The final witness for the prosecution. I have wind, im not a liar. Michael cohen back on the stand. We went through all times Michael Cohen has led, his legal troubles, the fact that he has been disbarred. Under crossexamination from the defense. He is obsessed with revenge against donald trump, that is what they are saying. As donald trump roles and with a full entourage, including the Speaker Of The House. President trumps is a friend and i wanted to be here to support him. Tonight, chris hayes and alex wagner break down what happened inside and outside the courtroom, with Rachel Maddow, Lawrence Odonnell, katie phang, and msnbc legal and political experts when special Coverage Of Trump On Trial begins right now. Good evening from new york, and chris hayes along with alex wagner. Thank you for joining us for our special coverage of day 17 of Donald Trumps criminal trial. We will be joined by Rachel Maddow and Lawrence Odonnell in just a minute to become what we heard from the most pivotal witness in the case, Michael Cohen today. In my case, the experience was firsthand, as i watched Michael Cohen testify life in the courthouse. The question looming over today, particularly today because crossexamination began, how did Michael Cohen do . The morning began with Michael Cohen finishing his direct testimony with the prosecution before a much anticipated Cross Examination from the defense in the afternoon. From the stand, well he told the jury the story that is, by now, a from there one, at least in the broad outlines. Michael cohens transformation from a loyal, conniving, Energetic Hustler on behalf of donald trump, who both admired and emulated his boss, to a fierce trump critic, who has now spent years cooperating with various investigations into him and occasionally during the midnight Tiktok Railing against him. The transformation from Trump Acolyte To trump critic effectively destroyed that previous version of Michael Cohens life, a life you get the since he quit enjoyed in many ways. Today, he said 10 feet away from the man responsible for all of that while he outlined what a prosecutors say is an illegal scheme to falsify Business Records in order to hide the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels. The problem, of course, is that, much like his former boss, Michael Cohen is a guy whos got a long record of not telling the truth. Of obligating them of avoiding, aligning. At least from where i was sitting today in the courthouse, when it came to the core allegations at hand here, we will discuss this throughout the next few hours, Michael Cohen did seem sincere. For at least like he was on the level. The major central question, one that might well decide the case is what the jury makes of the man that they saw on the stand today. I have a lot of questions for you. Great. I do want to say, though, i was very much struck over the course of the last few days and it came to a head today that a certain essential part of the strategy for the defense seems to be predicated on the assumption that people are no bigger than the jobs they do, right . And that Stormy Daniels would reveal herself on the stand to be a sleazy bottom. Here and under withering Cross Examination, she would just fall like a house of cards. The same assumption seemed to be made for Michael Cohen. As it turns out, Stormy Daniels was incredibly strong, really sort of resilient witness that seemed incredibly credible, in some ways humiliated the defense in the Cross Examination. Michael cohen, who they tried to prod into being like a rage machine, to reveal that he was nothing more than a Bottom Feeding Grifter ended up keeping his composure, right . Throughout the trial, they would sort of give, they would give the jury these statements that he made, these outlandish statements and he would say sounds like something i said. He was unapologetic. You could tell he took pride in the work that he did and, i dont know, he seemed really credible, at least on paper. What was it like in the courtroom . I will say throughout the day, you start with the direct and then went to the Cross Examination after the lunch break. Generally as my first time in that courtroom unlike tommy tuberville, i cannot find it particularly depressing. On the scale of the visible buildings for a civic purpose, it is probably a 7 or 8 out of 10. When i went to school in the 80s, probably like him before. This is like a 7 or 8. Judge juan merchan , the presiding judge, has tremendous and culpable equanimity with which he orders the proceedings. It feels like the epitome of judicial Temperament Exuding from the bench. Everything that is happening is orderly and moving along. In terms of Michael Cohen, i agree with you that, again, lisa rubin had this point, we will talk to her later in this hour, we got the best version of Michael Cohen yesterday. The question today was what theyre going to be some blowup moment or was there going to be a moment of Colonel Jessup and A Few Good Men where he slams the podium and says like yes, im lying. Whatever, i dont know what the fantasy was. You are right that it kept computer the entire time and he maintained that kind of more