meanwhile, police have reopened the investigation into barbara jean's murder. tom lowenstein has investigated the little girl's case longer than anyone. it's a journey he's grateful he took. when walt got out on june 5th, you know, there is that sense of like my dad saying, that notion of being useful and doing something useful in life. and i definitely that day felt useful. that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm andrea canning. thank you for watching. after 22 witnesses and 16

days of testimony donald trump has become the first ever american president to be convicted of a crime. this trial will go down in history, but without cameras in the courtroom americans never got to see the evidence for themselves. they didn't get to see trump's eye closed and his mouth go slack while he sat slumped at the defense table. they didn't get to hear stormy daniels' salacious testimony first-hand. they didn't get to watch the judge clear the courtroom seemingly in anger as he butted heads with one particularly truculent witness. instead americans had to rely on words from the few reporters actually in the room, making notes, writing down, committing to memory the things we saw and experienced, things that a transcript cannot capture. take a look. >> that was something to behold. i could hear gasps all around

me. >> i wasn't sure we would get to a place where we had any guilty verdict against donald trump let alone all 34 counts. >> just in terms of the vibe in the room, what you've heard about it being kind of a dingy courtroom is real. >> i was in the courtroom. his eyes have been closed most of the morning. i can't say what's happening behind those lids. >> one simple word, guilty repeated over and over and over, something we've never seen before. >> tonight we welcome you to this special msnbc event, prosecuting donald trump, witness to history. over this next hour andrew weissmann and i will lead you through what you missed inside that courtroom. not the line byline detail of witness testimony but with the help of our msnbc and nbc colleagues we'll tell you what

it was really like to sit just behind donald trump as the details of the case spilled out. we'll tell you what it felt like in the room when witnesses took the stand just a few feet away from the former president. the unscripted, unpredictable moments when the former president seemed to be nodding off or muttering curse words, what people said to each other in the line for the bathroom after that riveting controversial testimony from stormy daniels. from andrew weissmann and from some of our best legal minds we'll hear what they saw inside the courtroom that the nonlawyers like the rest of us might have missed. let's start things off with our first impressions from inside the manhattan criminal courthouse. >> it's a surreal moment to go into that courtroom for the first time and see a former president of the united states who is simultaneously the world's greatest clown -- those two things at the same time -- as a criminal defendant just

spins things in your head that nothing else can. and the weirdness of that alone is your first hour in the courtroom, and in that first hour in the courtroom it's hard to take in anything other than the weirdness of donald trump. >> anticipating going into the courtroom i was actually excited to do it. first of all, because i feel like as somebody who's written a trump book and has been covering this man, you know, from the beginning of his presidential campaign on, this kind of felt like a crescendo moment for him and for the country, and it is the only trial that he's going to face, so it definitely felt like a big moment and something that i really did want to witness for myself. >> having worked in the mueller investigation and, you know, we could not charge the sitting president, then, donald trump, that was a department of justice

rule now in a full-fledged criminal case was kind of remarkable. >> i thought there'd be a lot of people there, a lot of protrump people in particular, and there really weren't. and then found my nbc fam found the stand ups, found the camera producers and got in line and stood in line for a really long time. i will say the thing that i learned it's not what you are wearing that makes a difference it's what you are wearing on your feet because where you're going to get cold is through the soles of your dress shoes. you idiot, why didn't you wear sneakers? >> it's not they whisk you in. you line up outside across the street on center street because they anticipate a number of people showing up. you have three different lines. it's almost like flying on an airline where they put you in

groups to board. >> the judge and jury, et cetera, are in the overflow. >> that overflow room holds other members of the media. it also holds member of the public, and that overflow room has a very large monitor at the front of it that shows directly counsel's table. so you have the prosecution on one side, the defense on the other, but you very clearly see donald trump. >> it was like a spa compared to the courtroom. you can go to the restroom whenever you want to. and there's this absence of tension in the overflow room that i didn't know i was feeling in the courtroom until i wasn't in the courtroom, and it's almost like, you know, you're standing in this very difficult wind all day, and then the wind stops. it's that kind of very different senidation in what seems to be the same place. >> the day before senator tommy tuberville of alabama had gone to the trial and said it was the

