good day. i'm chris jansing live at msnbc headquarters in new york city. the waiting room now complete with television. new nbc news reporting about how the former president has gotten permission to outfit the drab room in lower manhattan where he has to wait for the jury's decision. he is watching sitcom reruns or coverage of his trial? has the waiting room become the epicenter of presidential campaign, both physically and strategically. plus, michael cohen, david pecker, and the 2015 trump tower meeting, the jury in donald trump's hush money case today keying in on the details of that critical encounter. asking to rehear multiple portions of related testimony as well as significant portions of jury instructions. what it could tell us about where their deliberations stand. and, yes, the law and the evidence, but as jurors deliberate, how and when will common sense impact their verdict? the important instruction from judge merchan that jurors must consider. . we have so much to get to. we begin with the jury in donald trump's hush money trial now back behind closed doors, into the sixth hour of deliberations after some key requests. they spent the morning inside the courtroom where they asked for portions of testimony from former "national enquirer" publisher david pecker and former trump lawyer, michael cohen to be read back to them. our analysts in the courthouse pointing out that a large part of what the jury heard centers around that alleged conspiracy to influence the election. and clearly looking for guidance at their request, the judge also read back a significant portion of jury instructions, 30 pages involving how to consider evidence and explaining how instructions on the law apply to the counts in this case. what we're seeing is how complicated it can be to decide whether donald trump broke laws that sound maybe on the surface pretty straightforward. 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, but in practice, it's requiring a lot of diligence and already raising questions by the jury. nbc's vaughn hillyard is reporting from outside the courthouse in new york city. also with us, deanna paul, defense attorney and former new york city prosecutor, kristy greenberg is a former sdny deputy chief, a former federal prosecutor and msnbc legal analyst. adam pollock is former new york assistant attorney general. thank you all for being here. okay, vaughn, i want to hear what the latest is from court including that brand new nbc reporting that donald trump has managed to get a tv for his waiting room. >> reporter: right, chris, our laura jarrett, our colleague is reporting that television has been procured for the holding room where donald trump has been holding now for more than six hours between the last two days. exactly what is on that television, it is not quite clear, but i know from social media activity of donald trump that he has been routinely posting fox news clips over the course of the last hour, including from jeanine pirro, who is just a few yards down from where we're standing here outside of the courthouse, from fox news clips, but we also just watched north dakota governor doug burgum, who could be a potential vice presidential pick to donald trump just five minutes ago walked down here the alleyway, he was making his way over to news max. so perhaps news max is now on his television screen. i can tell you that it is currently lunch hour here at the courthouse. during lunch hour, though, the jury continues to deliberate, and that's why you see the ticker on your screen continuing to move upwards here. today, of course, is day two of deliberation. for donald trump it is a lot of waiting and a lot of social media posting, and one post within the last hour, he put in all caps, i did nothing wrong. in fact, i did everything right. so for donald trump, he is trying to run his own pr operation from inside of this courthouse while he is forced to hold, as this jury deliberates. so the question is just how many hours or how many days await him and await all of us for these 12 jurors to make their decision. >> all right, so adam, donald trump has complained almost every day about the way he's being treated, that this was not a fair prosecution. he likes to rail against the judge. he likes to rail against other people involved in this, but then again, at least in terms of his request, he's gotten an awful lot of what he's asked for, including a television set while he's waiting. have you ever seen another defendant treated this way? >> i can't remember seeing a television set provided in any other case, nor can i imagine any of us have. >> kristy, you're laughing so hard. >> yeah, it just -- i mean, he's definitely gotten accommodations that other defendants have not had, and i think sitting in this courtroom day in and day out as i have, you really see this judge has i think bent over backwards to be respectful and cordial of this defendant in particular, a guy who's outside his very courtroom railing against the judge, and the judge has exercised such restraint, i think, in how he's responded. >> is that okay if he gets treated maybe a little better than some other defendants might? or is that unfair to even suggest that? >> i think that it was notable when we had the contempt of the gag order and the judge said i really don't want to send you to prison. you're potentially the next president of the united states. the judge was taking these factors into consideration, at least in some part, and so whether that's okay or not, i think the key point is that trump is completely wrong to say that he's been unfairly treated. he's completely wrong to say that the judge is treating him worse than the next defendant. >> we've talked a lot, deanna, about the job that the defense team has in keeping donald trump on -- in a way that is not going to get him into trouble. let's just put it that way, right? and it's not unusual to have to manage a client when you're a defense attorney, but is essentially what the judge is doing in some ways defendant management? >> i don't know if i would call it defendant management per se, but i was in the courtroom when he spoke to donald trump about the gag order, and urged him, not only for donald trump but also for the court officers that would have to execute this if they put him in. defense attorneys, the hardest thing for them, i think, is not knowing his way to testify the next day, and that's donald trump because the judge wouldn't force the prosecutors to tell them. >> vaughn, let's go back to what happened for the majority of the day today, which is the request that came from jurors that they wanted to hear