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 trumps eyes close and his mouth go slack as he sat slumped at the defense table. they didn't get to hear stormy daniels salacious testimony, firsthand. i didn't get to watch the judge clear the courtroom, seemingly in anger, as he butted heads with one particularly truculent witness. instead, americans have to rely on word from the few reporters who were 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 are going to get to a place where we had any guilty verdict against donald trump, let alone all 34 counts. >> donald trump was crying from the oval office. he was writing checks from the white house. >> this is a professional jury as you can get. and you can never read anything from them. >> in terms the vibe from the room, you heard about it being kind of a courtroom, it's real. >> i was in the courtroom, his eyes have been close most of the morning. i can't say what is happening behind those lids. >> one simple work, guilty, repeated over and over and over. something we have never seen before. , tonight we welcome you to the special msn ec event, prosecuting donald trump a witness to history. over this next hour, andrew weissman and i will lead you through what you missed inside the courtroom. not the line by line details of witness testimony, but with the

help of our msnbc colleagues, will tell you what it was really like to sit just behind donald trump as the details of the case spilled over. we will 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, uttering curse words. what people said to each other in the line for the bathroom after that riveting controversial testimony from stormy daniels. from andrew weissman and best legal minds, we will hear from what they saw inside the court, that the nonlawyers, like the rest of us, might have missed. start things off with our first impressions from inside manhattan courthouse. >> it is a surreal moment going for the first time. and see a former president of the united states, who is

simultaneously the world's greatest con artist. those two things at the same time as a criminal defendant, just spends things in a way that nothing else can. and the weirdness of that alone is your first in the courtroom. in that first hour, it is hard to take in anything other than the weirdness of donald trump. >> anticipating going into the courtroom, i was actually excited to do it. but first of all, because i feel like a somebody who has written a trump book and has been covering this man from the beginning of his presidential campaign on, this kind of felt like a crescenta moment for him , and for the country. it is the only trial that he is 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 another investigation, and we could not charge the sitting president

and donald trump, that was a department of justice rule. now, in a full-fledged criminal case, it was kind of remarkable. >> i thought there would be a lot of people there. a lot of pro trump people, in particular. and they really weren't. and then found my nbc pham, around the spot where we do stand up, found all the producers and camera operators and everything and stood in line for a really long time. i will say, the thing that i learned was it is not what you are wearing that makes a difference. it is what you are wearing on your feet, because where you are going to get caught is through the soles of your dress shoes, you idiot, why didn't you wear sneakers? >> people understand, it is not you just walk up to the courthouse and they whisk you in and it was this easy breezy kind of thing. you line up outside, across the street from center street

because they anticipate a number of people showing up. so you have three different lines, it is, flake flying on an airline was actually kind of put you in a different group of people to board. >> two courtroom that look identical, the only difference being the judge and the jury, et cetera, are in the overflow. >> the overflow room hold other members of the media and also withhold members of the public. the overflow room has a very large monitor at the front of it that shows directly councils table. so you have the prosecution on one side, the defense on the other. what you very clearly see donald trump. >> it was like a spa compared to the courtroom. you can go to the restroom whatever you want to. you can, and there is 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 is almost like, you know, you're standing in this very difficult window all day. and then the wind stops. it is that kind of very different sensation 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 had ever been in, and he scorned on it. and i take that man's statement 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 are not used to public spaces. in a simple spaces, bureaucratic spaces, you have to spend a lot of time in those kinds of spaces. elite people, people of power and money, they tend to be in grandeur. >> donald trump in that setting, both when he is walking past you, he walks in and out and you kind of seen for the first time. this was the first time i have 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 i had been mostly

reporters, 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. in 2011, when donald trump started about the presidential birth certificate, i said he was lying about it and i called him on the lie and donald trump had never been called a liar before in his life when he was leaving that day, he just did the stupidest thing you 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 is 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 on and watch this thing. i mean, it is so freaking 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 cliffhanger. it's, you can't. i don't know if trump is falling asleep or if he is just resting his eyes, but it is not boring. it is riveting. >> riveting is the perfect word to describe what it was like inside donald trump's trial. every trial is dramatic, it is

