referendum on you, including saying, being admonished by the judge for saying it, essentially the last word to the jury, do not send anyone to prison on the word of michael cohen. how was that for you and what you make of that decision? >> i don't really care, nor do i care what todd blanche cares about me. what i care about is my wife, my daughter, my son, my parents, my close friends. that is who i care about and what they say about me. danya perry, i care what she says about me. i don't care what don, ivanka, eric, don junior, it doesn't matter to me what any of them

say about me. i know who i am and i knew what i needed to do, so in this specific case it was a very, and i have said it, it was a very foolish strategy. and he is not really known as a defense attorney. i think it is only the second defense trial. not a good strategy and proof positive of that is the 34 count verdict. >> the defense counsel we are talking about, todd blanche, did an interview on another cable news network this evening. i will let you guess which one. he said in that interview that every decision in the case, every substantive decision in the case is one he made together with trump. >> it makes sense. >> i was going to ask if you see trump's fingerprints on some of the decisions you are describing. >> absolutely. the word, gloat, it is a donald

trump, fourth grade, playground bullying kind of tactic. what is that? >> did you have an acronym for todd? >> i did, the stupidest lawyer of all time. you cannot listen to your client when you're trying to create a defense. a defense that is as important as this is the very first president of the united states, former president to ever be charged with a crime, let alone convicted now on 34 counts. it was definitively the stupidest lawyer of all time. worse than some of the other ones that he has, you know, in his orbit. it made no sense at all and any good lawyer, if he would have tried to get a hold of danya,

she would not listen to his desire to control how the case would proceed. that is not how you run a good defense. i would never have allowed it if i was still with him. >> let me ask you about an element of the defense that i found puzzling as an observer and it was about the access hollywood tape. the defense argued that there was no new urgency from trump to kill the stormy daniels story after the access hollywood tape, because it was no big deal and it didn't have an impact on the campaign and did not change anyone's mind set about the potential damage that could be done by another sex scandal, particularly a sex scandal like this. the reason that was puzzling to a lot of us watching it is because we were alive then and it seemed like a very big deal then and would have rationally had an impact on the way they were thinking about potential damage on these stories. you were close to donald trump

of the time and involved in the response. how does that go with your lived experience? >> completely contrary to the reality. i was in london at the time, visiting my daughter who was studying at queen mary university for the semester. it was her 21st birthday, not to mention several days after were my anniversary, so we were there, celebrating as a family when this thing happened. i spent most of the vacation outside of the restaurant, on the telephone with people like hope hicks and others, trying to do damage control. that was demonstrated again by the evidence, whether it was text messages or, you know, corroborating testimony. that is what i had continuously said when i was on nicole's show or joys show or any of the msnbc shows. this is a case that is going to come down to the documentary evidence and the testimony of others.

and what ultimately was demonstrated was the fact that all of the testimony by the other witnesses that i had involvement with corroborated what i have been saying for six years and all of the evidence, the documentary evidence, emails, text messages, documents themselves, again corroborated what i have been saying for six years. >> this case was, i think, not derided but downplayed by a lot of people when it became clear it was one of four criminal indictments in four different jurisdictions. this was seen, i think, as the lightweight case. there has been a lot of discussion in the media. we call this the hush money case? is this an election interference case? how do we shorthand this? do you think that this case was substantively important, compared with a classified document case and january 6 case and the other ones that

are pending that may never come to trial, is this one important on its own? >> the answer is yes it is, but i myself on various different shows of said why are we looking at these cases like it is the kentucky derby and we are handicapping the cases? if in fact this was, it would be the fourth most obscene case that donald is being charged with. now obviously this case does not hold equal weight to the theft of nuclear secrets. the document, the mar-a-lago document case or the insurrection, the january 6 insurrection. it just doesn't. even the attempt to overturn free and fair elections. nevertheless this is an important case. it is a legitimate case and while i would have liked alvin bragg to have brought it a year earlier, because it would've

been good for me. i would have been, a year earlier, finished with this, it is an important case. it is a relevant case. it is an illegal act that any one of us would have already been prosecuted for and again, since no one is above the law, donald needed to be held accountable, just like any of us. like i was held accountable. the difference, i took responsibility. >> i will say to my colleagues, i am being uncool and not letting you in here. i have another question i want to ask you. a lot of the reason that i think this is being greeted the way that it is across the country, three inch headlines on every newspaper in the country. it is not necessarily because everyone is totally engaged in falsifying business records. the actual details of this is not what is driving it. what is driving at is that he

