The people of new york versus donald j. Trump. I should be in florida now. I should be in a lot of different places campaigning, and im sitting here. For the first time in history, prosecutors lay out a criminal case against a former american president to a jury. This case is about a conspiracy to corrupt the 2016 president ial election. Tonight the Opening Statements from the prosecution and the defense. And the first witness takes the stand. We should be expecting a lot more of david Rachel Maddow was inside the courtroom to see it all. We got a real road map today as to how this case is going to go. As donald trump goes on trial. He seems old and tired and mad. Tonight Rachel Maddow, joy reid, chris hayes, Lawrence Odonnell, alex wagner, jen sake, stef knew rhule, katie pham, and nbc legal experts are all here. Special Coverage Of Trump On Trial begins now. Thank you for joining us tonight for this special Primetime Recap of the first ever criminal trial of a former u. S. President , the first ever criminal trial of a major partys presumptive nominee as their candidate for president. Im Rachel Maddow here at Msnbc Headquarters along with Lawrence Odom and chris hayes and jen sake and katie pham. Well be joined by our colleagues, our legal experts, theyre going to be keeping us on the straight and narrow. Weve got lisa ruben here tonight and Suzanne Craig of the New York Times who were both at the trial today. Lisa and suzanne and katie were all in the Overflow Room at the trial today. I was in the actual courtroom, which makes it sound like i got the better seat, but ill tell you, there are advantages and disadvantages to both ways of sitting in on the trial, and a lot of them have to do with the five senses. Well talk about that a little bit tonight. The trial got underway at 9 30 eastern time this morning. It ran for about three hours before breaking early for both the Passover Holiday and for one juror to get to an emergency dentist appointment. I hope it went okay. But that short days proceedings nevertheless brought us a whole bunch of really Important News about this case. We got first thing a substantive ruling from judge juan merchan about effectively what prosecutors are going to be allowed to ask trump if he chooses to take the stand in his own defense. Now, this is something thats called a sandoval hearing that happened at the end of the week last week. This was judge merchans ruling on that that sandoval hearing. Basically, in nonlegalese, what it is, is if trumps going to present himself as a witness, prosecutors will want to call his credibility as a witness into question, and theyll want to do that by telling the jury about bad things trump has done or has said. Things that would reflect poorly on his believability as a witness in this proceeding. So prosecutors have to ask in judge about that. Prosecutors had asked permission to raise 13 different bad things about former President Trump in front of the jury. Judge merchan ruled today that they are allowed to raise six of those 13 things but not the rest of them. Now, is that good news or bad news for the prosecution, good news or bad news for the defense, i dont know. We will get advice from our legal experts tonight as to how much of a win or loss that is for either side. But that was right out of the gate a substantive thing about how much these jurors will get to hear about trump if he testifies. And this is done out of fairness to the defense. The defense basically needs to know whether its worth it to put trump on the stand. They cant compel trump to speak, but if he chooses to take the stand, they now understand the parameters about what he might be asked about. And that will help them fairly make a decision about whether or not it is a good idea for him to actually become a witness in his own case. So that happened today. That was first. It went fast. We also today got Opening Statements from each side today. And each side completed their Opening Statements today. And the Opening Statements, admittedly, i am a dork, but i found them fascinating, and they were so different from one another. You think of Opening Statements as kind of being a boilerplate thing or something where you can expect what theyre like, well, these were two totally different ways of doing it. The prosecution started. They laid out a dispassionate, straight forward, very linear, very blunt case. It started this way, prosecutor, good morning, your honor, counsel, members of the jury. This case is about a Criminal Conspiracy and cover a coverup. The defendant, donald trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 president ial election, then he covered up that Criminal Conspiracy by lying in his new York Business records over and over and over again. In june 2015 donald trump announced his candidacy for president in the 2016 eelection. A few months later, this conspiracy began. So thats how it started from the prosecution and their opening. Were going to talk in detail about the prosecutions argument, the sort of blunt, streamlined, linear nature of their case and the way they are making it. In total contrast, this was the opening of the Opening Statement from the defense. Todd blanch, Defense Counsel for President Trump. Good morning, your