most depressing building he'd ever been in and keep scorn on it, and i take that man's statements with a grain of salt, but it was perfectly nice. it was a good, highly functioning municipal building. it kind of struck me how much a certain class of americans are used to very elite spaces, and they're not used to public spaces, municipal spaces, bureaucratic spaces. particularly if you're poor, you have to spend a lot of time in those kinds of spaces. elite people, people with power and money, they tend to be in grandeur. >> donald trump in that setting both when he's walking past you, he walks in and out and you see him for the first time. this isn't the first time i've seen him in person. he was less than expected. >> the first time i was in the courtroom, donald trump was very surprised to see me because it had been mostly reporters, you know, very few anchor types

showing up there. and donald trump has hated me longer than anyone who was going to walk into that courtroom. he was once very fond of stormy daniels and, you know, very fond of michael cohen. but in 2011 when donald trump started talking about president obama's birth certificate i said he was lying about it and i called him a liar. and donald trump had never been called a liar before in his life even though he lived a life of lying. when he was leaving that day, he just did the stupidest thing he could possibly do, he looked right at me in this grand way that everyone in the courtroom could see, and he was trying to do a face that would be tough guy and scary and threatening and full of hate, but he's a terrible actor. and so it came out as just an insanely twisted face that meant nothing but madness, and i loved

it. >> if there were cameras in the court, people all over america in all 50 states would be calling in sick to work in order to stay home and watch this thing. i mean, it is so fricking compelling in person, and the drama of this particular criminal case against trump is both lurid and cogent and full of amazing characters and has just enough surprise to make every witness kind of a cliff-hanger. i mean, it's -- you can't -- like i don't know if trump is falling asleep or if he's just resting his eyes, but it's not boring. it's riveting. >> riveting is the perfect word to describe what it was like inside donald trump's trump. every trial is dramatic. that's why we all get addicted to tv shows like "law and

order", and "the wire." but this was real life. and it's one thing to hear the news about it, but tonight we're going to continue to learn from people who were inside the courtroom day in and day out waking up at the crack of dawn to wait in line to get one of the few seats available to the public and the press at 100 center street here in manhattan. so tonight i'm joined by a very special legal panel who also spent many hours in the manhattan criminal courthouse. please welcome nbc senior legal correspondent and at or near laura jarrett, msnbc host and legal contributor and like me a criminal trial attorney, katie phang, an msnbc legal correspondent and a former big law litigator, lisa rubin. they are here with us for the whole hour along with msnbc hosts giving us their impressions from inside the courthouse. lisa, obviously some of these witnesses got a ton of attention. they may not have been the most important witnesses, but stormy daniels, michael cohen, and

maybe -- maybe the most surprising witness, which is the defendant's last witness if anybody heard bob costello, spoiler alert, i thought that was a huge bomb. big picture, what was your impression of how they did people might not get from reading accounts and hearing from us about what was technically said? what was the sort of demeanor and tone that people might get? >> i think the most important part about the witness that you can't get from reading the transcripts and sometimes watching our coverage is the entrance and the exits because all the witnesses were brought in through a side door in the courtroom instead of the traditional back door where you walk along the entirety of the gallery, walk along the well and to the witness stand. each witness had to walk by the first row of surrogates on their way to the courtroom, flanked by security officers. and those who had counsel, their counsel then followed thereafter. in some cases trump really

wanted to have an interaction with them. in other cases the body language was hostile as hostile could be. michael cohen looked like he wanted to vault over the courtroom little doors so he could avoid even being approximate to donald trump. so i thought that entrance and exit was really fascinating to watch. >> katie, i have a question for you as somebody who's spent so many years as a criminal prosecutor. lots of people talked about how there should have been cameras in the courtroom or at least audio, and let's leave that aside for a moment. how do you think if there had been cameras that might have affected witnesses, the lawyers on either side, or even the defendant, donald trump, if this had been televised? >> i think it would have increased the tensity of the experience for everyone involved especially the witnesses. i mean you have to ask yourself whether or not donald trump himself would have maybe reacted even more visibly than he did. maybe he wouldn't have acted or

