Tonight, the Opening Statements from the prosecution and the defense. The first witness takes the stand. We should be expecting more of david Rachel Maddow was in the courtroom to see it all. We got a road map to how the case will 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 psaki, stephanie ruhle, and legal experts are all here. Special Coverage Of Trump On Trial begins now. Thank you for joining us for this special prime time recap of the first ever criminal trial of a former u. S. President. The first ever criminal trial of a major partys presumptive nominee is a candidate for president. I am Rachel Maddow at Msnbc Headquarters along with Lawrence Odonnell and chris hayes and jen psaki. We will be joined by joy reid and alex wagner and stephanie ruhle. Are legal experts Andrew Weissmann and catherine will keep us on the straight and narrow. Lisa ruben is here and Susanne Craig who were at the trial. Lisa and suzanne and katie were in the Overflow Room today. I was in the actual courtroom which makes it sound like i got the better see. I will tell you, there are advantages and disadvantages to both ways of sitting on the trial and a lot of to do with the five senses. We will talk about that a little bit tonight. The trial got underway at 9 930 eastern time this morning three hours before breaking early for the Passover Holiday and for one juror to get to an emergency dentist appointment. I hope it went okay. That short day preceding brought us a bunch of really Important News about this case. First thing, a substantive ruling from judge merchan about effectively, what prosecutors will be allowed to ask of trump if he chooses to take the stand in his own defense. This is something called the sandoval hearing that happened at the end of the week last week. This was judge merchans ruling on that sandoval hearing. Basically, and nonlegalese, its of trump presents himself as a witness, prosecutors will want to call his credibility as a witness into question. They will 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. Executors have to as the judge. Prosecutors had asked permission to raise 13 different bad things about former President Trump in front of the jury. Judge merchan rule they are allowed to raise six of those 13 things but not the rest of them. Now, is a good or bad news for the prosecution . Good or bad news for the defense . I dont know. We will get advice to how much of a win or loss that is for either side. That was out of the gate, a substantive thing about how much the jurors will get to hear about trump if he testifies. This is done out of fairness to the defense. The defense basically needs to know if its worth it to put trump on the stand. They cannot compel trump to speak, but if he chooses to take the stand, they understand the parameters of what he might be asked about and that will help them fairly make a decision about whether or not its a good idea for him to become a witness in his own case. That happened today. It went fast. We also today got Opening Statements from each side. Each side completed their Opening Statements today. The Opening Statements admittedly, i am a dork but i found fascinating. They were so different from one another. You think of Opening Statements as being a boilerplate thing or you expect with they will be like but these were two totally different ways. The prosecution started. They laid out a dispassionate, straightforward, linear very blunt case. It started this way. The prosecutor, good morning, your honor, counsel, members of the jury. This case is about a Criminal Conspiracy and a cover up. The defendant, donald trump, Orchestrated A Criminal Scream To Corrupt the president ial election and then a covered of the Criminal Conspiracy by lying in his new York Business records over and over and over again. June 2015, donald trump excuse me, he announced his candidacy for president in the 2016 election. A few months later, this conspiracy began. So, thats how it started from the prosecution and their opening. We will talk about the prosecutions argument. The blunt, streamlined, linear nature of the case and the way they are making a. In contrast, this was the opening of the Opening Statement from the defense. Defense counsel for former President Trump. Good morning, your honor. President trump is innocent. President trump did not commit any crimes. The Manhattan District Attorneys Office should never brought this case. You have heard this a few times already this morning and you will hear 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 his President Trump is presumed innocent. He is cloaked in innocence. That cloak of innocence does not leave President Trump today and does not leave him at any day during this trial, and i will not leave him when you all deliberate. You will find that he is not guilty. President trump, you have seen him for years, and you have seen them on television. Youve seen photos and youve seen articles written about him. He is in some ways larger than life but hes in this Courtroom Doing what any of us would do. Defending himself. You will hear me and even witnesses refer to him as resident trump. This is a title he has earned because he was our 45th president. We will call him President Trump out of respect for the office he held from 2017 to 2021. As everybody knows, Cfs Seas Running for now. Hes a republican nominee. This is important, is not just our former president. Hes not just donald trump youve seen on tv are seen photos of, he is a man, a husband, father, and he is a person, just like you and just like me. What the people did for 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 can see the difference in the approach. You think you know what an Opening Statement is. They are both Opening Statements but from different planets. You know, good defense will always presumably try to make it seem like the prosecution case is less straightforward than it seems. The defense, after all, has to inject some reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the defendant. They do not need to prove him innocent. In this case, trumps defenses bluntly proclaiming him innocent. That was literally the first line of the statement to the jury. President trump is innocent. To make that case, bolster the case, his Defense Lawyers today, and this surprised me as a lay observer, President Trumps lawyers today found themselves also having to make a number of supporting claims about trumps behavior around this incident and these alleged crimes. They were claims that, i think, outside the courtroom and to those of us not on the jury, there claims that will raise a lot of eyebrows. I do not know what the effect will be on the jury. These things are hard to sell. Out on a Street Corner or a Cocktail Party on tv. We will see if the jury buys them. Blanche, quote, when he became president in 2017, he put up a wall between himself and his company. He put his company in a trust. Eight did this so he could run the country and he would not 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 this company when he was president . I dont know with the jury will think of that claim, but, pick