honor, good morning, the judge, good morning, mr. Blanch, President Trump is innocent. President trump did not commit any crimes. The Manhattan District Attorneys Office should never have brought this case. Youve heard this a few times already this morning, and youre going to hear it a lot more during this trial. The people, the government, they have the burden of proof to prove President Trump guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. What that means, as judge merchan said a few minutes ago, is that President Trump is presumed innocent. He is cloaked in innocence. And that cloak of innocence does not leave President Trump today. It doesnt leave him at any day during this trial. And it wont leave him when you all deliberate. You will find that he is not guilty. Now, President Trump, youve seen him, of course, for years and years and years, youve seen him on television, youve seen photos of him, youve seen articles written about him. Hes in some ways larger than life, but hes also here in this Courtroom Doing what any of us would do, defending himself. Youre going to hear me, as ive done already today and others, even witnesses, refer to him as President Trump. This is a title that he has earned because he was our 45th president. We will call him President Trump out of respect for the office that he held from 2017 to 2021. And as everybody knows, its the office hes running for right now. Hes the republican nominee. But and this is important hes not just our former president. Hes not just donald trump that you have seen on tv and read about and seen photos of, hes also a man. Hes a husband. Hes a father. And hes a person, just like you and just like me. What the people just did for about 45 minutes is present to you what appeared to be a very clean, nice story. It is not. It is not simple as the people just described. So you could see the difference in the approach here, right . You think you know what an Opening Statement is, well, those are both Opening Statements but theyre from different planets. And, you know, a good defense will always, presumably, try to make it seem like the prosecutions case is less straight forward than it seems. The defense, after all, just has to inject some reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the defendant. They dont need to prove him innocent. In this case, though, trumps defense is bluntry proclaiming him innocent. That was literally the first line of their Opening Statement to the jury. President trump is innocent. To make that case, to bolster that case, his Defense Lawyers today and this surprised me as a lay observer of this matters President Trumps Defense Lawyers today found themselves also having to make a number of supporting claims about trumps behavior around this incident and these alleged crimes. And they were claims that, i think, outside the courtroom and to those of us who are not on the jury observing this case, they are claims that will raise a lot of eyebrows. I do not know what their effect will be on the jury, but these things are hard to sell on a, you know, on a Street Corner or on tv. Ed to blanch, Defense Counsel, quote, when we became president in 2017, he put up a wall between himself and his company. He put his entire company in a trust. He did this so that he could run the country and he wouldnt have anything to do with his company while he was president. Is that true . Did donald trump, in fact, put up a wall between himself and his company while he was president . Did he have nothing to do with his company when he was president . I dont know what the jury will think of that claim, but i mean, like pick your example. Remember when mike pence had a meeting in dublin, ireland, as Vice President but the Trump Administration had him stay on The Other Side of the island, the whole other side of the country, hours away from his meeting in dublin, just so he could stay at a trump Golf Property whole he was there . If Vice PresidentKamala Harris was going to dublin for a meeting right now, as Vice President of the united states, what do you think the odds are that she would be staying 181 miles away from dublin at doonbeg . Tell me more about the wall between President Trump and his company. Anyway. President trumps counsel also claiming to the jury today that trump paid Michael Cohen purely for Legal Services and he definitely didnt pay him as a reimbursement for this Hush Money Payment to stormy daniel, the woman they wanted to keep quiet ahead of the election about her claims about a former sexual relationship with former President Trump. They are claiming this really was payment to Michael Cohen for Legal Services, even though they also admitted to the jury today that cohen had been trumps lawyer for years and years and year, and it would appear that cohen was never paid like this before in any of the other years that he worked for trump. President trumps Defense Counsel is also claiming that the allegations that Stormy Daniels made that she had a sexual encounter with donald trump was a false claim, a false claim is what he said to the jury today. Make of that what you will. The jury will be expected to believe these things, because the claim from the defense is that donald trump is innocent. We now know