looked like he was asleep if he knew there was a camera trained on him. when it comes to the witnesses themselves, it's important because they knew just like we've seen in other trials they would have been on the witness stand, i think it would have amplified performances we saw from some of the witnesses. i think you're hyperaware and the jurors would have been aware. i know they know what's important what's at stake. it's a small space. this is not a huge federal courtroom. it is a small state courtroom, and so people are within very close proximity to lisa's point, within feet of each other and that is the jury. if you know also it's not just the people in the courtroom that are watching or the overflow room, it's america and the world, i think that amplifies the intensity. >> excellent point. i was really surprised how close the witness stand was to the jury box. really close, and actually the witness stand from donald trump was much, much further, so that was something i think you don't

get from not being there. we have much more of our super smart legal panel who were inside the courtroom coming up, but first it was some of the most shocking testimony of the trial when stormy daniels took the stand all while apparently unbeknownst to us wearing a bulletproof vest. after the break our team takes us not only inside the courtroom but inside the elevators, and wait for it bathroom lines where reporters tried to process what they had just heard. you're watching "prosecuting donald trump, witness to history." >> many of the journalists in the room were kind of looking at each other thinking, my gosh i cannot believe this is happening, i cannot believe what's being said on a public stage, and by the way how am i going to communicate this on television? the way how am i going to communicate this on television and a futures ladder that lets you place, flatten, or reverse orders so you won't miss an opportunity. e*trade from morgan stanley

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welcome back to "prosecuting donald trump witness to history." it's our special report on in-person in the courtroom reporting of the first ever criminal trial of a u.s. president. so after years of covering stormy daniels and her claims

that donald trump paid her to keep quiet about a sexual encounter so it wouldn't come out before the 2016 election, what was it like to finally see her in person when she finally took the stand to testify against him? and after her dramatic, combative, sometimes shocking testimony, what was the conversation like among the reporters and the spectators at the courthouse? and what about that bulletproof vest her lawyer says she wore to court? here are some more first-hand accounts from my colleagues who were inside the courtroom. >> when she came in, all of us kind of took a deep breath. no one expected -- i mean we don't know who the witnesses are until that day for a reason. right, the prosecution always protects their witnesses. through sources we might figure out who the witness is maybe an hour beforehand. and that morning donald trump had posted on truth social that

they had just been informed who the witness was, and they hadn't prepared and didn't think that person should be able to take the stand. from the minute he posted that and, by the way, delete td an hour later, we said it's going to be stormy. >> i have compared this trial to watching two movies that are made eight years apart, and none of the central characters look the way you remember them in 2016. and that's as true for michael cohen, for example, as it is for stormy daniels. on day one she came in with a jumpsuit with her hair haphazardly piled on top of her head with the glasses and not looking at all like the adult film star we remembered. i have since come to learn she was wearing a bulletproof vest. she was wearing an outfit that accommodated her wearing a bulletproof vest because she felt her life was at risk coming to testifying against former

president trump. the reaction of people in maga world reinforced why she felt she was in danger. >> there were no trump reactions the stormy daniels thing that you can see, but there's donald trump known to millions of people as the orange turd who has to sit there for the first time in his life and listen to him being called the orange turd and the person who is doing that is his defense lawyer thinking this somehow harms stormy daniels, that she flippantly refers to donald trump as the orange turd. there's not a juror there who cares that stormy daniels refers to him as the orange turd, not one. they're not offended by it. these are new yorkers. these are people who have heard worse, you know, in every trip in the subway. >> so we leave the courtroom. we walk out. there's a row of bathrooms

during breaks. we're all like online looking at each other and giving eyes at other especially if we know each other like oh, my gosh did that happen. did she just accuse the former president of this? everyone's kind of mulling over and digesting what it is we all just heard. >> the jurors i think have been admirably sort of stonefaced. i know i've seen reports -- i didn't see it with my own eyes, but i've seen reports of some jurors involuntarily reacting to some of the more salacious details that came up particularly during stormy daniels testimony. i didn't see anything like that. for me the jury was like stonehenge, like head, head, head. like they were very restrained. >> this is a case about falsifying business records, and the defense team made it a case that sounded like a 1970s rape case. they went at her really hard about the fact she's been in the

