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continued special coverage of today's unanimous guilty on all counts verdict in the new york criminal trial of former president donald trump. i am rachel maddow joined by nicole wallace and joy reid and katie phang and chris hayes. also lawrence o'donnell is with us. we're 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 to this verdict tonight. michael cohen will be joining us here in just one moment. he'll be with us live here on set. the jury sent a note to judge juan merchan, it said, quote, we, the jury, have reached a verdict. 45 minutes later at 5:05 p.m. the jury was back in the courtroom and seated. defendant donald trump was there and seated as well. judge merchan then addressed the foreperson of the jury. it went like this. the judge, mr. foreperson, 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 rise. have the members of the jury agreed on a verdict? juror number one, 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 three? >> juror number one, guilty. the clerk, how say you to count four? juror number one, guilty. and so on and so on. the clerk proceeded to ask the foreperson the same question, guilty or not guilty 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 ever convicted of a felony and then seconds later the first president ever convicted of two felonies. then every few seconds for a few minutes thereafter he kept ebreaking his own brand new old record for the most crimes an american president had ever been convicted of. here's the signed verdict sheet filled in by the jury. 34 handwritten check marks fall the guilty column, signed at the bottom by the prosecutor and by the defense attorney and by the foreperson, though 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 their time and commitment over these past several weeks. the 12 everyday jurors vowed to make a decision based on the evidence and the law, and the evidence and the law alone. their 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 then supervised the prosecution of this case. here's look at how news outlets across the country are covering this historic news this evening. this is all front pages here. 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 on all counts in hush money case. here's the tampa bay times, guilty, trump becomes first former u.s. president convicted of felony crimes. here's the l.a. times. trump found guilty on all charges. here's politico.com. trump guilty, all capital letters. here's the boston globe, same, trump guilty, all capital letters. here's donald trump's hometown paper, the queens daily eagle. queens man convicted. and here's the cover of the next issue of the new yorker magazine. the title of this is a man of conviction. key detail here, little hands. big handcuffs. nicole, 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 this few hours that we've had now since receiving this information as we've seen the republican party and trump and his supporters react unanimously by proclaiming this to be an illegitimate verdict and an illegitimate court, i wonder if you have a sense of what this night's going to mean for us. >> for me the trump story has always been about asymmetry. and i think as we came to set when we learned that a verdict was in, our coverage would have been tonally the same if he'd been acquitted, right? >> mm-hmm. >> it would have been respect and reverence for judge juan merchan that we've all been articulating over the last several hours. it would have been respect and reverence for the juror who is said, yeah, pick me, i'll do it. and i think if there was criticism it might have been, you know, that the process didn't yield a result that seemed plain to our eye, right, that they had the paper, they had the email, they seemed to have smoking gun evidence. but the republican, trump's

enabler, would have celebrated an acquittal, and they're only condemning a conviction because they don't like the result so. i think what is important is for us not to look away from what is broken. and what is broken is that one of the two parties does not respect the rule of law. not because they didn't like what they saw. not because they saw something different in judge juan merchan they we saw, but because they don't like the result. and that is a flashing red light for our country. >> chris? >> yeah, i mean, i keep thinking about the immunity case before the supreme court. >> yeah. >> mm-hmm. >> still pending. >> still pending. i mean, one of the things that really, really got to me during those oral arguments, which i felt was really shameful in some circumstances, was multiple conservative justices basically saying, oh, come on, you can indict a ham sandwich. isn't the rule of law just going to be used as this tool. and here you had, i thought, just a process that was run with incredible integrity. and basically i think that the kind of liberal democratic order that we're trying to hold on to

here rises or falls on our ability to agree to fair and neutral processes that we're all subject to. >> that's democracy. it's a process-based system. you're guaranteed a fair process. >> that's right. and that's true in courts and elections. and what we are seeing in the republican party is basically rejecting that notion, that if you lose an election, the election's no longer legitimate. if you're convicted at trial, the system is no longer legitimate, it's rigged. and this is a deeply held part of donald trump's personal view of the world. i mean, he said it about the emmys, right? it goes all the way back. it's not -- >> right. >> and it's authentically held, i think, in his own strange way, but it is now metastasized to take over the party. and in some ways when that is the party ethos, you're removing yourself from the collaboration we're engaged in in a liberal democratic enterprise. >> thinking about that, both of those points, our own coverage

