Imagine a common ledger for all assets that embeds the rules and assures us high system integrity. It may be hard to implement but we must strive to make it work.
movement towards women's basketball by masses of ladder. we're going to look back at 2024 as a moment and a movement where women's basketball busted through the slam dunks. the best ball being played right now is the other side of the ledger. >> no doubt about that with a lot of good story lines if everybody could kind of highlight them and bring them out to get people behind. there is some exciting competitions that will take place. i'll definitely be watching it as well. thank you to the both of you. and thank you at home for making time for us this weekend. make sure to catch ayman on msnbc every saturday, sunday 7:00 p.m. eastern. make sure to follow us on x and instagram. make sure to tune in tomorrow starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern for opening statements of trump's new york criminal trial on msnbc. until we meet again, i'm ayman mohyeldin in new york. have a good night.
actual funds. i think they're presenting what they expect to be their counternarrative because they have to, and we'll see whether it's effective. >> blanche is now saying president trump had nothing to do with the invoices. he had nothing to do. he was just essentially dealing with a ledger like people deal with their checking account checks, and when you say the president had nothing to do with it, you're in a sense saying he can't be guilty of anything he didn't know about. >> yeah, they're saying where's the intent here? >> there's an interesting thing that one of the prosecutors did in jury voir dire, which essentially he was saying to the jury you understand, right, that, you know, if someone takes a contract out with a hitman to kill their wife, that person's guilty of a crime, right? i mean, that's sort of their way of saying, yeah, donald trump did not have to personally engage in every single act to
>> and vaughn, there was an objection just now, right? >> reporter: yeah, there was an objection after todd blanche spoke the words, paint this as sinister, but this is a crime, you will hear it is not. at that point todd blanche said entering into a nondisclosure agreement is perfectly legal. that is when the objection was made. the objection was overruled, though. we assume here at this point in time gets to the heart of the extent to which the defense team is going to try to make the case that everything that was done was done legally and that hush money payments are not in themself a crime. the judge merchan just overruled that objection. we'll try to get a better understanding of how that scene played out. to the discussion that you were just having, what todd blanche is trying to paint donald trump as an unwitting actor here. somebody who was unaware of exactly how the ledger was being
filled out, exactly what he was writing checks for and that michael cohen was not getting just reimbursed, he was getting paid because he was his long-time personal lawyer. he is trying to make the case that the ledger is much like a checkbook, and it's just a little denotation here, trying to make out donald trump to be a more sympathetic, unwitting actor in all of this, someone who is being unfairly indicted and charged and prosecuted and that the focus of the hush money payments in and of themselves and maybe salacious, but that in itself is not a crime. todd blanche here trying to make donald trump seem to the jury as somebody who is an innocent man who is being unfairly victimized. >> and vaughn, as you were speaking we're hearing that merchan the judge has called a bench meeting interrupting donald trump's lawyer right now after another objection by the prosecution leading up to this bench meeting, we're quoting blanche as saying you will hear he fought back, like he always
hush money payment he paid to stormy daniels, that those were not reimbursements. those were actually just retainers for michael cohen, correct? >> what's at issue in this case is business records is entries and president trump's personal ledger that reflected payments to michael cohen as legal retainer payments. it's worth noting those entries were made by a mid-level trump organization official in trump tower while president trump was in the white house running the country, it's also worth noting that michael cohen was president trump's lawyer. and that therefore we believe these records were both accurate and not made by president trump, and those are two fatal problems with the prosecution's case. so again we believe if the jury is able to dispassionately just view the facts and evidence in this case this is a winning case for us president trump did nothing wrong how much of the defense strategy is based on undermining the credibility of michael cohen, who as we've
reimburse michael cohen as he ended up doing in 2017. for the defense's part, the defense made it clear that they intend to make donald trump much more of a sympathetic figure, larger than life in their words, someone who shouldn't have been charged in the first place because todd blanche said, he did not commit a crime. he is innocent. i want to read you one quote from todd blanche. quote, president trump had nothing to do with the invoice, with the check being generated or with the entry on the ledger. todd blanche saying you're going to hear salacious stories from the likes of stormy daniels, but her story does not matter to the heart of the crimes that donald trump has been charged with. the 12 jurors and the six alternates have a big task ahead of them in the weeks ahead. they're going to be hearing from two sides with two very different takes on what they should be listening to from the evidence and the testimony that is provided to them from both of these sides. >> vaughn hillyard, thank you
conspiracy existed between mr. pecker, cohen, trump, perhaps others and in a conspiracy, not every conspirator has to do each and every act. i think you have four people in the studio with you today counting you. if you all decided to rob a bank, one person could case the bank. another person could drive the get away car. one could buy the ski masks. one would go into the bank with perhaps a gun and take money from the tellers. you've committed a conspiracy to rob a bank but you've all done different things. so whether or not mr. trump actually, you know, made the entries in the ledger is absolutely beside the point from the perspective of conspiracy law. conspiracy also gives the prosecutors another advantage. an ef dench yar advantage because statements made by a conspirator during the
set. so marshall, this is a big day for the country, a big day in history. a lot of it, it was this wall be happening behind closed doors with no cameras in the courtroom. but what can we expect? >> we won't see anything. we won't hear anything will be totally reliant on our colleagues in the room. they can provide real-time updates in writing and sketches. of course, look, it's been a long time coming. here we are. donald trump faces 34 felony counts. these are state charges. he can't pardon himself. >> if he is ultimately convicted. >> and the theory of the case is falsification of business records all about that. hush money payment to stormy daniels how they use the ledger of the trump organization to funnel that money to michael cohen after the fact and the prosecutor say that it was essentially a cover up, cooking the books so a lot of the names, a lot of the people who are involved in this trial are quite familiar to anybody who's been following trump's
summarize the facts as follows. ms daniels has said that in 2006 she and mr. trump had one intimate encounter. a decade later as the 2016 election neared, mr. trump's fixer, michael cohen, paid ms daniels $130,000 to keep quiet a non-disclosure agreement is an illegal. mr. bragg's complaint is about the paperwork mr. cohen was reimbursed through 2017 via a monthly retainer disguised as a payment for legal services. the da said he padded his indictment by separately charging each invoice check and ledger entry to get 34 we're counts falsifying business records in new york can be a misdemeanor, but that statute of limitations had expired. so de a alvin bragg charged trump with felonies which require a showing of intent to commit another crime bragg was only able to do that because covid had caused an extension of the applicable statute of limitations for a year during which time trump was charged