porn industry for years. how could it be you were possibly this damsome in distress in the hotel room? and in that moment i looked right at the jurors faces to see if i could read anything and get any glimpse of what they were thinking. they're inscrutable. they're maintaining a poker face the whole time. this is the same courtroom that harvey weinstein was tried in. this is a storied courthouse. this is storied prosecution team. they have done sex crimes before, and it was just such a moment to have the woman at the center of this case basically told she couldn't have possibly been uncomfortable because she had been informed. >> you know, she was treated so differently than other witnesses. hope hicks and david pecker, the person who headed the national enquirer, were devastating witnesses. their substantive testimony is so damning for donald trump, and their cross-examination was kid

gloves. >> nobody's testimony is in some respects more devastating to the former president than hope hicks because of her proximity. no one questioned her credibility. but if you take a step back and you separate these women and forget about the accident of their respective births, hope hicks, for example, coming from wealthy connecticut, being raised as a ralph lauren model the epitome of wealth and grace in the courthouse contrasted by stormy dan whoolz had by contrast a very rough childhood, a mother who abandons her. all this comes out in direct examination. but the difference in how they were trusted i think was palpable in sort of a toxic brew of class and misogyny. there was absolutely a judgment on her credibility based on what she did for a living, and you have to think to yourself, wait a second, hope hicks may look the way she did but she not only worked for trump once, she worked for trump twice. she left the white house in

march of 2018, came back to work for the former president and stayed after he lost the election despite the fact that she was privately advising him that he had lost and the things his lawyers and allies were saying about his not losing the election and his winning were fraudulent. she still stayed. and so i got to ask the question who lacks credibility now? >> so fascinating to hear those stories. and as that piece mentioned the legal brains in the room were hyperfocused on the defense's strategy to go hard after stormy daniels on cross-examination but not hope hicks or david pecker. our panel, which a front row seat to it all is back. katie phang, lisa rubin, and laura jarrett. so, katie, from your spot in the courtroom what do you think of stormy daniels? how did she do from actually seeing her live as opposed to reading it cold? >> she did a spectacular job. stormy daniels testimony did not come across as rehearsed.

whether you liked her or not because of the sincerity it didn't seem she rehearsed or practiced her testimony. preparing with lawyers is totally different, but she prepared for that, and she did a great job, and i think shoe knew even though i call it a detour -- not a sideshow but a detour. the case took a detour to explore what happens between her and donald trump, because you had to create the foundation why that payment was made by michael cohen and how it got to the level of the business records being falsified, but you needed to have that dialogue, and what's really important is everyone likes to say this is paper case but it is about humanity in some way, people's courage, involvement with others, extra marital affairs, hush money payments. all of that is a human thing, and thee brought that humanity i think to the case. >> yeah, i had the same reaction. i thought in many ways she did better on cross because you got a better sense of her as a person, and she was responding sort of naturally to questions she didn't know was coming up,

and you really got a sense of her, and also i thought how smart she was. >> witty, quick. exactly. >> the sort of assumptions as you said were ones i sort of found myself checking myself saying why am i so surprised? i shouldn't have been. laura, so one of the more unusual aspects of this case was how it ended with bob costello being called by the defense. >> and i did not see that coming. >> lisa always thought they would call him. i thought they wouldn't do it. >> i'm with you, and one of it reasons i'm with you is because bob costello, if you remember, was somebody who donald trump said before this case was indicted that he wanted the grand jurors hear from him. i thought, okay, that's a really stupid move because it's never going to stop the grand jury from indicting him. you just revealed something to the prosecution. and as a defense lawyer one of the things you have, sometimes almost the only thing you have