that this is the nature of the defense theyre going to mount. They may have trump himself testify, they may not. Theyre going to make as much as possible over the fact that hes a former president. Theyre going to call him president over and over again in the courtroom. Theyre going to create what appears, i think, outside the courtroom to be an earth to narrative in which trump not only didnt have stormy daniel, trump had nothing to do with his company while he was president. That must have been the wall he built. And even though he apparently never paid Michael Cohen this way before, coincidentally after Michael Cohen on his own volition and for his own reasons decided to take out a Home Equity Line of credit in order to pay a porn star that he himself never met and never had sex with coincidentally after micah cohen decide today that out of the goodness of his own heart for his own mysterious reasons that have nothing to do with donald trump, coincidentally after that happened, trump decided to start a new way of paying his longtime lawyer that involved 35,000 checks that he signed in the oval office. And it was all a coincidence and none of it had anything to do with the election. Maybe, well see. Were going to talk tonight about what prosecutors said about how they came up with the payment plan to cohen. Personally i unintentionally, loudly snorted in court when i heard this, which was not at all polite. It annoyed the person sitting next to me. I will apologize and explain. We will talk about that. We will talk about the first witness whose name is because the news gods like to tease us and test our maturity. He was the ceo of the company that used to run the National Enquirer. His testimony only just got started today. He was only on the stand for about half an hour, but even just in that half hour, he already gave prosecutors, it would seem, a bunch of what they wanted. Well talk about how weird it was that when trumps Defense Counsel was giving his opening argument today, his Opening Statement to the jury today, there were multiple objections from the prosecutor, objections to the Opening Statement, including multiple objections that were sustained by the judge, which led to the judge, multiple times, stopping the Opening Statement and making all the lawyers in the room come up to the bench to talk to him in private. It was a bizarre thing to see in person. We will get advice tonight on how odd that is both as a matter of law and of Trial Procedure in new york. We will also tonight get to the card that prosecutors have in their deck that seems logically unassailable, at least to nonlawyer observers of this case. A card the prosecutors have in their deck that they showed a little bit of today, it goes to the absolute heart of this matter. We heard no defense to it today from The Other Side, at least not yet. Were going to get to all of that in this Primetime Recap tonight. Thats what were here for. But i want to start here with my colleagues with overall impressions of how things went today, how things are starting off for the former president , chris . I have lots of thoughts, but my one big takeaway, actually, was during the judges instructions to the jury. Mmhmm. The reason is that weve been doing this now, you know, donald trump comes down the escalator in 2015, so weve been doing this for like nine year, and theres this question of just how does a Democratic Society come to its conclusions about things. You think this metaphor of the court of public opinion, and theres lots of reasons people believe what they believe about donald trump. And what was fascinating in there is part of the reason i think so many people wanted this trial is when hes giving the instructions to the jury, hes giving them a methodology for divining the truth. Hes talking to them and saying, like, here are the ground rules. You guys are coming from all different kinds of places, you might have different politics, but here were going to work on this methodology. You have to actually work off the evidence. Just this basic stipulation, theres almost some part of you that like wants there to be some like small democratic version of that in the court of public opinion, but there was something kind of bracing about that moment simply because he has thrived in an environment for so long in defying what, to me, seemed the obvious ways that you should come to conclusions about the world. Yeah. And so here you have this Cross Section of people i thought i also thought like the level of language and sort of intellect and knowledge for the jury was great, perfect. He was not talking down to them. He was like, youre smart, grownup people, this is how were going to do it. It just felt to me that the reason theres so much on this is partly because of how haywire everythings gone outside of that courtroom that theres some Lig Miniature Version of something happening in there about discourse and reasons and arguments that was very exciting to listen to. Theres something about the kind of politician that trump is, which is about an appeal to emotion and reason doesnt apply, an appeal to emotion, reason doesnt apply. This is the inverse of that. Give me very firmly, this is how were going to do it. Im not telling you what conclusi