your example. Remember when mike pence had a meeting in dublin, ireland,s Vice President of the Trump Administration had him stay on the other side of the island . The whole other side of the country, hours away from us meeting in dublin so he could say they had a trump property while 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 he would be staying 181 miles away from dublin . Tell me more about the wall between President Trump and his company . Anyway. President trumps counsel claiming to the jury that trump paid Michael Cohen purely for Legal Services. He definitely did not pay him is a reimbursement for this Hush Money Payment to Stormy Daniels, the woman they wanted to keep quiet about her claims of a sexual relationship with former President Trump. They are claiming this really was just payment from trump to Michael Cohen for Legal Services even though they also admitted to the jury today that cohen had been trumps lawyers for years and years and it would appear that cohen was never paid like this before, and any of the years he worked for trump. President trumps Defense Counsel is claiming 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. You can make of that what you will. The jury will be expected to believe this because the claim for the defenses donald trump is innocent. We now know that this is the nature of the defense they will mount. They will have trump himself testify or they may not. The will make as much as possible over the fact they will call him President Trump. They will create what appears, outside the courtroom, to be an earth 2 narrative in which trump did not have sex was Stormy Daniels but nothing to do with this Company Well President , that mustve been the wall he built. Even though he apparently never paid Michael Cohen this way before, coincidentally, after Michael Cohen on his own volition and his own reasons, decided to take out a Home Equity Line of credit to pay a Pornography Star that he himself never met and never had sex with. Coincidentally after Michael Cohen did that out of the goodness of his 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 us on temblor that involved 35,000 other checks he signed in the oval office. It was all a coincidence and none of it had anything to do with the election. Maybe. We will see. We will talk tonight about what prosecutors said about how they came up with a payment plan to cohen , personally, i unintentionally loudly snorted in court when i heard this, which was not polite and annoyed the person sitting next to me. I will apologize and explain. We will talk about the first witness whose name is david they like to test our maturity as broadcasters. He was the ceo of the company that used to run the National Enquirer. s testimony only got started today. It was only on the stand for half an hour. Even just in the half an hour, get prosecutors a bunch of what they wanted. We will talk about how weird it was that one trumps Defense Counsel was giving his Opening Argument, his Opening Statement to the jury today, there were multiple objections from the prosecutors. Objections to the Opening Statement including multiple objections that were sustained by the judge would let to the judge, multiple times, stopping the Opening Statement and making all the lawyers come up to the bench to talk to him in private. It was bizarre to see in person. We will get advice on how out that is as a matter of law and of Trial Procedure in new york. We will tonight get to the card that prosecutors have in their deck that seems logically unassailable, at least 10 nonlawyer observers of this case. A card the prosecutors have in their deck that they showed a little today and he goes to the heart of this matter. We heard no defense to it today from the other side. At least, not yet. We will get all of that in this prime time recap. Thats what we are here for. I want to start with my colleagues with overall impressions of how things went today. How things are starting off for the former president. I have lots of thoughts but my big take away was during the judges instructions to the jury. The reason is we have been doing this, donald trump comes down the escalator so weve been doing this nine years. There is this question of, how does a Democratic Society come to conclusions about things . The court of Public Opinion . Theres lots of reasons people believe what they believe about donald trump. What was fascinating is part of the reason so many wanted this trial is when given instructions to the jury, hes giving a methodology for divining the truth. He is talking to them and say here are the ground rules. Youre coming from different places and you might have different politics, but here we will work on this methodology. You can assess credibility. Have to work up the evidence. Basic stipulation. There is, some part of you that wants this democratic version of that in the court of Public Opinion. There was something bracing about that moment simply because he has thrived in an environment for so long in defining what, to me, seemed the obvious ways you should come to conclusions. Here you have this Cross Section of people. I thought the level of language and intellect and knowledge he was assuming was great. He was not talking down to them. You are smart people and this is how we will do it. It felt to me the reason for so much on this is partly because how haywire is gone outside the courtroom. Theres a miniature version of something happening in there about discourse and reasons and arguments that was exciting to listen to. The kind of politician which trump is which is appeal to emotion. Reason does not apply. Firmly, this is how we will do would. Im not telling you conclusions but the method we will agree on. And its the opposite reassuring. What struck me as you outlined it well in the beginning is the difference between the Opening Statements. Thats whats helpful for people watching it in the courtroom because reading the transcripts, i have a lot of postit notes here, it struck me that defense was like a circus leader. He had a couple of things on a note card. The prosecutions case, you could picture what this guy was like in a study group, i would want to be in his study group. He has an outline of writes notes on it. Even as nerdy and a good way that was, this is a case about falsifying Business Records. He used real estate and words in Opening Statement to lay out the case why trump is a guy who pay to cover up information from the American Public, multiple times. I thought that was interesting. The National Enquirer aspect which is important was so dominant this morning. Its a story about the National Enquirer, at least thus far. David the first witness, testimony to that, not an accident. If trump and the National Enquirer, trump and emi were in a Criminal Conspiracy is prosecutors allege, all we need to know about trump, most of what we will learn is about ami. That made begin with reporting from my beat which is outside the building. [ laughter ] among the people, who i will now call the people and not the protesters, because they were not protesting. I counted two. Three Trump Supporters i w