is surprise. here it's sort of fluffed out to the prosecution a year ago. so i honestly what i hear gives some flavor to costello. >> i don't know it explains the clearing of the courtroom and how dramatic it was to be in the room when the judge was so fired up. i thought he was going to throw him behind bars. so bob costello gets on the stand and right away he is combative, he is aggressive, he is rolling his eyes, he's muttering audibly. >> could you hear it? >> i am in the courtroom lighting up the chat like, guys, this is going off the rails fast. we had a sense it was going south. i didn't know it was going to go as south as it did. >> when you're there you're also communicating to your colleagues? >> yes. we sort of have a bizarre pony express situation now where we're allow today some electronics but not all in the courtroom. so we can't use our phones because there's a concern

someone is going to mess up and tape it even though we've been admonished not to, but we can use our laptop. in the chat we're sending color in the courtroom about tone and how things are going. i'm often just focused on the jury because i'm interested what they're picking up on. right away the jury is look at each other some stuff is going to go down here. it was a sleepy morning and bob costello gets on the stand in the afternoon and we're off to the races. and so because he was so i think contemptuous of the judge and the process and did not like being interrupted. this is a former federal prosecutor who really felt like he should be respected, and he thought susan hoffinger, the prosecutor was challenging him in a way he didn't like. and most of those objections were sustained. and so in the room the tension is boiling, okay? and finally the judge sends the jury out. and i go oh, gosh here we go.

but then robert costello is giving it back to the judge, and the judge got so upset he clears the courtroom from the press, which is highly unusual, okay? usually if there's a security situation that's one thing. the judge was fired up and he was worried about what he might say and clears the courtroom for only a few minutes. we all come back in and he's still rolling his eyes for the remainder of the afternoon. >> there's a period when everyone's out of the courtroom other than you have obviously the defense table, prosecution table. but then the public and the press are out of the room. >> not all the public. >> that's what i was going to say. it's really interesting because the first two rows is friends of i think it's like bride and groom, they're still there. but this is where all of us have to go with a cold record. >> and it's chaotic. the media is screaming we have a

right to be here. the court officers are not having none of it, everybody is ushered out. thankfully the judge did make a record about what happened, so in a couple hours we all saw the transcript, we know what happened. but at the moment we all were sent out which we obviously wish had not happened. >> stay put for more of our excellent discussion. but first, you could feel the tension in the courtroom when trump's one-time fixer, michael cohen, took the stand and came face-to-face with his ex-boss for the first time in years. he was like a long line of underlings flipping on their boss. so after the break our team gives their first-hand accounts of what that moment was like. >> the first moment when trump's lawyer, todd blanche, gets up and asks cohen did you cry me a little crying [ bleep ] whatever it was, the judge instructs him

to approach as the d.a. raises an objection. everyone was talking about that. s an objection everyone was talking about that.

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once the testimony from stormy daniels was over, we didn't have to wait long before the next very dramatic testimony, michael cohen, trump's former fixer and loyal attack dog, now a star witness for the prosecution, and his testimony placed the former president at the center of this alleged criminal scheme. so what was it like in person? what was it like when michael cohen saw his old boss for the first time in years? and what was it like to witness the showdown between cohen and trump's defense lawyers during what turned out to be just a brutal cross-examination? let's go back inside the courtroom with our msnbc and nbc colleagues. >> the jury has been waiting for this moment as long as we have. it's highly anticipated. they've come face-to-face before

in the civil fraud trial, but this is criminal. this is different, and he is the only one who can tie donald trump directly to this crime. he is the linchpin of the prosecutor's case, and he's given up the glitz. he's put him from trump tower to the oval office in a way that nobody else can. >> there's a few moments that really stood out. the first moment when trump's lawyer, todd blanche, gets up and asks cohen did you call me a little [ bleep ], and the judge immediately instructs him to approach as the d.a.'s office raises an objection. everyone was talking about that was a strange way for blanche to open the proceedings. >> that's michael cohen at the time when he was working for donald trump and doing these things for him, it always, always captivates and captures the interest of the jury when they hear from the fixer, when they hear from the henchmen,