here on msnbc and all the people that we've talked to the, legal expert, the observer, the pundits, i don't think -- i mean, you can go through with a fine toothed 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 who were in the courtroom, talking to -- you know, getting reports over the course of the day, i don't think there was a moment where we were like, something went wrong there. there's something hinky in this trial, or like, wow, that's going to get appealed and that'll blow ethis thing up. there was never a moment like that. and that was true with us not knowing what the result was going to be. >> exactly. >> and to have a nonresults-driven, honest broker, fair take on what's going on means that you believe in the system. and you're policing the system to make sure that it's fair, but you're willing to accept it when it is regardless of what the outcome is. that's what it means to be a citizen. >> i don't want to overstate the case, right? there are times when public

officials are convicted of crimes and people rush to their defense. i saw this with the mayor of providence in providence, rhode island. i've seen it in chicago politic, and sometimes other elected politicses will do it. it's the you than -- you show up to support them, that happens in american politics, it is the down the line, complete party line you than anymorety that has been exproeszed and imposed today about this that from the moment this is announced this is an illegitimate process that i find generally unnerving and distinguishing from normal politics around criminal prosecution. >> oh, i'm sorry. >> you go first. >> i wanted to say, what we heard alvin bragg say, what we've said here on at this table and on shows on this network is, we are reporting, we are doing what we are doing without fear

or favor. >> mm-hmm. >> that's what alvin bragg said. and i think what's interesting is that has been the -- you've seen a redefinition of courage, which i think is interesting. we've had to redefine what courage means. it used to have a different definition, but now the things we used to take for granted in terms of people believing in the rule of law, we've had to redefine what that means. alvin bragg took a case with a team of prosecutors that worked. and i have an empathy for the lawyers, having been a trial lawyer, the amount of work this took, it's an incredible amount of time and energy. but it was the without fear or favor approach that they took. >> yeah. >> they did not let themselves be skewed by the following analysis. even if you have all of the elements of a crime, even if you have probable cause, even if you can be able to meet all of those elements, sometimes you stop yourself as a prosecutor and consider what the jury nullification could be on this. do you have enough to get a jury to care. and i sat here at this table

when we talked about the opening statements and i said for so long people poo pooed the value of this case. the first indictment of four, the first go to trial, but what they did during that prosecution's opening is they made you care. they made the jury care about this case when maybe the jury didn't care. and i think that was the critical moment. >> on the issue of fear or favor, the fear factor for the people who are involved in this -- >> huge, huge. >> -- process at every level, the jurors, obviously, juror's family members, the judge, the judge's family member, the prosecutors, their family member, and the witnesses. we're going to be speaking in just a moment with michael cohen, who was the prosecution's star witness, and the -- i mean, michael cohen's saga is shake s shakesperean. by some account, the way michael cohen tells it, basically worshipped far long time while we worked for him for more than a decade. the confrontation with trump

itself, but the confrontation with trump's supporters and what trump has been willing to bring to bear on his perceived enemies in the world is something that a witness like michael cohen is now contending with and has been contending with and is now presumably an order of magnitude different now that this unanimous, all counts guilty verdict has been pronounced by the jury. we'll be speaking with koensz in just a moment. before we speak with mr. cohen, i do want to talk to our friend lawrence o'donnell. lawrence, in your opinion the courtroom for most of the trial, including for mr. cohen's testimony. i just want to, before we speak with michael cohen here live, is there a key moment from the witness testimony, from the way this court proceeding proceeded that led it inexbly toward this verdict today, or did you think to the very end that it could go either way? >> i did think it could go either way. we now know and can say definitively that todd blanche

was defending a guilty client. defending a guilty client is really hard. it is a very hard thing to do, and it's a very hard thing when you're defending a guilty client to get 12 jurors to unanimously agree that -- 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. and you always wonder what that phrase means to every jury, and every jury, it's very common for a jury to want to hear that instruction on reasonable doubt read to them again. but this jury was clearly unified and they had to have been unified most of the way. there couldn't have been a lot of hard work to get through in that jury room, given that you basically got this verdict in about nine hours over 34 counts. they were being very respectful, i think, of the size of that indictment. i actually think, rachel, as this day's 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 potential defendant and suggested ways that this potential defendant could be prosecuted while some prosecutors in that office were opposing some of the ideas about the way this defendant could be prosecuted. and so, alvin bragg had a decision to make. it was his decision, and his decision alone to make that decision to go forward with this case. and as i was sitting in that courtroom and watching this evidence unfold, i could see why alvin bragg made the decision to do this, why when he looked at all of this 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's 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 assistants up there with him too. he had to assemble the perfect team, and they had to present a perfect case. there were plenty of moments in the trial that we wondered about, did this hurt one side, did this help the other side, 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, rachel, you have to think about it as an airplane engine. and what doubts you might have about an airplane evening een. and an airplane engine has to

