Khasawneh. Com. Im kevin lip ttac at the white house. And this is cnn it is just fast, 9 00 p. M. Here in new york dramatic day 11 of the trump hush money trial. Now in the books, former trump adviser, communications director, onetime close confidant, hope hicks, reunited with the foreign president by a Prosecution Subpoena for testimony establishing his awareness after he became president of how much he politically benefited by paying for Stormy Daniels silence before the 2016 election, whether her tears which followed were related to her answer on that or just came from the accumulated intention of being on the stand the emotion of the moment is impossible. Say whether the de was a significant dramatic end to week three of this historic trial. That is hard to deny. Joining the panel for this. Our cnn senior legal analyst, elie honig. Elie, we havent heard from you what stood out to you today. Well, here we are at roughly what iss to be about the mid point of this trial. Were about halfway through. I think if on the prosecutor and i like to think about things this way, im very be satisfied with certain elements my case, but im also very worried about other elements. Heres what i think they have strong clearly donald trump knew about these hush money payments. I dont think theres any real question. Clearly, he wanted the money to be paid and its quite clear to me and hope hicks, i think solidified this today that it was for a political reason. Yeah, there was a Family Concern too, but there also was a substantial political the reason thats the good news. The problem is theres nothing so far in this record as it stands now, tying donald trump to the accounting behind the fight the financing of those payments. And thats the crime and its starting to look increasingly like the only actual link theyre going to have showing that, yes, donald trump knew the weight structured these reimbursements with all the checks to try to make it look like legal fees. It looks like the only link is going to be Michael Cohen and boy, ive never seen a witness take on more damage before he stepped in the stand than Michael Cohen has taken on every single witness has said hes a horrible person. Hes a liar. I dont think the other piece of evidence is the actual checks that trump signed the checks help, but they dont answer all the questions. I mean, theres so many responses to that. Does he know exactly what hes paying for why is Michael Cohen extracting triple the amount that he paid, paid 130,000. He gets paid back over 400,000. What did Michael Cohen tell them whos going to be able to testify to that. I think the checks are helpful to the prosecution, but they dont get them to the finish line. So let me just explain how a Confidentiality Agreement works in the realworld, not what someones running for president , but lets talk about a very real scenario. My phone rings, its some dude who cheated on his wife. And now the woman says, i want money, or im telling you wife we i say, you go get a lawyer. She gets a lot so theres lawyer the lawyer were talking to each other. Theres a written i have them. Theyre like performs that is a confidence sheds gag order to basically and were gonna give you this amount of money over this amount of time and you cant say anything. And if you do this treble damages, so if we give you 1 million and you squeeze now you go was give us 3 million. The husband doesnt write the check to heart. The husband right. To check to my law firm. My law firm puts it in the Escrow Account and sometimes my legal fee is built in there. So hypothetically, if its 100 grand and my legal fee is 10,000, he writes uncheck to 110,000 and the law visited like Dollar Opportunity in cabins it goes in my Escrow Account 10,000 goes into my operating account, and then i write out the check from the Aidala Petunia and cabins il or account to her lawyer. He puts it in his Escrow Account and then he pays her. Thats all ethical, legal. And theres nothing wrong with it. I think what the prosecution is going to say that was a difference is that donald trump is running for president and they falsified these documents in order to hide the fact that it was hush money. But again, i dont think the proof is there yet that he knew about this level of granular detail. The fact that he signed the check, thats not the crime. The bookkeeping is the crying. I wasnt suggesting that signing the check was the crime, but rather that it indicates that he under stood that this was a repayment for the scheme that he was gonna get 35,000 over the course of a period of time. I mean, i also think that just the idea that trump simply could have done what you suggested. I think we wouldnt really even be dealing with but this but but Michael Cohen took out on his house, paid in advance, waited until after the election to be repaid. I mean, there was an attempt to conceal this arrangement from the public. I think that is pretty clear based on the just the timeline of things that happened. Weve gotten the full testimony out from the transcript new character youve been looking at anything stand out yeah. I mean, i think at the moment, if we look at 20 18, this is after Michael Cohen gives the New York Times a statement and says that he paid the, uh, hundred