when they hear from the guys that did the dirty work for the kingpin. >> i did not notice any interaction between the former president and michael cohen, but i did notice how closely michael cohen is making eye contact with the jury especially when he's describing some of the more emotional parts of the story when he's describing his sort of come to jesus moment about why he decided he was going to choose his family over donald trump. >> i think cohen was successful in maintaining control over his own demeanor. he did not get agitated. he did not act out. there were times where he got short or a little snippy, but mostly maintained the kind of equilibrium throughout that i think was probably helpful to the jury. >> i think he did do a pretty good job of humanizing himself. look, there are many people on the jury that will never know a person whose loyalty to an accused criminal defendant was as extensive as michael cohen's was by his own admission, and of

course michael cohen was a person who pled guilty on two different occasions to a panoply of federal crimes, what one jury called a smorgasbord of crime. do i think he humanized himself? yes. do i think he's relatable, not quite. but he doesn't have to be the person they want to have a beer with. >> this was one of the most stunning days in court when michael cohen finally took the stand. as the piece mentioned that jury seemed to be waiting for that moment for as long as as the journalists in the room had been. but being there in person there were some really noticeable differences between the michael cohen we've gotten to know on cable news shows or maybe his podcast versus who we saw testifying, his demeanor, how he sounded. i have to say i almost did a double take when the defense played a clip of cohen from his podcast, when you heard his voice from the podcast and you could just -- you compare that to what you had heard from the

stand over the last day. and that contrast is something that can play very well for the defense in summation to argue there are really two michael cohens. katie, lisa, and laura are back with us. so, laura, i wanted to ask you about that issue, of how you thought his sort of very polite, unflappable, even keeled demeanor -- >> solemn. >> yeah, which in many ways is what you want a witness to be -- how you thought that played given they did see this other piece -- they actually heard his voice. and he also was describing the way he behaved in bullying people and acting as -- a phrase that i hate but i'm going to use -- as sort of trump's pitbull? >> he has known this moment has been coming for a long time. for anyone getting up there it's rattling and he kept his cool even when things got thrown his way he wasn't prepared for and made him surprised and made him

look like a liar. >> he was crossed at some point with information about his wife and child. i thought, of, what's going to happen. i was waiting for fireworks. >> but they didn't come. he kept it calm, and i think that he came off as on the stand sort of out of hand honest. there were certain times i felt like he was resisting in terms of, well, that wasn't really a lie. i thought -- >> own it. >> just own it. they heard you on the podcast talking about revenge is a dish best served cold. let's just lay it all out there, and they won't punish you for it. if the jury thinks you're being authentic. you have to come off as authentic. i was surprised there were times you could feel that resistance. >> katie, i wanted to talk to you about juan merchan, the judge overseeing this. full disclosure, i now have a

man crush on him. i just think he's just a spectacular judge. the first thing i went to court the very first time i was struck by his voice, and we've all been in court. we've seen judges and we've seen judges who can't control their courtroom. we've seen judges who control a courtroom by raising their voice and through this histrionics. and if felt like he wasn't going to tolerate and he expected everyone to behave. and i thought that was remarkable. that's my view, not to influence you. how do you think he did? this is the first ever trial of a current or former president, enormous pressure, enormous claims of violations of the gag order that he found ten times

and a lot of legal issues to deal with. how do you think he did managing this case? >> we've been in courts and in trials. and to laura's point she made earlier the jury looks to the judge sometimes as a paternal figure or maternal figure or somebody going to be there to kind of guide us through this process, which can be confusing. it can be maze-like for some people. the thing about donald trump is he has introduced us to different judges. we've seen the confirmation hearings of the brett kavanaughs of the world and his demeanor during a confirmation hearing. we've seen justice arthur engoron for the new york attorney general. we've seen judge lewis kaplan from federal court for e. jean carroll's trial. we've seen different judges, and the thing i think so poor in terms of america not being able to know judge merchan is not

being able to see and hear him because he is measured and he is calm. even in the face of all this scrutiny and even in the face of all these complex legal issues. why? because this man, judge juan merchan, came to the united states. he emigrated at the age of 6 from clubu. he's one of six children. he was washing dishes. he went to school, graduated -- he's the first member of his family to go to college. he lived in queens. he worked at the manhattan d.a.'s office and the new york state attorney generals and has been a judge since 2006. if there anyone who isn't a fellow new yorker, i beg you find somebody else who's not more new york than judge juan merchan. he is what a lot of new yorkers are, and i think that's a really interesting theme when you think about donald trump having a jury of his peers in this trial. but having a man like judge juan merchan who's overseeing just the personalities, right, and having to be able to manage that, he's done a fantastic job. and i think it's just not good we haven't been able to see that