work flawlessly. it's a life and death matter. the prosecution's job is to build a flawless airplane engine and the defense's job is just to try to convince you somewhere that engine is leaking a drop of oil. that's all the defence has to do. that's all they have to do. and so it's perfection versus there might be a flaw, there might be a loose bolt. perfection has to win. and that's what alvin bragg saw at the outset was there was a way to do this case, there was a way to try it perfectly. he tried it perfectly, not calling allen weisselberg was the right wall, we now know. he had to know it was the right call before the fact. we all get 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 judge steinglass, you know what, a four and a half hour closing is too much, i need you to cut two hours. he didn't do that. he built his team, he trusted his team, he knew his team was

capable of doing the perfect job that they had to do to get to an all counts guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. and you know, this is the story, and 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 brat, donald trump. and across the isle from him is alvin bragg. alvin bragg grew up on a block in harlem called striver's row. his mother and father met in a small town in virginia in the eighth grade. they went to separate colleges, alvin bragg sr. went to syracuse university, they came to new york, worked lives as professionals as most of the people living on striver's row do, and they all on striver's row had high hopes for their kids. and on striver's row, the kids learned if you work really, really hard in school, if you work really hard, really hard, you will be able to do work that you can be proud of. and so alvin bragg has been

aimed at this point, and you know, for reasons that will never make sense in my memory, i decided today to spend the day at alvin bragg's alma mater for 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 that profile in his last week of college was the anointed one. and the article, it gives you what you think is the most hyper bollic title you can imagine for a college senior then lays out for you who this kid is who's graduating from harvard college and on his way to harvard law school. and you finish that article as i did a year ago thinking, yeah, that's the right title. that's who this guy is. and everybody there, everyone was -- when he was in this week of his life, that final week at

harvard college, that's what people saw here, and that's what people saw -- the people of manhattan who elected him, that's what they saw. they saw somebody who was dedicated to doing this job and doing it flawlessly and so profoundly modestly. in a country in a trump era that desperately needs lessons in modesty, alvin bragg is that lesson. >> lawrence, it's such a good point that in this moment when it is remembered in history, yes, the crimes will be part of the history, the criminals will be part of the history, absolutely, but the people who were brave enough to take this through the criminal justice system against all the threat that they had to face in order to do it and against all 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, you know, who a few generations from now -- i don't know we'll estill have movies,

but they'll have blockbuster holograms made about them. lawrence, thank you. thank you, my friend. i know we'll be back with you in a moment. joining us now here on set for his first interview since tonight's verdict was announced is the prosecution's primary witness from this case, michael cohen. he's joined here tonight by his attorney dan ya perry. we're grateful to you both for being here. >> it's 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 that i met with the district attorney's office -- we talked about it when i was on your show after putting out disloyal -- the very first time i ever met with the district attorney's office was while i was an inmate in otisville. they came up to see me on three separate occasions. so this is a six-year process within which for accountability to finally be had. >> were you surprised by the

verdict? >> no. >> hmm. >> i was not. i've spoken -- i've been on so many of the shows on msnbc, and i've told you all along that the facts speak for themselves, the documents speak for themselves. i've listened to so many pundits come on the various shows, including some of the hosts talking about x, y, and z, they couldn't be further from the truth. and i would have conversation with my lawyer danya on a regular basis, and i would say, i don't understand it. i just don't understand it. how come they don't see the same things that we're seeing? i understand that, you know, 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 and what it's been for you. before tonight there was this criminal scheme that had been described by prosecutor, right, this illegal conspiracy to influnts the election, payments to benefit the campaign, laundered through the trump organization, booked falsely as funds for something else. it's been described by multiple