and 30,000 without donald trump knowing and then hope hicks is testifying about the next day she talks a donald trump and that hes telling her about his, his conversation with Michael Cohen. So what she testifies to is this is when being questioned by the prosecutor, she said, i didnt know michael to be in especially charitable person um, or selfless person. Hes the kind of person who seeks credit. The prosecutor said, did mr. Trumps say anything else about this issue when he told you that michael made the payment . Just that he thought it was a generous amino thing to do and he was appreciative of the loyalty thats all i remember the prosecutor says, did he say anything about the timing of the News Reporting regarding picks . Oh, he yes, he wanted to know how it was playing and just my thoughts and opinion about this story versus having the story a different kind of story before the Campaign Payne had michael not made that payment. And i think mr. Trumps opinion was that it was better to be dealing with it now, and that would have been bad to have had that story come out before the election. So this was the last thing that hope hicks testified when questioned by the prosecutor was what she said before. The right before the crime. Right. This was the final thing seeing that the prosecutors left the jury hearing her say, which was she saying . She doesnt believe the story that Michael Cohen had advanced this money on his own. But also saying that trump was glad that he had to deal with this in 2018 because it would have been much worse to deal with it before the election. Kaitlan, the the former president and the access Hollywood Tape in a cnn town hall well, last year i want to play a clip of that there was a Tape Deposition of view from october in it. You defended the comments that you made on that excess Hollywood Tape about being able to grab women, how you want do you stand by those comments . I said if youre famous and rich or whatever i said, but i said if youre star you are. And i said, women let you i didnt say you grew up. I said women let you didnt use that word. But if you look, women, let you in a deposition that our result should be a star. Well, that are powerful they tend to do pretty well in a lot of different ways. Okay and you would like me to take that back . I cant take it back because it happens to be true i mean, one he said grabbed them in the audio. Anyone can listen to it. Its not really a problem. Its not up for dispute to what im so struck by listening back to that now is the video they played in court today for the jury to hear was trump, his video that he put out on twitter after that video came out, there was the crisis moment as hope hicks testified today, i hurricane was expected to make landfall that night. No one in the news. She said, we dont even know where it made landfall or anything because people were only talking about your hurricane, right . Much in a political sense, obviously. But donald trump put out that Video Apologizing and then in your debate question, he said he was embarrassed. That is language. He does not use anymore no matter what he does or what happens, he never says apologized. He never says hes embarrassed. And so it also speaks to how he is changed since 2016 and how he abused himself through this political lins is someone who really in his view is untouchable. But in a deposition that wasnt taken not that long ago. He defended the common city, made the video will and just to underscore that moment when this came out, i were at the time was working for the freedom caucus. Jim jordan was about to go to an event in ohio with mike pence and there was genuine when discussion that he may not go to the event that pence might not show up for the event there was basically a pause on all fronts, even within the rnc debate is this Campaign Even going to move forward so it is important to remember that context because another bombshell like this, having come out at the time, wouldve been incredibly significant. Well hope hicks. He was asked about that on The Stand Today and she talked about paul ryan had an event in wisconsin that trump was supposed to go to and then she said it was sort of a the prosecution said that he he turned trump down. She said, actually its more nuance and she went on to explain that paul ryan kind of reorganized it so that to deemphasize trump and maybe paul ryan wouldnt be there and then she says, trump decided not to go because he was insulted, i guess. And i believe Reince Priebus gotten to try to facilitate that so it wouldnt look like a clean break at the time, but thats thats accurate. I mean, this was a moment where steve benen loves to tell the story, but they all sat around a conference table. The people that she was describing for their as they were in the middle of the debate prep, but they fair and hold from the post, emailed them to say, hey, weve got this really embarrassing audio tape of trump. And they kinda went around the room and trump asked if they thought he should drop out. And a lot of them including Reince Priebus, said that they believed he should steve bannon, i believe as he characterizes, it was one of the only people who did not believe, but he was such a moment in the campaign where people