is the first president convicted of a crime and what is he going to do? we are very worried about what trump may demand or expect his supporters to do in response to this. the extralegal pressure that he brings to bear on every situation when he feels victimized now. for the future of our democracy. i would like to hear what you think about that, how you calibrate that and how you have dealt with what i know has been the anxiety around the threat level for you and your family. >> i know he has the series of republicans who show up to court with him, to pass a law whereby he cannot be held legally accountable for any crime. i've never heard of anything like this. he has his own set of constitutional rights that none of us are afforded the same.

this is going to be an all new law class for these poor law students right now. they will have to take another course. maybe danya will be teaching it. will he looked to create violence? sure. will it happen? i don't think so. i don't believe that the american people are as invested in him as he believes. we have already seen what happened with the oath keepers, stewart rhodes, 18 years. i spent 13 months at otisville. a satellite camp. 51 days in solitary confinement. i assure you, nobody wants that for themselves. so no one is going to go out and do something stupid, especially let's say in new york. we have the greatest law enforcement in new york. our men and women in blue, the best. they are also great in all of the other cities and all of the

other states in our country. then we have the national guard. we have the military. no one will allow him to create the havoc that he wants everybody to believe he has the ability to create. >> michael, you were -- >> hi, nicolle. i didn't realize . >> no, it has been fun to watch this conversation. >> for some of us. >> i am sure everyone enjoyed it. i want to ask you about your pain, because you were able to talk about it in a way that most humans are not able to talk about it and you were able to bring the jury into your journey of reverence. you describe your time as something that i think you said had incredible experiences. you were able to be multidimensional in a way that no one in the press gives you credit for. the whole frame around here was, credibility. todd blanche got it. it was a nano second and people

thought that you had shot your credibility. i wonder how you were, one, able to be that vulnerable and in a criminal trial watched around the world and share all that. and i know you see a lot, i know you taken a lot of coverage. i wonder how that felt. >> difficult. one of the things during prep sessions with danya and her office was, don't quibble over an answer. if you did it, own it. it is very difficult. don't get me wrong. no one wants to acknowledge that they did something wrong, that they did something bad, but there is no point in quibbling and as a lawyer, a former lawyer myself who has done a handful of trials, and especially a lot of depositions, you know how to get the person on the next question and question after that. there is no point in quibbling.

did i lie to congress? i sure did. i also pled guilty to it, and spent time as part of my sentence for it. why am i going to quibble about that? there is no reason to do that. it is not easy. that i can tell you. that is the problem also. everybody wants to sort of be the prognosticator. where they put the hat on and they are able to look into a crystal ball and say michael cohen is -- danya said, no, don't do that. just be yourself. connect to people. anybody in the courtroom when i would speak to the jury, they would sit up and they would engage, because they knew that the story i was telling them,

the narrative i was telling them was truthful and how did they know that? they knew it because they heard it from a handful of witnesses before. the documents prove what i was saying. like the story with my daughter about wanting to go work at the white house. there were 10 days of back-and- forth conversation with my daughter. that's not what i want. i know what i want. it is a hybrid. i will explain to you because she was in college at the time in her senior year. i will explain to you, but it is going to be really good. good for us as a family. things like that destroyed todd blanche's ideas on how to come at me and how to impugn my credibility and it failed. i don't think if you asked todd whether this is the way he really wanted to run this

defense, i would assure you he would say no. it was never his call. it was donald's call and now that he lost i am sure we will not see much of him anymore. >> you think trump blew blanche's case? >> yes. >> michael, good to see you. you have talked a lot on my show and all of the shows about donald trump's complaints about a two-tiered system of justice. you are the only person who served time in jail for these sets of offenses, but you were also returned to jail by the then justice department under donald trump, because of writing your book. so you have seen the politicization of the justice system firsthand. what you make of the people now calling this a politicized system, politicized use of the justice system given that you literally face an attempt to

