Doc . About the Stormy Daniels hush money deal. Todd blanche repeating the word lie or lying 35 times so far while questioning cohen. Im chris jansing, alongside my colleague andrea mitchell. Constantly trying to pin the blame on someone else and hes being asked to answer for past statements where he celebrated the idea of seeing his former boss behind bars. I want to bring back our panel, vaughn hillyard, danny cevallos, catherine christian, and jeremy soland. Okay, jeremy, i just got new statistics in, are you ready . Are you sitting down . I am sitting. The total cohen time on the stand, 12 hours, 52 minutes. Total cohen cross, 4 hours and 40 minutes. High point, low point so far that the jurors may take away from this . I think the low point, depending how youre defining this is the cross. I dont think the cross has hammered home what the defense wants to hammer home. The high point for the prosecution is he was contrite, yeah, he lied. Again, may not want him to be your neighborhood or date your daughter, but he told you what it is, and you know what, we can back it up with hope hicks within reason, Phone Call Logs and documents within reason. Its going well for the prosecution. Proof Beyond A Reasonable Doubt, well see. Its going well. 13 hours is what were approaching and we have a little ways to go about what you expected. Does it just feel long . I had colleagues that would give six hour summations and acquittals, she spoke for six hours. So i think the prosecution and susan hoffinger, its her witness, is pretty happy now. Its not over yet. I think todd blanche will make a mistake. He said its going to go to the end of the day today, to bring it to the end of the day today. Unless theres something new we dont know about, and i dont think there is, less is more, and there probably wont be much of a redirect. And vaughn hillyard, youre there at the courthouse, you have had a parade of House Republicans today, the speaker yesterday, which was controversial. And he made some statements, Scott Long On The Hill interviewed him afterwards and he repeated some statements from donald trump about the whole area being warded off and according to your reporting, there have been about 20 people there, you know, pro Trump Supporters, but nobody is blocking them from getting anywhere close. In any case, so today youve got sort of a parade of stars. I use that in air quotes, lauren, matt gaetz, far right caucus, right . Reporter you had these individuals, matt gaetz, lauren boebert, bob good, eli crane, andy biggs leave the courtroom and address reporters, and essentially critique and attack judge merchans family. Attack Stormy Daniels, attack Michael Cohen as a liar. You had them attacking the pitchers and umpires involved in this case, but largely, there was no direct defense of the battered donald trump from the underlying allegations. And when it came time to attempt to ask them questions about those underlying facts and after calling Michael Cohen a liar, to attempt to question them on statements that donald trump had made related to this case, they quickly left the scene and there was no opportunity to ask them questions. These are the same group of individuals who said that they came voluntarily to defend donald trump. The republican nominee. We are now less than two months from the Republican National convention, and these individuals, you know, i think its important to note much like we saw with speaker johnson, senators vance and scott come out here, they really filled the void that donald trump under the gag order was not able to do. So im going to attack those individuals who are so crucial to this case. And, vaughn, theres a whole web of false facts being paraded out there, and you know, on the internet and a lot of misinformation by the supporters, by some of the supporters, a lot of conspiracy theories, one perpetrated by newsmax, which was dan goldman from manhattan said that he had deposed Michael Cohen, you know, in the past. He was talking about when he was the staff lawyer for the first trump impeachment committee, and that was on the moscow piece of this, not on all of the rest of this case. This case in particular. But that was picked up by newsmax as somehow democratic congressman dan goldman was helping to depose and prep Michael Cohen for his crossexamination or for his testimony, so someone you know very well and have covered for years, kari lake, the senate candidate, Republican Senate candidate in arizona, she seized on that and said, you see, you know, theres this whole conspiracy to try to make Michael Cohen look good, in other words, that Congressman Goldman was preparing him for his testimony, which he certainly was not. And thats how these things get woven. This is all part of theyre saying that theyre all part of saying this is a coordinated effort between the democrats and the white house, democrats on capitol hill, Daniel Goldman wasnt a member of congress at the time in 2019, when he was working as the lead counsel for the first impeachment inquiry into donald trump back in 2019. But kari lake is somebody who propagates this conspiracy, this is an entanglement. Frankly, what we heard from others, matt gaetz and lauren boebert, again, was repeated attacks on judge merchan, and particularly the daughter, donald