in terms of on video and on audio. >> i love your response because donald trump has attacked this judge. it's not the first time he's attacked judges because of as donald trump says he's unfair because of where he comes from. that's a quote. we all know what that means. and your answer tells us exactly where this judge came from. and there will be controversy on this trial on one side or the other, and every trial one side is disappointed or not as to what happened. and the fact that we were all there inside the court, i think we can all agree i mean this is such a fair trial and such a fair process because of the judge, there are really good lawyers on both sides. whatever is happening it's not because the process isn't working, and it's really i think important, and i think the judge is primarily responsible for that in terms of how he's handle this. so, all right, we're not the only ones consumed by this

trial. our viewers also have a lot of questions. we'll answer a few of them. you're watching "prosecuting donald trump, witness to history." e fu ou need to take flight. cirkul is the energy that gets you to the next level. cirkul is what you hope for when life tosses lemons your way. cirkul, available at walmart and drinkcirkul.com.

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welcome back to "prosecuting donald trump: witness to history," our special report on in-person, in the courtroom reporting of the first ever criminal trial of an american president. over the last 50 minutes or so, we've given you an inside look at the trial through the eyes of our msnbc team. we know you have lots of questions about what you saw over the last several weeks. here's andrew weissmann and our legal panel. >> thanks, rachel. back with us now, laura jarrett, katie phang, lisa rubin. let's get to viewer questions. myrna from new jersey asks, in the new york city courthouse, why were special accommodations made for trump and his allies? i know you've been focused on

his allies. for example, trump was allowed an area to rant and rave against the judicial system and others and lie blatantly. and his son and allies were allowed to keep their phones while in court. why was that? >> i'll give you what i think is the only reasonable argument for it and then stipulate that it has been abused and wildly so. i think the legitimate reason is for his own security. these are arrangements that were made between the court, the nypd, and the secret service. for example, trump enters through a separate entrance to the courthouse. there is a street blocked off for his motorcade to approach that entrance. they use separate elevators. he has his own holding rooms. when he appears for the press conferences, he comes through a set of blackened glass doors beyond the holding rooms. however, there are things that have been abused. the first of which is the reserved seats. those are supposed to be for extra members of his defense team. that's the way the d.a.'s office

used their side of the -- the bride's side, as you put it earlier. >> right. >> but in trump's case, he is using it for sort of a rotating surrogate operation. those surrogates not only have their phones but they are tweeting from the courtroom. we can prove they're tweeting from the courtroom given the tweets, the truth social posts, they're doing it to circumvnt a gag order, which one admitted last week. they have been used for the president's security, yet they've been rampantly abused by him and his friends. >> including the group of people from congress, the men at least wearing identical uniforms which were mini mes of the former president. i should note, all former presidents are given secret service. donald trump is not being treated differently on that. last question, michele from the

netherlands asks, is the decision of the jury final? welcome to being with a panel of lawyers. this is the kind of question where -- this is why lawyers don't have a great name. it depends. here's, like, a one key answer. if there is a conviction, that is something that can be appealed on the law. if there were legal mistakes that were made, if the jury was instructed improperly on the law, if evidence was kept out that was material improperly, those kinds of things can be appealed. it can take quite some time. there is recourse there. really complicated. let me just say, thank you so much to our incredible team. it is really great to be here nerding out with lawyers and all of us having been in the courtroom. thanks so much for your perception and insight and personal stories. and thank all of you for spending the last hour with us. if you can't get enough trump

news and you want to dig even deeper, try the msnbc podcast "prosecuting donald trump" holded by mary mccord and me. have a great night. introducing new advil targeted relief. the only topical pain reliever with 4 powerful pain-fighting ingredients that start working on contact to target tough pain at the source. for up to 8 hours of powerful relief. new advil targeted relief.

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