of today's closing arguments in trump's criminal trial, but do not go anywhere. our coverage continues with the last word and lawrence o'donnell who spent all day today in court and has the back pain to prove it. good evening, my friend. >> i was working on my posture for most of the day. but look, rachel, two full reporters notebooks and a day. i've never filled up to before, certainly not in a courtroom day. it went longer than any of us expected. longer than most of us thought was necessary, but it was one of those no stone unturned closings by the prosecution. the defense, i thought, was effective as they could be given the cards dealt them. they have some internal contradictions in their theory of the case, but really this is the criminal defense team trying to defend donald trump. good luck with that. it is going to look pretty messy. >> judge merchan said at the outset that it is a practice in his courtroom where he likes the jury to get both summations on one day. i was so worried about whether or not there would be other things trailing in from the trial that ended on the schedule they didn't want last week. i was thinking each summation would be like 90 minutes. when we got three hours and that was the short one and then four hours and 40 minute for the second one, it really was an endurance test for the jury. but the judge, who seems to be bonded with history, does seem to think that it is in their best interest that they did not have a break and that when they come back tomorrow they are looking at him and listening to him and getting to work. >> the judge did say when this was well into overtime, look, he told the lawyers i've been watching the jury. they still seem to be with us. they seem to be ready to keep going and of course the jury wants to go. they want to get this done and have it over with as soon as is reasonably possible, so the judge already said listen, we might need to go late on tuesday night. they were warned about that a week ago, so they were ready to go late tonight. but when we heard the prosecutor say maybe he had four hours of material, i have to say, it felt like are we going to be here tomorrow morning, finishing the final summation? but the judge really did not want that to happen and, rachel, just to show you, the judge does have limits to his patients. this was one of those things you had to kind of be in the courtroom four. in the last, i don't know, 10 minutes or so of steinglass's summation, which the judge was really finished with. this should be over. there was a moment when there was an objection, todd blanche, objection. it was sustained and then the prosecutor said, may we approach? now, every single time that either lawyer said may we approach in this trial, every single time, and approached the bench and had a bench conference. this time in the fourth hour of the summation, when he said to the judge, may we approach, there is no word in the transcript, because it is just the judge shaking his head no. >> talk to the hand. >> no, don't approach. don't even think about approaching. you should approach the exit, is what the judge was letting them know. >> i know you need to start your portion of the recap, but can i ask one more question about your experience in the courtroom? you have been in court a bunch of days and not just in the overflow room, but in the court itself. do you have a vibe for the jury in terms of how you think the jury is behaving and whether there might be a holdout or two who is not paying attention or may not be there in good faith? do you feel like the jury is doing a good jury job? >> i'm glad you asked that, because that is how i was about to begin this discussion. by the way, i haven't had a time to write a single word, rushing from the courthouse to hear, but this is exactly how i wanted to begin and i am glad to begin it with you. i have now heard all of the testimony and hearing every word of the summations is maybe the most important thing you can do. if you could pick one day to be there, that would be the day. so what i can tell the audience and i can tell you is i have been in a lot of courtrooms over the course of my life. i've heard a lot of testimony. i have had strong feelings about possible verdicts at the end of summation. i have certainly had strong feelings about what the obvious and correct verdict is and only some kind of jury bias can derail this. i am coming out of this with no ability to read this jury at all. this afternoon i had one of the best views of the jury i have had the entire trial. by the way, in that courtroom no one has a good view of every juror. that is impossible in the way the courtroom is laid out. sometimes you have a better view of the back row of the jurors on the right side of the room. other angles have other views. i have seen all of these jurors at different times and studied the mall. i can't find anything for any of them and i offered that as praise, because that is what they should be delivering to me and to everyone else in the courtroom. they should be delivering nothing except the attention, when merited, whether it is the witness stand or the attorneys podium as it was today, and they're just fully and constantly attentive more so than any jury i've ever seen. you don't see a moment of them drifting off at any point, even at times when some of us in the audience might drift off a bit because it might feel like we are going down a tangent. that jury is so attentive and so on point and they have never given me the slightest hint and i have not heard from anyone else, anyone getting hints of how the jury is feeling. i think the defense did everything they could do today and throughout the trial to introduce reasonable doubt and it is always a question of, is that enough reasonable doubt that the defense has introduced for enough jurors? is it enough for one juror? is it enough for 12? i don't know. did the prosecution presented its case beyond a reasonable doubt? i think that could be a very clear and relatively easy finding for this jury, but i come out able to tell you, rachel, i have no idea which way this verdict will come out. i would not be surprised by any version of this verdict. >> it's fascinating to hear you say that. i'm sorry to take off of your hour by making you do this with me, but we are starting to see the first reporting now that is attributing, you know, confidence or hope or worry about jurors to one side or the other in the case and it feels like wishful thinking and projection by, in this case, the trump side, then it does buy anything that seems actually observable in the courtroom and i feel