did genuinely think trump may drop out of the race well, i was also central moment, i will say in the debate prep what they were doing debate prep at that same moment, we were doing debate prep is one of the moderators of that debate and it suddenly soon as, it hit all our plans for what the first question was going to be. And Energy Policy write it all it all went out the window and then there was this whole day long drama behind, scenes of how do we ask it . We know exactly whats the wording going to be and whats the followup going to be and sort of planning that all out. I mean, i think that the what caitlin was saying about trump changing the way he talks about the access Hollywood Tape. That was such a seminal moment for him politically because he one and how do you not one, i think obviously everything would have changed, but the lesson that trump learn from that, similarly from charlottesville when he made the statements about the charlottesville and then he tried to walk it back and ever since then, hes been denying that he ever said there were very fine people on both sides. Trump has learned the lesson, never to walk a thing back, but it never ever to walk a thing back. And that has become his i just want to point out the first 30 minutes of that debate were i mean, i was on the stage and Martha Raddatz and nobody knew how this was going to play out. Nobody knew who. Down from had held this Press Conference with bill clinton accusers. He had brought them to the debate hall they both walked out there. They didnt shake hands, they didnt shake hands with the moderators the tension, the molecules of the air on that said were charged in that room and i mean, ive done other debates before, never committee of the president ial debate, but primary debates. Ive never experienced a 20 minutes outside of a combat zone that was so charged and just almost anything could have had. And he started following her around on stage. I mean, the whole thing was it was just stunning to be a part of yeah. I mean, i remember i mean, i was covering Hillary Clinton at the time. The fact that he brought bill clintons accusers to that debate created this incredible circus atmosphere. But it also made people believed that he was just going to bulldoze through this moment i think it was kind of a mixed bag on the debate stage, but it was it really was because ultimately the end result of all of this, probably because there was not another woman or accuser who came forward. The end result of all of this was that the access Hollywood Tape didnt sink him. And so he is totally emboldened by that variance. And every other experience that hes had subsequently that has left him empowered after these moments that wouldve killed anybody elses political career. Its a revisionist history where hes see how he talked about that then and then look at how he was talking about one year ago, he saying thats actually not what i said. Well, you can hear him. The audio tape they played. Yes. Mr. Day, that Michael Cohen surreptitiously taped of him and donald trump discussing it. Trump posted today, they cut off part of it that was actually very positive for him. Theres no evidence of that. His attorneys did not argue that in court at las you know, and it was just a moment where he tries to seek to reframe things even when there is there document evidence, if there is an audio tape, he tries to basically reframe things and the question is how that plays. They argued this in front of the judge today about the evidence of the chain of custody of that tape, and also that the prosecution is saying that a call came in, which is what sort of cut off that call and the defense is trying to raise questions about well, whats the evidence that a call came in and how do you determine that every defendant in history who has been caught on tape always maintains that as soon as that tape ended, something great for them i ever done that. Its worth noting is not true. Thats not true. That was true much more head debited, Powerful Katelyn just mentioned on the access hollywood story that he himself broke. Hes joining us next, the question of whether the former president has again violated his gag order will show you what he posts on social media last nine, you get a former federal judges take on that as well. And later, given all the Trump World Turmoil that hope hicks, were counting today and that we just talked about some perspective on how despite all that, he still managed to come from president could be again, former republican congressman in january 6, Committee MemberAdam Kinzinger joins us asas wel were here to get your sayyed of the store. A bribery prostitution. Why do we keep ending up . You cant write this stuff. United states of scandal with jake tapper. Now streaming on macs critics and audiences are raving about them. Number one week in america. Ill make them suck you good guadagninos challengers is nothing short of miraculous. Its pure filmmaking booleans challengers, where to go are now playing in theaters everywhere mom jeans she passed them down to you but who passed them to her ancestry dna can show her who and where her deans came from. Best of all, its on sale for mothers day. 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