People taking in the actual facts and discussing it as a country and we will see what the jury decides. Keep it locked right here on msnbc. Tonight on all in the thing that was effective was the repetition over and over and over that Michael Cohen is a liar. Michael cohen back on the stand and under fire. Once he connected up to the text, i thought we are in for something here. It casts doubt on the veracity of a ton of his testimony. The expresident s former fixer runs into trouble under cross as the latest round of republican sycophants swooping. There are things that we can say that President Trump is unjustly not allowed to say. Tonight how the courtroom became a campaign stop. Why are we here is a good question to ask. Is trumps entourage skips the line while members of the public wait out in the cold. Ive been here more than nine hours. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. I am Alisa Menendez in for chris hayes. Day 18 of Donald Trumps criminal trial in manhattan began where it left off on tuesday with a Cross Examination of the prosecutions star witness, Michael Cohen. Trumps former fixer set 10 feet away from his old boss, once again flanked by his support team of maga elected officials. He faced me rendering faced moran during questioning. Multiple instances of lying including that he perjured himself when he pled guilty to tax evasion in 2018. He did not dispute that he often lied on behalf of donald trump, including under oath. The heated moment came when blanche finally got to the thrust of the case, the hush money payments. Phone calls he made to trump. Cohen says he called so he could hand the phone to trump so cohen could tell him he made the payment to daniels. The defense is that is not true. There are Text Messages that suggest he called to complain about threats he was receiving. Blanche up until now had taken a calm tone. He grew increasingly loud and angry as he pushed going to say he lied. He said, quote, you said you had a recollection of a phone call on october 24 and you called schiller and he gave the phone to President Trump and you gave trump an update and he said okay, good. That was a lie. You did not talk to President Trump on that night. You talked to Keith Schiller about what we went through. Our reporters in the room note that cohen kept his cool, responding that im not sure that was accurate and i believe i spoke to mister trump about the Stormy Daniels matter. By and large the defense did not seem to land many blows, especially when it comes to his core claim. He paid off Stormy Daniels on behalf of trump and reimbursed him in the form of bogus payments. The former fixer is not in the clear. The crossexamination will pick up for a third day when the trial resumes on monday. Andrew weissmann spent years as a federal prosecutor in the Department Of Justice and now cohosts the awardwinning podcast, prosecuting donald trump. Lisa rubin is an msnbc correspondent in the courtroom today. Suzanne craig is an Investigative Reporter for the New York Times who also attended the trial and they join me now. You are outside the courtroom seconds ago. Thank you for somehow teleporting yourselves here. Help me understand, lisa, what it was that blanche was trying to accomplish today. Blanche had a number of different objectives today, but if were talking about that testimony, the october 24 phone call, what he was trying to establish was cohen doesnt have an independent recollection of conversations with trump, which was the heart of his testimony, but rather has had his memory refreshed by reviewing documents and records with the District Attorneys Office so much so that he cant separate his organic memory from what he has been fed by the d. A. By Casting Doubt on the veracity of the testimony that on october 24 he did talk to trump by calling Keith Schiller, todd blanche then put in doubt the veracity of Michael Cohens other testimony and his memory about a host of conversations between him and trump alone or him and Allen Weisselberg for example or david pecker. If his goal was to undermine cohen, do you think he succeeded . Somewhat. I think there are aspects of what he did that are completely expected and the d. A. Knew. To the point that she has been making the finally todd blanche went through the prior bad acts. Susanne said that and i agree it was effective, but it is like where were you on day one . Yes i mean he has lied repeatedly. He has committed all sorts of crimes. Crimes for donald trump and also not for donald trump. So you really do have to bring that out. The piece on the october 24 call was definitely sort of a Gotcha Moment that i think was, to me it was sort of theater, because there are so many other calls. Okay, you may be able to say two things happened on the call. I did not view this as either or, but you know what, we know Keith Schiller. By documents. He would be the intermediary like, ive got the phone and here is the president. It is not like the president always picked up his own phone. I sort of went okay, maybe on the 24th, but there are so many other calls. Remember the key calls are on the 26th, because two days later there are phone records that are between the president and Michael Cohen and there are two of them and then the payment is made. The payment is not the 24th. The key payment that goes out from Central Consulting is on the 26th and you can be sure that Michael Cohen is not laying out 130,000 without knowing that donald trump approved it and that there would be some sort of agreement that it would get paid back. This is my Big Point For Sort Of Closing and Hope Hicks Telegraphed this. Michael cohen, the cross has showed, Michael Cohen is not altruistic. The idea that he laid out this money out of the goodness of his heart and is doing this for his former boss, but did not have any understanding that he was going to get repaid and he was not even going to tell him he was doing this . At the very least, get credit for it. The basic story from the defense side, i just dont think works and i did not think that so far ive heard anything that disputes it. Final point, Michael Cohen in terms of his demeanor has been remarkable. The state and his lawyer have to be very happy. He just is not taking the bait and he is staying very calm, even after he is crossexamined about things about his wife and daughter, both of which i thought were sort of not fair cross and could backfire and Michael Cohen did not explode. You have any sense in the courtroom of how this played with the jury . I was thinking about that because i want to pull back on what todd blanche was trying to achieve. He spent the whole morning talking about Michael Cohen being a liar and that repetition was there and went on and on. We knew that was coming. All of these things that he lied about were outside the trial. Other things that happened. Serious lies, lying to congress, lying in front of judges. Then they zoom in on one thing that happened in the trial and what they were trying to do and i thought was effective. The hope, i believe is that you cant believe anything he was saying and here is one really good example and he landed it and they hope to cast doubt on the rest of it. What is really important is the prosecution has to get to intent. The documents do a lot of work, but they still have to get to