like that is a good reality check for all of us. it was my experience as well. there is nothing that this jury has done to tell you how they are going to deliberate or whether any of them is going to act in a bad-faith way and force a hung jury when one is not deserved. it really is in the jurors hands and this judge has treated them with respect and they have treated the process with respect and that is how it is supposed to go. >> that is the case and in most of the trials i've seen, jury guesswork has been a waste of time. i have wasted none of my time on that subject in that courtroom. >> thank you, my friend. much appreciated. >> thanks, rachel. well, it was the does anyone believe that presentation by the prosecution, versus the you cannot believe michael cohen defense by the defense. that is really what it came down to. it was the loudest moment that the prosecutor had today in his closing summation, does anyone believe that? he said it very excitedly and what he was talking about was the theory of the defense that donald trump had no idea that the business records being kept for michael cohen's payments were not accurate and the prosecutor went through all of the ways in which donald trump had to know and had to have caused the falsifying of those business records, which is what the case is about. it is about the falsification of business records and when it came back to the most important, detailed points about all of that, the prosecutor's argument simply came down to, does anyone believe that? it was a very effective moment. there were several other effective moments for the prosecution and the defense today. we will take our courtroom panel around the table tonight through everything that happened. leading off our discussion tonight, adam klasfeld, who was in the courtroom today as he has been every day. usually sitting beside me, but we got separated. what happened to your past? at lunch time you did not have your past to get back in and how did you solve that problem? >> it was everyone and particularly my nightmare. it was recovered by the court staff. take you. >> and lisa rubin is here today. you love this. adam is walking in right behind me without his pass. he realizes as we go through the x-ray machine that he doesn't have a pass and he thinks this is going to work. he walks in behind me and asks the court officer to get the elevator and he says, i'm with lawrence. exactly. the officer didn't laugh, because he thought he was crazy. so he immediately sent him away from the elevator. andrew weissmann, also with us. andrew, on the way out to the studio i foolishly said to you, have you ever done a summation longer than that one? to which the answer was -- >> yes. i had a couple of things, which is it is really important for people to remember, it is not even the elephant in the room, because it is in the trial. this is the former president of the united states who may become the future president of the united states. and why is that relevant? because if you are the prosecutor one of the things you're thinking about is whether the jury will hold you to a higher standard of proof. to the question of if this were a normal case and donald trump was any other defendant, like the ceo of a company -- of course you never know what a jury is going to do, so there could be an acquittal. but if you would ask, you know, 10 prosecutors, they would be like this is going to be a conviction. as much as any case you could have that prediction. the unknown here and the reason why i could see just on glass -- could see joshua steinglass gave the soup to nuts, kind of i have to do everything is because subconsciously will the jury be saying the case involves direct evidence, but a lot of circumstantial evidence which is just as valid. is the jury going to be saying to convict him i need more than circumstantial evidence that is here? so i think that plays into it and the other quick question or quick comment about the jury, having been on a jury, yes we can think about is there a holdout right now, but the jury has no idea about what the jury thinks, because they are not deliberating. >> the guy sitting beside me, i don't know what he thinks. >> exactly. the first time they will have an opportunity to really find out what the jury is thinking is tomorrow after jury instructions and they are finally in a room where they are allowed to talk about it. i am confident they have not talked about the case in the jury room. you don't want to spend this time and then get kicked off the case because you start talking about it, because one of the jurors would report it. they don't know how the jury is thinking. they can take a straw vote, which is pretty normal when you start. that will offer the first inclination of where they are. >> lisa, what was todd blanche's best moment this morning? i say this morning and it feels like, i don't know, last week at this time. >> i think it was not todd blanche's best moment. it was when todd blanche called up to different recordings of michael cohen from his podcast and brought the jury back to michael cohen that was not the guy they saw in the courtroom, whereas josh steinglass reminded them that michael cohen spent more hours on cross- examination then he did actually working for donald trump in 2017, just to give some context. so the michael cohen that the jury came to know is a very calm, lucid, unflappable michael cohen. by playing those excerpts, the demeanor that he exhibits is itself enough to raise reasonable doubt about his motive. not just the content of wanting to see trump behind bars, but the cadence and fury and those excerpts kind of leads someone to think, wait, that is not the guy i met last week. who is that? is that to that guy really is? if i were a juror i would be going through those recordings in my head. >> michael cohen on the podcast. first time i had ever heard the podcast version of michael cohen. sounds utterly insane. >> manic almost. >> like he is in a straitjacket and screaming. then he bursts into the courtroom and it upsets the sound of the courtroom. >> particularly since we are in a room that, generally speaking, is not full of bombastic personalities. todd blanche has called up a lot of drama for him, but that is not his natural state. he is generally the everyman you want to have a beer within his natural state. josh steinglass can bring the volume, but he is not a theatrical guy. we all know who judge merchan is. a grandfatherly figure who almost when he gets angry talks more softly for affect. given that we are in this courtroom with a lot of people who don't necessarily have