why we all get addicted to tv shows like law and order and the wire. this is real life, and it was no exception. but it is one thing to hear the news about it, or if you are a nerd like me, to read the cold transcript. 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 correspondence and attorney, laura jarrett, in legal contributor, and former terminal trial attorney, katie fang, and msnbc legal correspondent, law litigator, lisa rubin. they are here with us for the whole hour, along with msnbc hosts giving us their impression 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. maybe the most surprising witness, which was the defendants last witness, the last anyone heard from bob castillo's. the big picture, what was your impression of how they did that people might not get from just 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 transcript, or sometimes even watching our coverage is the entrance and the exit. because all the witnesses were brought in through a side door to the courtroom, instead of the traditional back door where you walk along the entirety of the gallery, he watched through the center aisle and walked to the witness stand. here, each and every witness, no matter hostile to donald trump or friendly, had to walk by his first row of surrogates on their way into the courtroom. went by corporal security

officers and those of them who had counsel, their counsel then load thereafter. in some cases, trump really wanted to have an interaction with the as with rona graff, his former executive assistant and other cases, the body language was as hostile as hostile could be. michael cohen looks like you wanted to vault over the courtroom doors so that he could avoid being even proximate to donald trump. that that entrance and exit was really fascinating to watch. >> katie, i had a question to you is somebody who spent so many years as a criminal prosecutor. lots of people have talked about how there should have been cameras in the courtroom, 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've increased the intensity of the experience for everyone involved, especially the witnesses. you kind of ask yourself on and

off, donald trump himself would have maybe reacted to more visibly than he did. maybe she wouldn't have acted or looked like he was asleep if you knew that there was a camera trained on him. but when it comes to the witnesses themselves, it is important because if they knew, just like we have seen in other trials, that they would be on the witness stand. i think it would've amplified maybe even performances that we saw from some of the witnesses. i think you are more hyperaware. i also think the jurors would have been aware, even if you never saw their identities, i know that they know it is important, what is at stake. but when you're in a courtroom, it is a small space. people need to understand this is not some huge cavernous federal courtroom. it is a small state courtroom and so people are within very close proximity, within feet of each other. and that is the jury. so if you know also, does not just people in the court that are watching or the overflow room, is america and the world, i think that amplifies the intensity. >> i was really surprised by how close the witness stand was to the jury box. really close. and actually the witness stand for donald trump

was much, much further. so that was something i think you don't get from being there. much more for supersmart legal panel who were inside the courtroom, coming up. first, it is one of the most shocking testimonies of the truck, 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 try to process what they had just heard. you're watching prosecuting donald trump, witness to history. >> many of the journalists in the room are looking at each other think, my gosh, i can't believe that this is happening. i cannot believe this is actually being set on a public state. either way, how am i going to communicate this on television?

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welcome back to prosecuting donald trump, witness to history. it is 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 quite about a sexual encounter so it wouldn't, 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 of the courthouse? and, what about that bullet proof vest her lawyer says she wore to court. here are some more firsthand accounts from my colleagues from inside the room. when she came in, all of us kind of took a deep breath. no one expected we don't know who the witnesses are until that day. for a reason. right? the prosecution always protects their witnesses. resources we might figure out who witnesses maybe an hour beforehand.

that morning, donald trump had posted on truth social that they had just informed of who the witness was and they had prepared and that person shouldn't be able to take the stand. and so the minute he had posted that, and then, by the way deleted it an hour later, we said, it is 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. that is true of michael cohen, for example, as it is stormy daniels. on day one, she came in in a jumpsuit with her hair sort of haphazardly piled up on top of her head, wearing glasses, and not looking at all like the adult film star that we remembered. i have since come to learn, because her lawyer said this on another media outlet, she was wearing a bulletproof vest. and that accounted, i think, for her appearance, as well. she was wearing an outfit that accommodated her wearing a bulletproof vest because she

felt that her life was at risk in coming to court and testify against former president trump and the reaction of people in margo world, who are loyal to president trump, i could just tell you this by looking at my twitter feed, reinforced why she felt she was in danger. >> we know trump reactions to stormy daniels thing, you can see. but there's donald trump, known to millions of people as the orange turned that has to sit there for the first time in his life and listen to himself being called the orange, his defense lawyer thinking that 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 hurt worse in every trip on the subway.