quiet, chastened version of himself. A few plumbers of the other Michael Cohen. Like to do a cheeto faced dictator . Im matching up all the assertions together. He had sort of relinquished like his rage in a lot of ways, for the most part. And, that seemed really powerful to me. I will say, and we will talk about this more throughout the evening, i will say on cross, there were moments where he seemed nervous, shifty, a little cottonmouth, going for water. His eyes were darting. There were a few very long pauses. When you ask someone a question, that paz doesnt make you think like now im going to get the truth, right . There was a little bit of that. Again, all of that i think is atmospheric because none of that pertain and i think we will talk about through the next few hours one of that really drilled down to the sort of core questions at issue for guilt or innocence of the defendant, who sat there, i will say, with the phalanx of friends, Family Members, the person, his buffer zone, the person that puts together the word document that has all the nice articles about him. We will talk about that. You had an eagles eye view. Edited get to see the sausage getting made, the sausage that gets fed to Donald Trumps ego being made. And, this was, that is a good example, i think. Sort of capitalizes a little bit of the cross, which is the Defense Lawyer saying we know the conversion story. I dont know how much the jurors know, todd blanche saying in your view, President Trumps speaks from the heart. Michael cohen, i said that. This is when Michael Cohen is still working with the campaign you said that. Michael cohen, sans right. Todd blanche. At the time, you werent lying, right . Michael cohen, at that time, i was kneedeep into the court of donald trump, yes. That was the store that got told today was we watched under direct the trajectory of Michael Cohen in the fold and outside of default and that fema continued in the Cross Examination of is there something the jury should suspect about Michael Cohen because he went from in the fold to outside the fold . We are joined by Rachel Maddow and Lawrence Odonnell, who was also at the courthouse today. The simple Scorecard Reporting is not a single point, relevant point was scored against Michael Cohen on Cross Examination. To everyones surprise, the demeanor held up. That was the suspense of last night. The suspense was well, that is the most remarkable version of Michael Cohen we have ever seen, those of us who have watched him in the courtroom yesterday. Can he do it on cross when he is challenged, he such a defensive guy, he such a combative guy in every other environment. But he was contained, as most people are, by the pressures of the conference of the courtroom, especially the Witness Stand. You have to remember that when lives end up in a Criminal Court Room and you are the key witness for a criminal prosecution for yours is a broken life because you are here as the eyewitness to your friends murder, you are part of a tragedy yourself. Michael cohens life was broken by all of this. What you saw on the Witness Stand was this broken man. I love some of what we saw from the courtroom art. The capturing of Michael Cohens mournful face, which is what this was. This was someone morning for his own mistakes, morning for his own terrible mistakes that hes made in his life and then describing, eventually, it was a Family Intervention to get him to turn away from what was literally his life of crime with donald trump and save what could be left of his life by the simple course of telling the truth to prosecutors, doing time in prison, it turns out, will be a consequence of this. Chris, one thing i would say about Michael Cohens pauses on Answering Questions is i took every one of those to actually be a smart moment. That just might be the jury wont be thinking the way i am about it but having seen a lot of witnesses, especially lawyer witnesses, what hes doing is hes listening to every word you just said and deciding how to answer it, whether he should answer it, whether he should ask for clarification, and it never felt to me like there was Something Weird about the paz but it could, to a jury, who doesnt know that that is what i see going through his mind. There was a little bit of this, theres a little bit of this having been through depositions, theres a little bit of this, a question is asked and you sort of quibble the characterization so you brushback a little bit. 25 comes back. At one point, there was a big stand off, was that a lie . It wasnt truthful. Was it a lie . If you want to call it. Not asking if you want to call it a line. Theres a few of those standoffs. I guess that was intentional on Michael Cohens part because he is a lawyer, he is being careful and he does understand the weight and i think that last thing, the weight of all of this, which, again, we were talking yesterday, everyone was talking like is this going to last . It was very clear the spectral presence that he had, the gaunt, broken guy who, that remained throughout. Rachel, obviously you were following closely today, im sure. What was your big take away . My big take away was, is this all there is . From the defense. I think that the defense is under no obligation to put any witnesses forward at all. Lawrence has been very taken with it and persuasive in saying there is 0 chance that they will put the defendant, that they will put their own client, donald trump, on the stand in his own defense. We dont know if they will put anybody. So, if they dont do this is to their defense. The Cross Examination of Michael Cohen is of the case for the defense. To get what todd blanche was able to get out of him today, there was nothing , which it makes me feel like they must be incredibly confident in their ability to try to get a Mistrial Ruling here or something surprising is going to happen on thursday, or they just didnt bring it because there really was nothing, especially when you consider that when the prosecution laid out their case at the outset, they basically said this is a documents case, we are going to put Michael Cohen on the stand, hes a controversial guy, and for good reason and you are going to hear about why but everything that we are going to need to prove to you in order for you to come back with a guilty verdict will be bolstered by corroborating evidence by multiple witnesses and by documents. Thus far, they spent the last couple of weeks doing that, getting all the documents, authenticating the document, given the corroborating witness testimony, they get to their culminating witness, Michael Cohen, and he performs perfectly as a witness for them. He doesnt lose his cool, as you guys were saying, he answers all the right questions, he doesnt seem to, you know, Go Into Weird Soliloquies or sidebars that might be picked apart on Cross Examination. They hand him over to the defense today after lunch. I have to tell you, i was on tender hooks, i thought this was it, this is how we are going to see they keep donald trump out of prison and it was just nothing. So, maybe thursday will be something. But, otherwise, it looks like they are just not making a difference at all. I was, i was struck by the same thing. Not only that, where is the beef . But also this sort of spaghetti against the wall nature of the line of questioning from the defense, rachel, just they tried to paint Michael Cohen as a bunch of different things, and unreliable narrator or a grifter or someone who was in it for himself, selfish. A spurned lover, basically. Someone who was obsessed with donald trump and when he was cast aside for not getting a position in the white house, not getting the job he was intent on destroying donald trump. Did you find any of those characterizations regularly effective . I might have found anyone of them effective at the prosecution not laid on them out in advance to tell us to put them all in context and tell us what they mean. I didnt know that Michael Cohen had called the Defense Lawyer, todd blanche , a quiet little swearword for the very first thing he led with, i didnt know he had complained about trumps Defense Lawyers in a tiktok video or something. That was new, okay. Is that going to change my view about what Michael Cohen brings to this case . No. The prosecution did a good job at eliciting from all of the other witnesses, i couldnt stand Michael Cohen, Michael Cohen called himself a lawyer. Michael cohen, a fixer, he only fixes things that he broke. We got all of this stuff, all of the ad hominem anything you could want about Michael Cohen weve already had. Then they put it all in context. Heres what he wants when he served donald trump, heres when he stopped serving donald trump, here is what he has done since, here are the since he has committed and the way he has atoned. It has all been out there in advance. For todd blanche to be out as Donald TrumpsDefense Lawyer saying Michael Cohen, didnt you like to congress . The jury must be sitting there yes, we heard the expiration for that already, we know what that is, why are you picking it up again . The thing that struck me today on that point, on the cross is i do think, i mean, there are plausible stories to tell here. For instance, right, and they are spending a lot of time on his podcast and the fact that there was a moment, all the different merchandise you sell on your website, your associated websites that show donald trump in prison and send them to the because, the white house, if that about President Trumps . Yes it is. Okay, theres a story that tells this guy is so out for revenge he will do whatever it takes to put him behind bars, which is what is being implied. That part at least was legible to me. There were large parts of the cross today that i could not follow. And, i think im pretty good at following this stuff, generally. I followed most of, i followed the direct. Part of this i will just say is like a small color thing, this is something we can talk about with our legal experts. In the direct, all of the evidence is being put up for all of us to see, which is extremely helpful because you can see the documents. Here is the paystub. During the cross, and they would present a document to Michael Cohen to refresh his memory, it was not admitted into evidence broadly, which meant hes looking at a screen. You dont see what the do