imprison you because of your book? >> right, we all know that donald is the great deflector and one of the things he does is he even took, for example the heading of my book, revenge. how donald trump weaponized the united states department of justice against his critics. he is using the cover of my book as a way to deflect and say it is the biden administration. the biden administration is weaponized against me because i am leading in all of the polls and the whole nine yards that he does. that is donald trump. he is deflecting because he knows what he did. look, geoffrey berman is part of rachel's statement. he acknowledged that the department of justice, maine justice reached out to the southern district of new york to whitewash donald's name from any of the allegations. they wanted to go back in time

and undo the sentence that i had already pled guilty to in order to whitewash donald's name out of it. that is the most dangerous thing anyone could ever do. let me tell you something, this is very dangerous for what is coming down the road if god forbid donald ends up coming back to the white house. he will weaponize it against every single person at this table. he does not care. he is vindictive and he will tell you. he has written about it in his book. if you punch me i will hit you 10 times holder. if he has the power and again it is his own words. he wants to rewrite the constitution. he wants to go ahead and strip the legislative branch and judiciary of their coequal powers and what happens to the rest of us? as he likes to say, you will

end up in gitmo. lock everybody up because they are a critic of him. >> i want to ask a sort of detailed question that i have been thinking about the whole time. we talked about the documents. the smoking gun document. the one that has allen weisselberg's handwriting, your handwriting where you break it down. where did that, did you know that document existed? when did you become reacquainted with its existence? tell me about that document? >> so i was asked by allen weisselberg to bring that document to him in order so we could present it to trump for repayment. >> it was a bank statement showing the money transfer? >> correct. on the new account i had opened and then the transfer. then there was some outstanding funds that was owed to read finch and we all know that

story. but alan came up with the concept of grossing up the $130 and then donald had cut my bonus that year by two thirds. this made absolutely no sense as well. he is now headed to the presidency. i've been involved going back to 2011. i had laid out money on his behalf. and he cuts my bonus by two thirds. i never understood why and for me it was more of an emotional thing. i was incredibly angry at this sort of behavior towards me. it made no sense at all. so, after i had come back from the new year's, christmas vacation, asked me to bring in the document. we wrote it down on there. did i know that document still existed? no. i became reacquainted when i

was asked to meet with the district attorney. >> so they have it and you meet with them and you don't know that document exists. >> i remembered it. >> but it is not like you saved it somewhere. they come to you and are like, look what we have. can you take us through this? >> in fact, the second document, i think it is number 36. 35, 36. the one that says trump on the top of it. i never saw that document. i didn't even know that document existed. >> body authenticated that. >> correct. >> in terms of grossing it up for taxes, the way the prosecution explained that was this was another way that you know this was faking a reimbursement to make it look like income. essentially a form of tax fraud. you said allen weisselberg came with that as a reason to do it. why was he thinking along those lines? >> i don't know, but one of the things we have to understand is

in the office we used to call mr. trump and allen weisselberg frick and phrack. they did everything together. there was nothing that was a surprise. it was like bad acting. acting 101 where alan would come in and say we are going to pay michael. that's a great idea. as if he didn't already know what was going on. the concept of grossing it up, which i did and i paid my taxes on 50%, city, state, and federal tax. that is how they wanted me to do it, so i said okay. >> lawrence o'donnell is standing by and wants to ask you a question. let me throw it to you. >> michael, thank you. >> lawrence are you going to go through my entire life history, too? because i am a new yorker as well. >> exactly. michael, i have to say on that

point, after your first day of testimony one of the things i said on that show was that the michael cohen i saw in the courtroom that day, every new yorker knows that guy. there is a guy like that to lives in all of our buildings. we all know that guy. i want to emphasize this for the audience. i have a question about what people think was the most dramatic part of the cross- examination and i guess danya perry deserves credit on this for the no quibbling strategy and you took to heart that there was no point in quibbling, because you were so constantly humble and respectful and friendly to todd blanche. tonight's audience might not get that feeling, but so many of your answers. five answers in a row were yes sir. it is yes sir, no sir, all the way through. there was a humility in your presentation of that that i believe was registering with the jury. i certainly believe that now since the jury obviously found