>> so we leave the courtroom, we walk out, there is like a row of bathrooms during breaks. everybody kind of lines up in the bathroom like you would in any kind of public place. we are all online looking at each other, giving eyes to each other. oh my gosh, that really what happened? getting onto the elevator, going down for lunch, did she just accuse the former president of this? did she just say this happened with the former president everybody'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 have seen reports, i didn't see it with my own eyes, but i've seen reports of some jurors kind of involuntarily reacting to some of the more salacious details i came out, particularly during stormy daniels paths tory., the jury was like stonehenge. like they were very restrained. >> this is a case about falsifying business records and the defense team made it sound

like a 1970s rape case. they went after her about really hard about the fact that she has been in the porn industry for years. you have been in more than 200 porn films, how could you be a damsel in distress in the hotel room? in that moment, look at right at the jurors faces to try to see if i could read anything and get any glimpse of what they were thinking. they were inscrutable. they are 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 a storied prosecution team. they have done sex crimes before. this was such a momentto have the woman at the center of this case basically told she couldn't have possibly been a comfortable because she had been. >> she was treated so differently than other witnesses. hope hicks and david pecker, the person at the head of the national enquirer, were devastating witnesses. they are sensitive testimony is so damning for donald trump and

their cross-examination was kid gloves. >> nobody's testimony is in some respects, more devastating than hope hicks, because of her proximity. nobody questioned her credibility but if you take a step back and you separate these women and you forget about the accident of their respective births, hope hicks, for example, coming from very wealthy, greenwich, connecticut. sort of the academy of poise and grace in the trump white house, contrasted with stormy daniels, who had, by contrast, very rough childhood, a mother who abandoned her. all this comes out on her direct examination. but the difference in how they were trusted, i think, is really palpable. sort of a toxic brew of class and misogyny. there was absolutely a judgment about her credibility based on what she did for a living. and then you have to think to yourself, well, wait a second. hope hicks may look the way that 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 in the things that his lawyers and allies were saying about his not losing the election and his winning were fraudulent. she still stayed. i have to question, who lacks credibility now? >> so fascinating to hear their stories. the legal brains in the room or hyper focused on the defenses strategy to go hard after stormy daniels on cross- examination. but not hope hicks or david pecker. our panel had a front row seat to it all is back. so, katie, from your spot in the courtroom, what do you think of stormy daniels? how did she do from actually seeing her life, as opposed to just reading it cold?

>> she did a spectacular job. stormy daniels's testimony did not come across as rehearsed. whether you liked it or not, because of the sincerity. didn't seem like she rehearsed or practiced her testimony. given, she had prepared and that is the big difference. preparing with lawyers is totally different. but she prepared for that and she did a great job and i think she knew that even though, i call it a detour, not a sideshow but 80 torr of the case took a detour to export what happened between her and donald trump because he had to create the foundation of why the payment was made by michael cohen. how it got to the level of the business records being falsified. but you needed to have that dialogue. and what is really important, everybody likes to say that this is a paper case but is about humanity in some way, right? people's courage, people's involvement with others. extramarital affairs, hush money payments, all that is a very human thing and she brought that humanity to the case. >> 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 that she didn't know what was coming up and she really got a sense of her and also i thought how smart. exactly. you know, the sort of assumption, as you said, are ones that are sort of, i sort of found myself checking myself saying why am i so surprised? i should not have been. so laura, so one of the more unusual aspects of this case was how it ended with bob castillo being called by the defense. >> i did not see that coming. lisa always thought they would call him. i thought they wouldn't do it. >> i am with you. one of the reasons i'm with you is that bob castillo, if you remember, was somebody who donald trump said before this case was indicted, that he wanted the grand jurors to hear from you that well, okay, that is a really stupid move because it is never going to stop the grand jury from indicting, 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 surprised. and so here they sort of, it was flopped out to the prosecution a year ago. so obviously, the call record here does give some flavor to castillo. >> i don't know if he explains the clearing of the courtroom and how dramatic it was to be in the room with the judge who was so fired up. i thought he was going to throw him behind bars. so bob castillo gets on the stand and right away, he is combative, he is aggressive. he is rolling his eyes, he is muttering audibly. >> could you hear it? >> i am in the courtroom, lighting up the chat like, guys, this is going off the rails fast, okay? we had a sense it was going south but i didn't know it was going to go as south as it did. >> in the overflow, by the way. >> you are also communicating to your colleagues? >> we sort of have a bizarre pony express situation now. allow do some electronics not also we can use our phones in

the physical courtroom because i think there's a concern that somebody is going to mess up and tape it, even though we had been admonished not to but we can use our laptops. and so we can send messages by email, by slack, by dm but we can't use our phones. so in the chat, we are all sitting color from the courtroom about what we are observing, that tone, about how things are going. i often just focus on the jury is i'm very interested in what they're picking up on. right away, the jury is looking at each other like something is about to go down here. so it had been a sleepy morning. everybody was sort of feeling monday, all of its glory. and then bob castillo get on the stand in the afternoon and we are off to the races. so because he was so, i think, contemptuous of the judge and the process and did not like being interrupted this is a federal prosecutor who really felt like he should be respected and he thought susan hoffinger, the prosecutor, was telling him in a way that he didn't like and he didn't like interrupted when she was objecting. most of those objections were sustained. so in the room, the tension is