back some of the testimony but also part of the judge's instructions. what stands out there? >> right, number one, it comes down to the testimony of david pecker and michael cohen from 2015 and 2016 as it related to what the prosecution has alleged was the beginning of the experience to commit election fraud and to suppress the story of stormy daniels, and the testimony, there were four different parts of it, one of them was a phone call between donald trump and david pecker, that david pecker says took place in the summer of 2016 as it related to the potential purchasing of karen mcdougal's story. there was testimony related directly to the august 2015 trump tower meeting that donald trump had with david pecker and michael cohen, and then there was another phone call over the life rights, lifetime rights of karen mcdougal's story, and the purchasing of them. and so for the jury i think it's notable that there was discussion inside of that deliberation room and a desire to have this testimony read back to them because it specifically pertains to the underlying crime that the prosecution has alleged. this is a complex case. of course there is the financial -- there is the fraudulent business records component of this, but then there is the election fraud part of this, and that is where you see the jury apparently interested in the internal discussions that were taking place and the extent to which perhaps donald trump was the one that was directing these conversations to take place, and now we should also note that as part of this that there are audio recordings that they have in their possession on this laptop that the jury has in their room, and they have requested this morning the ability to have headphones to be able to more effectively listen to these multiple audio recordings that conclude a september 2016 audio recording that michael cohen says that he recorded of donald trump, in which he contends that he was discussing the $150,000 payment to karencdougal. then there was that phone call between michael cohen and keith davidson in october of 2017, in which he expressed that donald trump had regretted buying stormy daniels' story. there is a lot that this jury has to comb through here, and to the extent that they do, we are getting some tidbits of potential interest points for this jury coming out of these notes and these requests directly to judge merchan. >> so let me ask you, kristy, about one specific portion of the readback. that is when pecker was asked about his phone call. when i got on the phone, mr. trump said to me i spoke to michael, presumably meaning michael cohen -- karen is a nice girl. is it true that a mexican group is looking to buy her story for $8 million donald trump asks? i said, this is, again, pecker, i absolutely don't believe there is a mexican group out there to buy a story for $8 million. and then he said, what do you think i should do? i said i think you should buy the story and take it off the market. we should also point out it's been more than a month since they heard this testimony and some other testimony, but does that tell you anything important about where their brains are? >> yes. so this is exactly what the prosecutor, joshua steinglass told them that they should focus on in his closing. he said -- a lot of documents in this case, a lot of witnesses, don't lose sight of the significance of this phone call: and so the fact that the jury has now asked to get that testimony read back is, i think, a good thing for the prosecutors because it shows a number of things. one, donald trump knew who karen mcdougal was. she's a nice girl. two, they're talking about whether or not to purchase this story. remember, that goes back to that trump tower meeting that they also wanted to hear about where part of the agreement is finding these negative stories from women and killing them, and to help the campaign, and then the other thing it shows is trump is deputizing michael cohen, right? at the end of that call, according to pecker, he said, well, you know, i'll have michael get in touch with you, and that's important because michael cohen then follows up with pecker and they arrange for ami to make the payment to karen mcdougal. that's the corporate contribution that would be the unlawful means in this second election law conspiracy crime. >> so i also want to talk about, adam, the readback of pecker and cohen's testimony back to back. it is always interesting when you're at a trial doing a trial, covering a trial as we have done. is that, you know, you can't like say let's do this witness and we're going to talk about this thing, and then we're going to have this other witness talk about this thing and go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, it doesn't work that way, right? the jury clearly wanted to look at these two pieces of testimony about the same incident, but they were actually given three weeks apart. do you think it helps one side or the other? >> i think it definitely helps the prosecution. this was a relatively long trial. what has it been, four weeks now at least, so bringing those two elements of testimony, those two witnesses, as you said, they can't jump back and forth, having them read right next to each other i think is very powerful for the prosecution here. >> do you think, deanna, that specific pieces of testimony that we heard read today suggest a kind of road map that the jury is following? >> i do, and juries are wild cards. you never really know what they're going to do until the end. if you look at what they ask for, they're starting in 2015 at trump tower, which is where the conspiracy, alleged conspiracy began, and then like you said, they're going into the testimony of both pecker and cohen, and the judge instructed them yesterday that for accomplice liability in new york, michael cohen's an accomplice, they can't just convict on michael cohen's testimony alone, so having david pecker's testimony as well, to make sure they corroborate each other is a really good sign for the prosecution. >> i also want to bring in msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin who has been inside the courtroom all morning long. okay, lisa, bring us inside that courtroom. your specific observations and if you have clues to what the jurors may be doing here. >> reporter: it's always difficult, chris, to read the tea leaves based on juror body language, but i will tell you there were some points in time where there were more jurors taking notes than there weren't, and i've never seen such an attentive jury. all the body language was focused on judge merchan as he was re-reading the jury instructions