prosecutor, but before tonight there was exactly one person who had gotten in trouble for this scheme. >> only one. >> only one, it was you. you were not the beneficiary of the scheme, but you were the only person who'd been in trouble for it. i mean, the national enquirer got immunity, but you ended up in prison. >> as did allen weisselberg. >> yeah, trump's attorney general bill barr told sdny to stop the investigation after you were in prison, after you had got ton sharp end of that stick and to get trump's name out of it. it's finally been eight years down the road from these alleged crimes. i just have to ask you -- and i know you just said about how you feel about the verdict, but that's justice delayed. is justice delayed justice denied? >> clearly not in this case. 34 counts, one after the other after the other after the other of guilty. it's accountability. it's exactly what america needs right now. we need for accountability to be had by all those that break the

law. because as we like to continuously state, no one is above the law. and today's verdict is demonstrates that. >> how do you think donald trump is feeling today in the wake of these verdicts? >> i can only go back to when judge pauley sentenced me to 36 months. you don't feel good. sentencing is tshl. i, of course, took the plea, the 48 hours that was given to me where 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 very different. donald didn't let it go in order to protect his family. he took it all the way, and judge juan merchan, who is an absolute gentleman, to see him on that stand is to see poetry. it's to see a masterful judge

who was quick with decision making. he was absolutely judicial perfection. and the jury had tremendous respect for him, as did i, which is what kept me off of all my speed eya. that and danya, of course, tell knowing stay off the 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 eye closing, you know, the leaning back, the total disregard for the jury, i don't think he engendered any positive feelings by anyone. >> did you feel like him -- i mean, some people said he was sleeping, some people said he was resting his eyes, i don't know, there was a lot of different interpretations about what he was doing, your interpretation of it in the room was he was being disrespectful to the jury?

>> yes, but i was also not concentrating so much on him as i was trying to keep track of todd blanche's meandering questioning, you know. that was very difficult you go from 2016 to 2018, 2019, 2020, and trying to keep track of the dates and the events when you have that type of a meandering question, you know, questioner is not an easy process. >> did you -- and danya, i'll put this to you as well -- in preparing for that cross examination from todd blanche, did you prepare emotionally as well as factually? it seemed like from us just watching it, being in the courtroom and from our reporters and looking at the transcript, it seemed like a homework leanne effort to stay calm and even ekeel in what seemed designed and provoke you and confuse you. >> a lot of our prep focused on the facts. there was so much prior testimony and interviews and

statements, so we wanted to be up to speed on that, refreshed. >> that's not an advantage when your client has spoken a lot in public. >> he has. and -- but you know, it was important -- i emphasized this to michael, and he handled himself remarkably well. but i wanted him to understand that his demeanor mattered and that he needed to maintain the same type of affect and composure on direct as on cross as on redirect and on recross. and he did that. and i think i saw a connection between him and the jury. they believed him and i think -- and they were just with him. and so it was, yes, there was a lot of emotion involved, painful for me as his lawyer to watch the attacks on him. the constant, i mean, 85 times he was called a liar in the summation by todd. he's not a liar. nobody's a liar. no one's a truth teller. he has told lie, and he admitted

to it. and the jury believed him, and they returned the swift and just verdict. and so i think all the preparation was put to good use. >> what danya is describing about the strategic necessity of you staying cool and having that same affect and everything, how hard was it? >> not hard at all. it's the media that wants to portray me as this sort of bombastic character. it's really not -- >> we've all heard bombast from you. >> but you've heard it from my mea culpa podcast or political beatdown podcast. it's a persona for it. i can't go with intelligence, so i have to go with bombastic, right? it's not necessarily my affect. yes, i get hot tempered. yes, you've heard that a couple of times, you know, here and there when i was working for mr. trump. but that's not generally my affect.

and it really wasn't hard. i will tell you, though, 51 days of solitary confinement changes anyone and everyone when you start to learn to live in your own head, which is a dangerous place for anyone. it's very easy to then turn around and say i just 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 focussed with his questioning, that was more difficult. the anxiety and dealing with the anxiety on this was difficult as well. >> what kind of anxiety? >> you know, when -- i'm nervous. i was nervous because so much was riding on the result of this. >> yeah. >> and i wanted to ensure that my testimony was perfect. i knew that there could be no

deviation from perfection. and both dany a and i afterwards when the whole thing was over, we sat and we spoke for a little bit about my testimony. and couldn't understand some of the criticisms. oh, a minute and 39 seconds, how could you possibly have two conversations? well, you can. especially when one is not a status call, it's just an update. hey, just want to let you know, everything's taken care of. we're good. that's the conversations that take place with donald trump, not this long winded -- including that tape that i had recorded him, which i had done, as i had told you, for david pecker. that was only like a minute and change. so -- but that was a substantive conversation, so imagine what you could do in a minute and 39. and i thought josh steinglass did a fabulous job by putting that minute 39 seconds out