boiling, okay? and finally, the judge sends the jury out. i go oh god, 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, there's a security situation, that is one thing. this was not that. the judge was fired up and i think he was worried about what he might say and so he clears the courtroom for only a few minutes, we should make that clear. it wasn't long. we all come back in and he is still kind of rolling his eyes for the remainder of the afternoon. >> there is a period, the period where everyone gets out of the courtroom other than, you have honestly the defense team, on the prosecution table. but then the public and the press are out of the room. >> not all of them. >> that is what i was going to say. so it is really interesting because i think as we mentioned, the first two rows, which were sort of friends of, like bride and groom. they are still there. but this is what, all of us

have to go through, the cold record. >> it is chaotic. the media is screaming we have a right to be here. our media lawyers trying to object. the court officers are having none of it. everybody is ushered in. thank you, the judge to make a record of what happened. so in a couple of hours we also the transcript, we know what happened. in the moment, we all were sent out but obviously should not have happened. >> this legal panel the state put four 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 sammy groove on a and he just skillet and can weigh, a long line of under links flipping on their bosses. after the break, our team gives us their first-hand account of what that moment was like. >> the first moment when trump's lawyer, todd blanche, gets up and asked cohen, did you call me a little crying [

bleep ] or whatever it was, and the judge immediately instructs them to approach as the d.a.s office raises an objection. everyone was talking about that. (bell ringing) someone needs to customize and save hundreds with liberty mutual! (inaudible sounds) (elevator doors opening) wait, there's an elevator? only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, ♪ ♪ liberty. ♪ known as a passionate artist. known for loving the outdoors. known for getting everyone together. no one wants to be known for cancer,

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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, trumps 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 trumps 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 is highly anticipated. they have 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

has given up the goods. he has 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 wins trumps lawyer, todd blanche gets up and asks cohen, did you call me a little crying [ bleep ]? the judge immediately instructs him to approach, as the d.a.s office raises an objection. everyone was talking about that. everybody was talking about how strange way for blanche to open up the proceedings. >> when you prosecute cases whenever but he has her hands dirty. that was michael cohen of 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 henchman, 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 i can't with the jury, especially when

he is describing some of the most emotional parts of the story. when he is describing his come to jesus moment when why he decided he is 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 little snippy but mostly maintained the kind of equilibrium throughout that i think was probably helpful with 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. of course, michael cohen is a person who pled guilty on two different occasions to a panoply of federal crimes.

one of the federal judges called it a smorgasbord of crime. i think you humanized himself? yes. i think it is necessarily relatable? not quite. but he doesn't have to be a person that they want to have a beer with. >> these are some the most stunning days in court when michael cohen finally took the stand. as the piece mentioned, the jury seemed to have been waiting for that moment as long as the journalist in the room had. but being there, in person, there's some really noticeable differences between the michael cohen we have gotten to know on cable news shows or maybe his podcast versus who we saw testifying. his demeanor, how he sounded i will have to say, i posted a double take when the defense played a clip of cohen from his podcast, when you heard his voice from the podcast, and compare that to what you had heard from the stand over the last day. in that contrast is something that can play very well for the defense in summation to argue there are really two michael cohen's katie, lisa, and laura are back with us.

i wanted to ask about that issue of how you thought his very polite, unflappable, even killed demeanor. >> solemn. >> which, in many ways, is what you want a witness to be. i thought that played given that 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 trumps pitbull. >> he has done that the moment is coming for a long time, for anybody getting up there, it is rattling and he kept his cool, even when things got thrown his way that he was not prepared for and that were a surprise and made him look like a liar. >> even he was crossed at some point about his information about his wife and his child. that i thought oh, okay, what is going to happen, i was waiting for fireworks. >> but they didn't come, he kept a calm, and i think that he came off as, on the stand,

sort of hat in hand on his. there were times where i felt like he was sort of resisting in terms of like, well, that doesn't play alive. i thought just tell them, of course, just own it. you have already come this far. they heard two on the podcast talking about revenge is a dish best served cold. let's lay it all out there and they won't punish you for it. the jury think you're being authentic. even if what you said is horrendous, right? jurors are like drug dealers and they think they are being honest, they have to come off as authentic. so i'm surprised there were times where there was like, you could feel that resistance. >> katie, 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 is just a spectacular judge. the first thing when i went to court, the very first time, i was struck by his voice and we have all