this morning, and there was one in particular that made me kind of stand up at attention because this is when i noticed the pen writing pick up a little bit, and that's where they got to the definition of intent, and in particular, this part. in determining whether donald trump had the requisite criminal intent, the instructions say the jury may consider the person's conduct and all of the circumstances surrounding that conduct including, but not limited to the following, and i'm on page 28 of the jury instructions for anyone who has them in front of them, either at the table or at home. what if anything did the person do or say, what result followed the person's conduct, and was that result the natural, necessary, and probable consequence of that conduct? that matters because trump's own fingerprints on the falsification of the business records are few and far between. at best, he signed nine checks to michael cohen. however, michael cohen places him at a meeting in january of 2017 with allen weisselberg where he and weisselberg go in. they've got a bank statement from michael cohen's llc that reflects a wire transfer to stormy daniels' lawyer of 130,000, and then the document contains handwriting from both weisselberg on the left, cohen on the right, mapping out what that repayment scheme is going to look like. cohen testified that trump not only approved that repayment in 12 installments, but once he did that, sort of signaled to them, now that that's taken care of, d.c.'s going to be a hell of a ride. in other words, he was almost signaling, well, we've gotten that out of the way, now it's time to be president. and so, you know, was it foreseeable to donald trump having approved that repayment scheme that that would have happened? that is what the jurors are entitled to take into account when they're measuring whether donald trump had the criminal intent to falsify records, even if he didn't do the falsification himself, if he caused it, and if his intent was such that he would reasonably foresee what was going to happen after that meeting, if the jurors credit michael cohen's account of that meeting, they are likely based on the recitation here that they were paying such careful attention to to find that he did have the requisite intent. >> sometimes a when you listen to what juries want read back, it's very difficult to see where they're going with it. sometimes it can seem unrelated or you're not sure how one part of it goes with the other part of it. does it seem to you, again, we can't get into their heads. we don't know what the conversations are, but they're approaching this methodically, that it makes sense that the various things that they asked to have read today. >> there is one part of what they asked for that makes perfect sense to me or maybe three-fourths of it makes perfect sense to me. there's one thing that's still a question mark in my head. let's go to the first part. hearing david pecker's testimony about the august 2015 meeting just right up against michael cohen's testimony, i was struck and i know our colleague katy tur was too, by the similarities between their two stories. told, you know, literally miles apart at least in terms of the presentation of evidence in this case. and yet, their accounts are markedly similar. so, again, to deanna's point, if you are trying to assure yourself that you're not going to convict donald trump just based on the testimony of his accomplice michael cohen, hearing those two accounts and hearing how well, pecker's account which came first corroborates that of cohen, which he's been telling for years, that would be meaningful to you. the one thing that i'm still scratching my head about is that the jurors asked for a readback on pecker's testimony about his decision not to go through with the transfer of life rights from ami to donald trump. that's a transfer that he said he put the kibosh on after consulting with the general counsel of american media. why the jurors wanted to hear that in particular, it's still leaving me scratching my head because it was as a result of that decision that donald trump didn't end up purchasing karen mcdougal's life rights and that the a party that made that purchase and in the end made a contribution that the fec and the southern district of new york, the federal prosecutors decided was an unlawful campaign contribution, they did that and were left holding the bag because of david pecker's decision to call off that deal, not donald trump's. it may be porn to the jury to remind themselves that it wasn't trump who backed out of the deal, but in fact, it was pecker based on legal advice that he received. and i should note, he never detailed it. the judge was careful to guard the attorney/client privilege between pecker and his lawyer. the in-house lawyer basically said to pecker, this is a no-go, and he was concerned enough to call michael cohen and in his own testimony tell cohen to rip it up. at which point cohen said to him, again, according to pecker's testimony, the boss is going to be very angry with you, chris. >> let me go back to vaughn hillyard. i understand that once again the former president as he waits to hear anything more from the jury has been busy on social media. >> reporter: yeah, we've been monitoring, of course, over the course of the last weeks, not only his television and right wing radio outlet appearances, but also his social media account, and there have been a vast number of misrepresentations about the case brought against him in the proceedings of this courtroom. this is the latest here in just the last five minutes as he is holding in that side room inside of his courthouse. he put on social media saying in part, quote, does anybody ask why the government -- he goes on to say -- failed to bring in a long list of witnesses that they so viciously threatened everybody with? the prosecutors didn't use them because these people would have been very bad for the government's case. of course you would think that he would be directly alluding to the likes of his former bodyguard and his former chief financial officer at the trump organization, allen weisselberg, both of those men not being called by the prosecution to come testify. donald trump had hoped that those individuals would have potentially refuted some of the testimony heard by witnesses, but this is the part, again where we get to the misrepresentations of this case and the proceedings inside of the courtroom. donald trump leaves out the fact that his defense team also had the opportunity to call up witnesses they desired to call 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