there. susan 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 number, most of the exhibit numbers. very impressive group of people. >> what did you make of the decision by the defense -- and we're all speculating that a lot of the defense strategy was driven by trump himself. we are speculating about that because we don't know, but it just kind of felt like it. but they made a strategic decision to try to make the verdict a referendum on you. >> yeah. >> including saying, being admonished by the judge for saying it, saying essentially the last word to the jury do not send anyone to prison on the word of michael cohen. what do you -- how was that for you? what do you make of that decision? >> again, i didn't really care, nor do i really care what todd blanche says about me. what i care about is my wife, my

daughter, my son, my parents, my close friends. that's who i care about and what they say about me. danya, i care about what she says about me. i don't care what todd blanche says. it means nothing to me. i don't care what don, ivanka, eric, don jr., 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 had said it, it was a very foolish strategy. and he's not really known as a defense attorney. i think it's only his second defense trial. not a good strategy, and proof positive of that is the 34-count verdict. >> the defense counsel we're talking about todd blanche did an interview on another cable news network this evening. i'll let you guess which one.

and he said in that interview that every decision in the case, every substantive decision in the case is one that he made together with trump. >> makes sense. >> well, i was going to ask you if you see trump's fingerprints on some of the decisions that you're describing here. >> absolutely. the term gloat, it's a donald trump fourth grade, playground, bullying type of tactic. what's that? >> don't you have an acronym for todd? >> i did. i was going to call him a sloat, which is the stupidest lawyer of all time. >> sorry. >> you cannot listen -- you cannot listen to your client when you are trying to create a defense. a defence that is as important as this one 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 just made no sense at all. and any good lawyer -- if he would have tried to get ahold of danya, she never would have listened to his desire for retribution or his desire to control how the case would proceed. that's 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 was mounted, which i found puzzling as an observer. 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 the access hollywood tape was no big deal. that it didn't have a big impact on the campaign. it didn't change anybody's mindset about the relative potential damage that could be

done by another sex scandal, particularly a sex scandal like this. and the reason that was, i think, puzzling to a lot of us is because we were alive then, and it seemed like an access hollywood tape was a very big deal then and it would have rationally had an impact. you were very close to donald trump at the time. you were involved in the response to the access hollywood tape, how does that comport 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 thereafter was my anniversary. so we were there celebrating as a family when this thing happened. i spent most of the vacation outside of the restaurants on the telephone with people like hope hicks and others trying to do damage control. and that was demonstrated, again, by the evidence.

whether it was text messages or, you know, corroborating testimony. that's what i had continuously said when i was on, like, nicole's show or joy's 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've been saying for six years. and all of the evidence, the documentary evidence, emails, text messages, documents themselves, again, corroborated what i'd been saying for six years. >> this case was, i think, not derided but downplayed by a lot of people when it became clear that it was one of four criminal indictments in four different jurisdictions for trump. this was scene seen, i think, as

the lightweight case. >> yep. >> there's been a lot of discussion in the media, do we call this the hush money case, is this an election interference case, how should we shorthand this. do you think that this case was substantively important, especially compared with the classified documents case and the january 6th case and tore ones that are out there pending that may never come to trial, is this one substantively important on its own? >> the answer is yes, it is, but i myself, again, on various different shows have said why are we looking at these cases like this is the kentucky derby that we're handicapping the four cases. if, in fact, this was a handicap, it would be the fourth most obscene case that donald is being charged with. you know, obviously, this case does not hold equal weight to the theft of nuclear secrets, the mar-a-lago document case, or

the insurrection, the january 6th insurrection, it just doesn't. or even the attempt to overturn a free and fair election. 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 that would have been good for me, right, i would have been a year earlier finished with this, it's an important case. it's 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. just like i was held accountable. the only difference, i took responsibility. >> in terms of, ily say, my colleagues here, i'm being very uncool and not letting you guys in here, i've got another question i'm going to ask you, but then i will let you talk to michael as well. a lot of the reason that i think this is being greeted the way