been in court, we have seen judges and seen judges who can't control a courtroom. we have seen judges who control a courtroom by raising their voice and through histrionics and hear, he controlled the courtroom by being the adults in the room and had such a calm judicial temperament. and i just felt like he wasn't going to tolerate and he expected everyone to behave properly. it was just, i thought, sort of remarkable. that is sort of my view. don't let me influence you. how do you think he did? this is the first ever trial of a current or former president, enormous pressures, enormous claims of violations of the gag order that he found 10 times and a lot of novel legal issues to deal with, how did you think he did managing this case? >> we have been inside courtrooms, in front of judges,

very high-stakes cases, the one thing that we know is the person who is gatekeeping everything is the judge, right? and to laura's point that she made earlier, the jury looks to the judge, sometimes as a paternal figure or a maternal figure or somebody who is going to be there to kind of guide us through this process, which can be confusing it can be mazelike for some people. the thing about donald trump is he has introduced us to different judges, right? we have seen the brett kavanaugh's of the world, and his demeanor during a confirmation hearing. we have also seen justice arthur engoron through the civil fraud trial. we have seen judge kaplan from federal court for e. jean carroll's trials. we have seen different judges. the thing that i think is so, 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 the scrutiny and all these complex legal issues. why? because this man came to the

united states, he immigrated at the age of six from columbia. he is one of six children. he was washing dishes. he went to school. you know, he graduated at the first member of his family to go to college. he lived in queens. he worked at the new york d.a.s office, and the new york state attorney general's office and has been a judge since 2006. if there is anyone who isn't, i beg you, find somebody else that is not more new york than judge juan merchan. a lot of new york are, when you think about donald trump having a jury of his peers in this trial, but having a man like judge or sean who is overseeing just the personalities, right? and having to be able to manage that. he has done a fantastic job and i think it is just not good that we haven't been able to see that in terms of on video. >> i love your response, because donald trump has attacked this judge, is not the first time he has attacked judges because, as donald trump says, he is unfair because of

where he comes from, to quote. we all know what that means. and your answer tells us exactly where this judge came from and there will be controversy from this trial, one side or the other, in 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. this is such a fair trial, and such a fair process because of the judge, there are really good lawyers on both sides. whatever was happening, it is not because the process isn't working. again, it is really important, and i think the judge is primarily responsible for that. 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.

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welcome back to prosecuting donald trump a witness to history. a 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 have given you an inside look at the trial through the eyes of our msnbc team . but we know that you have lots of questions about what you saw over the last several weeks here is andrew wiseman and our legal panel. >> jakes, rachel. let's get right to your questions so meritor from new jersey asks, the gap city courthouse, why were special accommodations made for trump and his allies? i know you have been very fixed on the last part of his allies. for example, he was allowed to rent and against the judicial system in others and lie blatantly, and his son and allies were allowed to keep

their phones while in court. so, why was that? >> i will 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 are 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 that is blocked off for his motorcade to approach that entrance. these separate elevators, he's got his own holding rooms. when he appears for the press conferences, he comes through a set of darkened glass doors beyond which are those holding rooms however, there are some things that are going on here that definitely have been abused. the first of which is the reserved seats those are supposed to be for extra members of his defense team, and that is the way that the d.a.s office has used their side of the drive side, as you said earlier. in trump's case, he is using it for sort of rotating surrogate operation. and those surrogates

not only have their phones, but they are tweeting from the courtroom. we can prove that they are tweeting from the courtroom, timestamps on their tweets or truth social post, and there often doing it to circumvent the gag order, which one of them admitted on another media outlet last week. there are some special arrangements here, that should have been made for former president security and yet they have been rampantly abused by him and his friend. >> including the group of people from congress wearing sort of identical uniforms, sort of mini me's of the former president. i should note, all former presidents are given secret service. donald trump has not been treated differently. >> from the netherlands, she asks, is the decision of the jury final? well, welcome to gain a panel of lawyers. this is the kind of question where, his lawyers don't have a great name, which is it depends. but here is like a one key

answer if there is a conviction , that is something that can be appealed on the law. if there are legal mistakes that were made. the jury was instructed improperly on the law, is evidence was kept out that was material, improperly. those kinds of things can be appealed and it can take quite some time. so there is recourse there. so it's really complicated. let me just say, thank you so much to our incredible team. it is really great to be here, nerdy 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 take even deeper, try the msnbc podcast, hosted by mary mccord and me. have a