intent and Michael Cohen is not the only person who can get them there, but it is important that the jurors believe them. Can you help me understand something strategically, which is Michael Cohen not disputing the characterization of himself as a liar . I think Michael Cohen has fought Tooth And Nail on even the most minor details. When he has presented clear evidence that he said something in the past that was not accurate, he was clearly coached to say yes, that is not accurate or correct, i lied. That had to be difficult for him, but nonetheless, very effective because there is no other answer to it. To just accept it and move on i think was the only strategic choice for him to preserve credibility with the jury. It was a level of discipline, lets just say, that we have not seen in some of the Television Interviews weve done. Robert costello, the Rudy Giuliani associate who cohen testified about is raising his hand and saying i will testify for the defense if they want me. Listen. I kept going back and suggesting, listen, michael, if you have something truthful on donald trump, now is the time to cooperate. He kept saying over and over again, 10 to 20 times, i swear i dont have anything on donald trump. Your face tells me the whole story. Lets go back a year. That the indictment is sort of about to happen and everyone understood it and then it got delayed because the defense was saying that they wanted the grand jury to hear from mr. Costello. At the time i was thinking to myself, that is a really stupid, that is the technical legal term, move on the defense part. Because one of the few things you have on the defense side is surprise. If this were a witness with impeaching evidence, the idea that the grand jury was not going to indict, that is far fetched. You know this is not andy mccabe where there was really good reason for the grand jury not to indict. That was going to happen instead. Mr. Costello said he went to the grand jury and that means the d. A. Heard his story, crossexamined him in the grand jury and theyve had a year to figure out exactly what is wrong. In other words they know what he was going to say and they obviously thought that they could dispute it. The idea that he would take the stands now and there is not going to be any surprise, the d. A. Is going to be aware of it. Im not terribly concerned. Also what has come out are the Text Messages that, lets put it this way. The state would have a very good argument that this was lawyers reaching out to Michael Cohen to say do not flip, the president is watching and will help you and sort of dangling that. Something i am very familiar with from the mueller investigation. Sort of stay in the tent and things will be fine. You know, i think we have seen evidence that Robert Costello was probably someone that Michael Cohen continued to communicate with because he was advertising himself as a friend of Rudy Giulianis and therefore a back channel to the white house, but there is no evidence that Michael Cohen ever retained him or said to him you will be my lawyer. At best this is like Michael Cohen led Robert Costello on and Robert Costello wanted to be paid, so he continued to try to entice Michael Cohen to hire him. At the end of the day that never happened. Im not sure what costello can do other than talk about conversations between the two of them that evolve into he said, he said. As andrew said, the emails and Text Messages between them and the kinds of messages that costello tried to transmit on behalf of rudy and other allies of trump are themselves devastating. Im not sure it is in anyones interest to hear from costello, least of all the defense. So no court tomorrow. Monday we come back and you have Michael Cohen back on the stand. What are you expecting . Maybe there are more surprises, but i think we will head toward the end of him on cross and then there will be some redirect and then we head into Closing Arguments, i think, next week. Then the jury is going to be out. What did they say, half a day each for Closing Arguments . So we are looking at this going to the jury before the long weekend and if not, right after. Can you pull back the curtain for me, Andrew Weissmann, in light of what we saw today and the way that each team gets together, huddles based on where they find themselves today, knowing that there is now very little runway ahead of them. I heard you make the point that they leave this dangling question of whether or not donald trump is going to take the stand. Whether or not they will mount some defense, because it forces the prosecution to stay on their toes, to continue to plan for a variety of possible outcomes, but if you are each of those teams, what are you doing tonight, tomorrow, saturday, sunday . So, both sides, if they have done this correctly and you got experienced people on both sides, so i have no reason to think they didnt. As a trial lawyer you start with a summation and work backwards. So i think a lot of us are looking at this going, if you have not been a trial lawyer, thinking i wonder what they are doing. They know. There are things that you can see todd blanche leaving easter eggs. Its all going to come back and they are going to make arguments about it. They have already written that and yes, you have to tweak it based on things that happen with Michael Cohen, the last witness, but they already have the basic themes and structure ready. So you know they are probably rehearsing it a few times. Getting some notes as to what people think is more effective or not. I have heard Joshua Steinglass will give the summation. The lead lawyer, fantastic in court. Todd blanche is going to do the summation for the defense and you know he had a very good day today and he should be good at summations because even though he is not an experienced defense lawyer, he is an experienced prosecutor, so the summation should be something he is comfortable standing up and doing even though he has not done a lot on the defense side and finally for redirect you can be sure that susan hoffinger, who did the direct, is keeping a path like this and has a list of things that she has to decide, you know, what really needs to be corrected and what doesnt . That is definitely more of an art than a science. So interesting to hear the way lawyers go about it. It is very different from the way that you and i do our work and yet we have a list of questions we would like answered and part of what we are watching and listening for is have my questions been answered or has this created new questions . I watch them and you can tell they are keeping a list of things they want to come back to. A lot that will be done on redirect, but they are keeping a list of how this will be framed. A lot like we do when we are doing a big interview. You take notes and keep a list of things you want to come back to or weaknesses somebody said. I think it is very similar. When we were taking the subway we were talking about that. We have this team where we go to court, leave and race appear to do the show at 4 00 and we were talking about the similarities between being an investigator and a criminal prosecutor and being an investigative journalist and there really are a lot of similarities. I look forward to the miniseries. Thank you very much. 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