trump is not getting a fair shake. The question i was going to ask these individuals is whether they thought the jurors in this case could be fair and impartial because its the jurors who are ultimately going to determine the verdict of whether donald trump is guilty or not. Not judge merchan, as has been repeatedly implied by the surrogates that are coming out on Donald Trumps behalf. I want to get back to the case, and ill start with you, if you want to chime in, you certainly can. When you see whats happening, when there are people who are elected officials here in the United States, and who trash the system, say its not fair. Who have extraordinarily unkind and untrue things to say about certain individuals who are trying to do their jobs, as someone who works within the system, is it just so much noise . Or would you acknowledge that this is not something that ought to be happening right now. It shouldnt be happening. Its an attack on a rule of law. I find it shameful on the attacks on kids. Nothing to do with this case. You have the speaker of the house of representatives. Its one thing, one no name congressperson but the speaker of the house of representatives. Its upsetting for someone whos part of the criminal Justice System to see this outside of new yorks largest criminal court. I didnt mean to interrupt. To say that is what has really upset a lot of democrats on the hill because hes in line for the second in line for the presidency, in the line of succession, involving, you know, every aspect of Foreign Policy and intelligence. And a man who, you know, ran on his morality and a couple of years ago was criticizing donald trump for Extramarital Affairs and for his lack of faith. Wait until the case is over, whatever the verdict is, and then express your opinion, but in the middle of an ongoing trial, elected officials, to do that is just shameful. Do you see it as an end around the gag order on donald trump so they can say what he cant . I believe it is. Youre never going to prove it was done at his behest or direction. My heart rate gets ticked up. If i had a Heart Rate Monitor on, it would go through the roof. I think its so reprehensible what they do outside the courtroom, its disgusting and putrid, and i could go through all sorts of words. Innocent in the courtroom, absolutely, until if and when its proven guilty. What they are doing outside the courtroom is so selfish and disgusting to tear down the system and trust and belief in the system because theyre unhappy, because they want that loyalty that donald trump wrote about in his book. The governor of one of the dakotas, its certainly not like shooting your dog but coming here and shooting up the proverbially, not literally, and i shouldnt use that term, making that reference, youre doing damage to the belief in the system. Thats reprehensible, for what. For what . I raise one more point on this on all the extraneous noise and this is from a republican, a highly respected republican, former nominee for president who did an extraordinary interview with Stephanie Ruhle last night. All of you lawyers on this, the first thing that joe biden should have done to make himself be bigger was to pardon to call the Attorney General and say dont prosecute. Interfering with bill barr as Attorney General, and which joe biden as head of the judiciary committee, and, you know, as being so careful. I mean, hes not gone into the trial at all except to say in his taunts yesterday about the debate, i hear youre free on wednesdays. That was the closest he came. In any case he said that he should have interfered with the Attorney General and then he said he should have pardoned him, pulled a jerry ford, richard nixon, i would love to hear what the table has to say about that, danny. You took the Jerry Ford Nixon comment right out of my mouth. Thats the first thing i was thinking of, which is look, pardons are almost by definition, controversial, you are undoing the hard work and efforts of the department of justice. I cant think of a pardon that isnt on some level controversial, Everyone Wants a pardon when theyre in the hot seat. Pardons wont apply in this case, this is a stay case. Not dealing with federal pardons, the president couldnt pardon if he wanted to. Look, Go Back To Nixon and ford, they are always controversial. Its contradictory, gerald ford, i got to know him well. He told me why he felt that was the most honorable thing he had done. That is an outlying opinion. I get that. Lets bring in msnbc host of The Last WordLawrence Odonnell. Hes been until the courtroom. We have been talking about the mitt romney interview with Stephanie Ruhle last anything. Im aware of mitt romney being the pardon advocate. History has proved the absurdity of this position. It wasnt terribly shocking when gerald ford issued the pardon to nixon. People felt it was a reasonable thing to do. It was a substantial segment of the population, half that disagreed with the pardon, and what history has shown is that pardon taught donald trump that president s can get away with anything. That is the longterm damage, and advocating a pardon for the most criminal pardon that anyone has ever seen just put mitt romney into a level of obliviousness of where we are in trump world that was kind of shocking. Can i ask