that it is across the country, you know, three-inch headlines in every newspaper across the country, it's not necessarily because everybody is totally engaged with the substance of the falsifying the business record to occlude the commission of another crime which is the actual details of this is not what's driving it. what's driving it is, a, he's the first president convicted of a crime, and b, what's he going to do. the sort of extralegal pressure and potential violence that he brings to bear on every situation where he feels victimized now is very much front of mind for us in terms of the future of our democracy. i'd 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. >> so i know that he's already asked a series of the republicans that showed 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. it's -- he has his own set of constitutional rights that none of us are afforded the same. this is going to be a whole new law class for these law students right now. they're going to have to take a new course, maybe danya will end up teaching it at harvard or something. will he look 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've already seen what happened with the oath keepers, with the stewart rhodes, 18 years. nobody wants to spend 18 -- i spent 13 months at otisville, a satellite camp, but 51 days in

solitary confinement. i assure you, nobody wants that for themselves. so no one's going to go out there, you know, and do something stupid, especially, let's say here in new york, we have the greatest law enforcement in new york. our men and women in blue, the best. but they're also great in all the other cities and all the other states in our country. then we have the national guard. we have the military. no one is going to allow him to create the havoc that he wants everybody to believe that he has the ability to create. >> nicole? >> michael, you were able -- >> hi, nicole, i didn't realize that you were here. >> sorry, i do that. sorry. >> no, it's been fun to watch this conversation. i want to ask you about -- >> for some of us. >> i'm sure everyone is riveted. i'm going to ask you about your pain, because you were able to talk about it in a way that just most humans aren't able to talk about it. and you were able to bring the

jury into your journey of reverence. you describe your time with the trump org as something that had a lot of -- i think you said incredible experiences. you were able to be multidimensional in a way that nobody in the press gives you credit for. it was like a nanosecond when todd blanche wasn't failing and people thought you shot your credibility. i was wondering how, one, you were able to be that vulnerable, and i wonder how you -- i know you've taken a lot of coverage, i wonder how that felt? >> difficult. one of the things during prep sessions with danya and, you know, her office, was don't quibble over an answer. if you did it, own it. and it's very difficult. don't get me wrong. you know, nobody wants to acknowledge that they did

something wrong, that they did something bad. but there's no point in quibbling, and as a lawyer, former lawyer myself who's done a handful of trials, and especially a lot of depositions, you know how to get the person on the next question, the question after that, and so on. so there was no point in quibbling. did i lie to congress? i sure did. i did. i also pled guilty to it and i served time as part of my sentence for it. so why am i going to quibble about that? there's no reason to do that. it's not easy. that i can tell you. and where this whole narrative about everybody -- that's the problem also with so much. everybody wants to sort of be the prognosticator. they want to be like the great car knack where they put the hat on and they're able to look into the crystal ball and say, oh, michael cohen is going to be x,

y, and z, things that danya would turn to me, no, no, don't do that. just be yourself, connect to people, which anybody that was in the courtroom, when i would speak to the jury, they would sit up and they would engage because they knew that the story that i was telling them, the narrative that i was telling them, was truthful. and how do they know that? they knew it because they heard it from a handful of witnesses before. the documents proved what i was saying. like the story with my daughter about wanting to go work in the white house. there's like ten days worth of back and forth conversation with my daughter saying that's not what i want. i know what i want, it's a hybrid. i'll explain to you, because she was in college at the time in her senior year. i said, i'll explain to you, but it's going to be really good. it'll be good for us as a

family. so things like that destroyed todd blanche's ideas on how to come at me and how to try to impugn my credibility. and it failed. and i don't think if you probably ask todd whether this is the way he really wanted to run this defense, i can assure you he would say no. but it's not -- it was never his call, it was donald's call. and now that he lost, i'm sure we're not going to see much of him anymore. >> you think trump blew blanche's case? >> yes. >> michael, hi, good to see you. >> hi, joy. >> you have talked a lot on my show and on all of these shows about donald trump's complaints about a two-tiered system of justice. as we've all said, you are the only person who has actually served time in jail for these sets of offenses. but you were also returned to

jail by the then justice department of -- under donald trump because of writing your book. and so you have seen the politicization of the justice system firsthand. what do you make of the people who are now calling this a politicized system a politicized use of the justice system given that you literally did face a politicized attempt to reimprison you because of your book? >> well, we all know that donald is the great deflector. and one of the things that 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's using the -- the cover of my book as a way for him to deflect, to say, oh, it's the biden administration. the biden administration is now weaponized against me because i'm leading in all the polls and the whole nine yards that he does, right? that's donald trump.