you credible and i do want to confirm what you said about what felt like your connection to the jury when you were turning and speaking directly to them. i was taking that and taking their attention to you and the mystery as we all know is okay, are they believing him? i think this verdict says that they were. michael, i want to take you to what everyone considered, including me at that moment, the most dramatic moment in your cross-examination. now i didn't think it was as big as other people thought, because cross-examination is never the end of the story. i was waiting to see what would happen on redirect and it changed a lot. you know what i am talking about. it is the todd blanche moment on the phone call that you identified as happening at 8:02 and todd blanche insisted to you based on text messages that were part of the record before that that when you got keith

schiller on the phone and asked to speak to donald trump about the stormy daniels payoff, that in fact you were calling him about harassing phone calls and phone treatment you were suffering at the time and surely you spent that whole time talking to keith schiller about the harassing phone calls and/or testimony changed. you talked about it to keith schiller and then to donald trump and there were legal analysts on other networks who were saying that was it, that was the knockout punch. michael cohen is destroyed. i'm not talking about fox. your credibility was supposed to be destroyed in one question and answer and i am wondering for those of us out here, what was it like sitting in the witness stand, in the witness box when you saw how that was landing? did it feel like it was landing like a knockout punch or something that you had to try to repair? >> not even close. when the question about the

1:30, i recall and i stayed emphatic that i spoke to donald trump. i know what the same way you know certain things that happened in your life, like the day her child was born or the day you got hit by a car, right? you know those days. it is embedded into your head. i knew based upon the facts, that i had spoken to donald trump and i wasn't going to come off of it. what todd blanche did was say that is impossible, because here there was a 14-year-old calling the office, calling my cell number, my office line. he was wreaking havoc until he ultimately made a mistake and had his cell number or home number on it, but i never changed my testimony. i stayed true to what i said which was that i spoke to donald trump that night. we were fortunate because we

had the weekend in which to look and we found five minutes earlier donald trump had gotten off the stage and it makes perfect sense that i could have and i did speak to him. so i stayed my ground. i don't know why these pundits decide, oh, it is good for television. that is about it. just because they say it does not make it so. it doesn't make it into a reality. the funny thing is that the opinion is not predicated on any fact. it is just their opinion and that is a shame on the media for even allowing it to happen, because it is not the reality. the reality is, everything that i had set on that stand in 21 hours of being there was corroborated by documents. it was corroborated by other testimony. i don't think todd blanche landed a single blow, which is very difficult. >> michael, i am sure. i was going to say i am sure

that all of those pundits who say it was a knockout punch and your credibility was destroyed will all be apologizing to you. >> i'm sure. just like they are still apologizing. danya wanted to say something. >> i just wanted to add on that because i do think that exchange was met with derision and exactly as you said, lawrence, that was a knockout punch. i think more than anything it proved that michael was telling the truth. there were so many ways that the jury knew michael was telling the truth. in that moment, chris, you talked about documents that were used in prep. that had not been. he had not seen those text messages, which by the way were text messages he provided voluntarily to the d.a.s office. he was not hiding anything. even before he was redirected or anything, he said no, those things can both be true.

they can happen at the same time. it was not something he rehearsed or was discussed. it was organic and natural and true. it is easy when you're telling the truth cannot be knocked off your balance, but i think that moment more than anything corroborated the story. >> do you think todd blanche was graded on a curve? i don't know if it was sort of a subconscious feeling, but to be fair. he landed this one point. do you think todd blanche is graded on a curve by the press? >> i have known him for 20 years. he was my paralegal and my first criminal trial at the u.s. attorney's office. he was great. >> the lawyer world was small. >> we were all there at the same time. he is a good lawyer. he is smart, careful, thoughtful. so i was surprised at the way

he conducted his cross- examination and i think that is what happened. i think everyone was scratching their heads, saying where is he going with this? it is all over the place. the timeline is off. the blows are not landing, as everyone says. then there was this moment where they acted like it was an ambush. it was a surprise in the sense that he had not seen those text messages in eight years, but it was not more than that. i don't want to say that he rebounded, because i don't think he faltered. >> michael, let me ask you. this is about this trial and your experience with donald trump. we have seen him have some big falls in life. we have seen him declare bankruptcy a whole bunch of times. we have seen him involved in humiliating scandals of various kinds, but when it came to actually being knocked flat, it has been twice.

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