you another kind of political question, and im going to read this directly from the New York Times, and we were discussing earlier before you came out the parade, its like ten people from the house, people there supporting donald trump who believe that hes being railroaded. As the New York Times points out, House Republicans had a vote scheduled for this afternoon to rebuke President Biden for his decision to pause an armed shipment to israel. The bill is designed to divide democrats and embarrass mr. Biden and have no chance of passing the senate or becoming law, but so many republicans demonstrating their fealty to mr. Trump, they left open the possibility that the partys own messaging bill could be defeated. Ill let you take that one. Theres that old phrase that comes from parliament. Back venture. Someone whos not a relevant player in the parliament or the congress, the back bencher. Most of those cases that you just saw in that photograph were to their shock relegated to literally the back bench of the courtroom because there wasnt enough space in the first two rows where the Secret Service occupy a couple of seats and the eric trump frequently occupies a seat, and other Trump Supporters occupy some seats. Only a couple of them got into that front row space. Matt gaetz is one of them who got into the front row space. A good six or seven of them, i couldnt recognize without their congressional pins on their lapels. And so they didnt, i think, get the treatment inside the courtroom that they were hoping for, but the whole game for them was what they were going to say to the microphones outside the courtroom. Let me ask you about what happened inside the courtroom. Right before the judge called lunch, todd blanche seemed to be building into a kind of crescendo. He was raising his voice, at least according to our document, and he was trying to make the point that he believed Michael Cohen was lying about this phone call where he supposedly told donald trump that these hush money payments had been made to Stormy Daniels. Theyre saying, no, this was really just a call about a 14yearold prankster who was making phone calls. Tell us your feeling as you were watching it and what you observed and was that a moment where todd blanche seemed to be connecting . Oh, by far its the most important and biggest point the defense has scored so far. Theres nothing else comes close to comparing to it. So, you know, a couple of hours this morning. Most of it was in an irrelevant space, but it was on the Credibility Issue of Michael Cohen, which for the defense really is the entire area that they want to concentrate on. What was crucial about this testimony is this testimony was about Stormy Daniels, and about the Stormy Daniels payoff, and about Michael Cohen credibility. And theres a phone call at 8 02 p. M. That was identified in the log, phone logs the other day by the prosecution, direct examination of Michael Cohen. Michael cohen identified that phone call as a call he made to Keith Schiller, who is always, as many people know, standing right beside donald trump in those days, and he made the point, which a lot of people can confirm that he used to call Keith Schiller when he wanted to talk to donald trump so that Keith Schiller could hand the phone to donald trump. The other day, that went in smoothlessly and smoothly and seamlessly, talked only to donald trump, only about Stormy Daniels saying we got to make the deal now. Its time to make the deal. This is october 2016, and thats how that phone call went in. Well, todd blanche really, really went at that phone call and did some real damage to Michael Cohens credibility about that actual phone call. He pointed out there were some Text Messages that preceded that that Michael Cohen was involved in that included his problems with a Harassing Phone Caller who he discovered to be 14 years old. He texted Keith Schiller about that Harassing Phone Caller, and what could be done about it. And he texted Keith Schiller right before the 8 02 phone call. And Keith Schillers reply in the text, which we did not learn until this crossexamination, keiths reply was call me, so the next thing that happens with those phones is that Michael Cohen calls him within the minute that Keith Schiller says call me, and Keith Schillers call me is about the Phone Harassment that Michael Cohen has been suffering from a 14yearold. And so Michael Cohens testimony became that the call was actually about two things. He quickly said something to Keith Schiller about the 14yearold, and then spoke to donald trump about its time to make the deal with Stormy Daniels. The trouble is that phone call is 1 36. Now, it is possible to conduct both of those pieces of business in that amount of time for sure, especially in the way we have heard how donald trump can speak in situations like this, on the discussion that Michael Cohen did take with donald trump. This phone call, and what that allowed what that allowed todd blanche to do is that dramatic moment that every cross examining lawyer wants in the criminal defense practice, that was a lie. He boomed. That was a lie a couple of times to Michael Cohen on the Witness Stand about Michael Cohens previous description of that 8 02 p. M. Phone call, and that was a very very powerful and effective