he's deflecting because he knows what he did, and he got bill barr -- look, geoffrey berman is part of rachel's statement. geoffrey berman acknowledged that department of justice, that main justice, reached out to the southern district of new york to whitewash donald's name from any of the allegations that were being -- 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's the most dangerous thing that anyone could ever do, especially as a president to weaponize -- and let me tell you something, this is very dangerous for what's potentially coming down the road if, in fact, god fored by a million times, that donald comes back into the white house. he will weaponize it against every single person at this table. he doesn't care. he's vindictive. he'll tell you, he's written it in his own book, if you punch me, i will hit you ten times

harder. if he has the power, again, his own words, he wants to rewrite the constitution. he wants to go ahead and he wants to strip the legislative branch and the judiciary of their coequal powers under the government, confer all power to the executive branch. what happens to the rest of us? we end up, as he likes to say, you'll end up in gitmo. he's going to put everybody in gitmo, lock everybody up, because they're a critic of him. >> i want to ask a sort of detailed weedsy question, but i've been thinking about it the whole time. you talk about the documents. the smoking gun document. the one that's got allen weisselberg's handwriting, your hand writing, 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 that document -- i was asked by allen weisselberg to bring that document to him in

order so that we could present it to mr. trump for repayment. >> it was a bank statement showing that -- showing the money transfer? >> correct. on the new account that i had opened and then the transfer. then there was some outstanding funds that was owed to red finch. we all know that story there too. but allen came up be the concept of grossing up the $130,000 to $260,000. then donald had cut my bonus that year by two-thirds. this made absolutely no sense as well. he's now heading to the presidency. i had been involved in it going back to 2011. i had laid out money on his behalf for the cnbc poll, all that. and he cuts my bonus by two-thirds. never understood why, and it was really, for me it was more an emotional thing. i was incredibly angry at this

sort of behavior towards me. made no sense at all. so allen 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 with it when i was asked to meet with the district attorney's office. >> so they have it, you meet with them and you don't know that document exists. >> oh, i remembered it. >> you remembered it, but not like you saved it somewhere. >> no. >> they just come to you, and they're like, look what we have. can you take us through this? >> in fact, the second document, i think it's number 36, which is the -- right, 35, 36 -- >> there it is, the one on the right. >> that's jeff mcconney. i never saw that document. i didn't even know that document existed. >> mcconney authenticated it. >> correct. >> in terms of the grossing it up for taxes, the way the

prosecution explained that was that this is another way you know that this was faking a reimbursement to make it look like income that implied that this was essentially a form of tax fraud. you said allen weisselberg came up with that as a reason to do it. why was he thinking along those lines? >> i don't know, but one of the things that we have to understand is that -- in the office we used to call mr. trump and allen weisselberg frick and frack. they did everything together. there was nothing that was a surprise. they would pretent. it was bad acting. it was acting 101 where allen would come in and say, donald, we're going to pay michael in 12. oh, yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. as if he didn't already know what was going on. the concept of grossing it up was in order for me to take it as income, which i did, and i paid my taxes on my 50%, right, city, state, and federal tax. that's what -- that's how they wanted me to do it, so i said,

okay. that's what i did. >> lawrence o'donnell is standing by and wants to ask you a question. lawrence, let me throw it to you. >> michael, thank you. >> lawrence, are you going to go through my entire life history too? because i'm a new yorker as well. >> exactly. well, you know, michael, i have to say, on that point after your first day of testimony, one of the things that i said on the show that night was that the michael cohen that i saw in the courtroom that day every new yorker knows that guy. every new yorker knows a version of that guy. there's a guy like that who lives in all of our buildings. we all know that guy. i want to emphasize this point for the audience. i have a question for you about what people thought was the most dramatic part of your cross examination, but -- and i guess dan ya perry deserves some credit for this on the no quibbling strategy. you took to heart there was no point in quibbling, because you were so constantly humble and respectful and friendly to todd

blanche. i mean, tonight's audience might not get that feeling, but so many of your answers, like five answers in a row are just yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir. it's 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. but -- 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 in, and i was taking in their attention to you. and you know, the mystery a as we all know, is where they believing him, and this verdict says they were. i want to take you to what everyone considered, and 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 to your