huge personalities, huge voices, to play those recordings of cohen where he is talking at a speed that seems unreasonable and talking at a pitch and with venom in his voice. it was very jarring to hear and if i were a juror that would have real impact on me. >> again, to go back to the morning, which was a long time ago for all of us and todd blanche's defense argument. we will cover a lot of the prosecution and one thing i say is that the evidence the prosecution has is very familiar to our audience, because that has been available to us for a long time. we have been presenting most of it for a long time, but what we have been waiting for is what is the defense? now that we heard today's most cogent presentation of the trump defense in this case. todd blanche kept coming back to reasonable doubt. he was not going for innocent. he was not going for that. he understood, look, donald trump cannot be defended as an innocent person. donald trump did stuff and did stuff within this story that you are not going to like, but did todd blanche wedge in enough reasonable doubt for a jury to cling to? >> i think the answer to that question helps explain why josh steinglass went so long. i think the strongest part of blanche's presentation was in the morning when he stuck to the law. there was this part where he was talking about the intent to fraud. there is this line, there is no other way to characterize them to call it a legal expense. the government said that is a crime. what the administrator did, that's absurd. he said later, he talked about the mechanics of how the ledger entries are entered and he pointed out it is a drop-down menu. presumably there is not in the drop-down menu, hush money to porn star. when he resigned himself to the law that was the strongest part and i think where things started to go off and where steinglass is very effective is where blanche started coming along with one-liners, calling cohen the mvp of lines. the greatest liar of all time. the living embodiment of reasonable doubt. he would do that in this scattershot way. i am a little biased toward this moment of what i felt was effective, because i predicted this moment on the show last week where i said that it seems the defense is pushing this internal inconsistency, logical inconsistency that will be called out by the prosecution and steinglass did. the moment was tarring cohen as a thief and the defense wanted to have it both ways. here is what steinglass said. none of this matters because it is not a defense for the false business records charge that one of the co-conspirators is also guilty of stealing from another and i will tell you something else that was kind of funny and steinglass laughed about. >> you presented this very well. >> and said i don't know if someone got this, but blanche said he stole $60,000, right, because he was grossed up. that means the defense is trying to have it both ways. they can call him a fief -- a fief or claim this was not a reimbursement, but not both. >> it is the internal conflict i have been watching for, which is that it is not a reimbursement. it is a paycheck here and by doing legal work. as lisa points out, the d.a. said today that michael cohen spent less time doing legal work for that money than he spent in cross-examination in this courtroom. so it is not a reimbursement, it is a paycheck. that is one defense argument and then over here is the other defense argument that in this reimbursement formula michael cohen lied about how much he should be reimbursed, so he was reimbursed too much. we get to call him a thief because it was reimbursement, but wait you just called it a paycheck and now you say he is a fief because it is reimbursement. >> in todd's defense, i do not think it was a good summation, to be clear. >> i sat there waiting for him to solve that problem. was there a way for him to solve it? >> first it is not uncommon for defense lawyers to have inconsistent arguments and thoughts, because you are only trying to kill something to one juror and you don't know what that one thing will be. so you are presenting a whole range of things and unlike where you pick your best suit to go with that, you really do try to present as much as you can and hope something sticks without saying something ridiculous. there were a few things where he should not have gone there. i am pretty sure it is his client who insisted on it, but the reason i thought there was a real problem and the gift of todd blanche to this case and to josh steinglass was a little bit of the gift of costello to josh steinglass, which is there is what todd blanche addressed and the huge problems with what he did not address. as you have pointed out, nothing in any way cogent about exhibits 35 and 36, the handwritten notes. >> $130,000, never explained. >> everyone knew. we've been sitting here and talking over and over again. you have to have a theory. if you don't have a theory, your client better plead guilty. you have to have some 30 -- some theory. there was no mention of hope hicks. just to use her for some embroidery, but not to deal with the substance. the second problem, david pecker. again, not dealing with the damaging information. nothing was said about that. to then say about the access hollywood tape, that it was not a big deal. again, you have to come up with a better argument or not address it. so josh steinglass was given all of these gifts because all of that proved nothing was said. i kept thinking, susan necheles, who i keep praising, had to be sitting there dying. >> as far away as she could be. she wasn't just at the end of the regular council table. she moved over to where the junior lawyers are to get even farther away. >> and she is the most experienced defense lawyer in that room other than susan hoffinger on the prosecution side . you just can't give that closing argument. you have to come up with something and i am not sure what i would say about exhibit 35 and 36, but you have to bring it up and at least say donald trump is not honest. you don't know what they said or did not say to him. you don't know if michael cohen said don't worry, i've talked to donald trump, so you don't have to. you have to say something about it to help explain it, because you know they are going to jump all over it. to me it is so hard to give them high marks because of what was not addressed. >> the prosecution called those exhibits the smoking guns in the case. we will show you the smoking guns, which you have already seen, by the way, when we come right back after this break. my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis held me back..