advantage on redirect, but you know what i'm talking about. it's that todd blanche moment on the minute 30-second phone call you identified as happening at 8:02 p.m. 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 you 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 that you were suffering at the time, and surely you spent that whole time talking to keith schiller about the harassing phone calls. your testimony then changed in the moment to you talked about it to keith shiller and then you talked about it to donald trump. and there were other analysts saying that was the knockout punch, michael cohen is destroyed. and i'm not talking about fox. your credibility was supposed to

have been destroyed in one question and answer, and i'm just wondering for those of us out here, what was it like sitting in the witness stand, in the witness box there when you saw how that was landing? did it feel like it was landing like a knockout punch or something that you had to somehow try to repair? >> not even close. when the question about the minute and 30 -- i recall -- and i stayed emphatic that i spoke to donald trump, i know it. the same way you know certain things that happened in your life, like the day that your child was born or the day you got hit by a car, right? you know those dates. it's 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. and what todd blanche did is say, well, that's impossible because here there was a 14-year-old that was calling the offer, calling my cell number, my office line.

he was just, you know, reeking 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 had said, which is i spoke to donald trump that night. we were fortunate because, you know, we had the weekend within which to look, and we found that 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, my -- it's good for television. it's -- you know, that's about it. it's not -- just because they say it doesn't make it so. it doesn't make it into a reality. it's just their opinion. but the funny thing is their opinion isn't predicated on any fact. it's just their opinion, right? and that's really -- that's a shame on the media for even allowing it to happen because it's not the reality. the reality is everything that i

had said on that stand in 21 hours of being there was corroborated by documents. it was corroborated by other's testimony. so i don't think todd blanche landed a single blow, which is very difficult in a cross examination. >> can i butt in for one minute -- i'm sorry. >> i'm sure those who said it was a knockout punch and your credibility was destroyed will all be apologizing to you. >> i'm sure. just like they're still apologizing for me being in prague. but danya wanted to say something too. >> i just wanted to add on that, because i do think that exchange was met with so much derision and exactly as you said, lawrence, you know, that was a knockout punch, that was the got ya moment, i think more than anything it proved that michael was telling the truth. there were so many ways that the jury knew that michael was telling the truth, but in that moment, chris, you talked about documents that were used in prep

to refresh michael. that hadn't been. he had not seen those text messages. >> oh. >> which, by the way, were text messages that he had provided voluntarily to the d.a.'s office, so he wasn't hiding anything, but he hadn't been refreshed. but even before he was redirected or anything he said, no, no, those things can both be true. they can happen at the same time. so it wasn't something he rehearsed or was discussed, it was -- it was organic. it was natural, and it was true. so it's easy when you're telling the truth to not be knocked off your balance. but i think that moment more than anything corroborated the story. >> danya, do you think todd blanche was graded on a curve? because there was a real assess ement he flopped the day before. and i don't know if it was sort of subconscious feeling to be fair, right, so he landed this one -- i don't even want to call it a blow, but he made this one point, do you think todd blanche was graded on a curve by the press? >> you know, i've known todd for

20 years. he was my paralegal for my first criminal trial at the u.s. attorney's office. >> was he good? >> he was great. >> this is one big giant family. lawyer world is small. >> we were all there at the same time. he's a good lawyer. and he's just -- he's smart, he's careful, he's thoughtful. so i was surprised at the way that he conducted his cross examination and i do -- i think that's -- i think that is what happened. i think everyone was scratching their heads saying where's he going with this, it's all over the place, the timeline is off. the blows aren't landing, as everybody says, and then there was this moment where, clearly, everyone 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. and he -- i don't even want to say he rebounded, because i don't think he faltered. >> michael, let me just ask you, again, this is about both this trial and about your long

experience with donald trump. we've seen him have some big falls in life. we've seen him declare bankruptcy a whole bunch of times. we've seen him involved in humiliating scandals of various kinds. but when it came to actually really being knocked flat, it's been twice. one is losing the 2020 election, the way he responded to that was by creating an alternate universe in which he did not lose the 2020 election, and the country is still paying the price. >> three times. losing the 2020, the new york attorney general case, and now the 34-count -- >> the new york attorney general case with the massive civil penalty against him. >> yes. >> now this criminal case, you're right to point that out in terms of the devastating nature of that blow in that civil case. hundreds of millions of dollars that he owes. now in this criminal case, in this civil case and the criminal case, he does not have the option to do what he did losing the 2020 election. t he did losin the 2020 election. 2020 election. he doesn't have the option to he say that didn't