the d.a. could have an uphill battle. not whether there was a lie, the business lie has been proven on paper. but whether there was this larger felony. they could argue for example that the d.a. has overreached and they could try to get the judge or the jury to look at this as something that shouldn t have gotten to this level. and there are ways for example, and we haven t gotten there yet, but they could legally try to get none instruction to the jury, to say, maybe you just want to hit him on that misdemeanor, the business stuff and end this whole thing. they could try to argue that trump wasn t in the loop. that michael cohen went rogue. we ve heard that a lot. there is a lot of unknowns. but again, the way we learn about this is through the entire record and both sides of the case so i m very happy to say that we re joined by tim parlatory. he was on the high-profile january 6 case defense and the
cohen $130,000, he had to true up the amount so that michael cohen would actually get the full $130,000. you wouldn t need to do that if these were actually legal fees. this is not how this would work. so, and as you pointed out, there are a lot of prior inconsistent statements and you ll hear from the prosecution about, look, if this was an innocent scheme, why is his story changing so much over time. yeah. so i think those are all of the kinds of things you ll hear to undermine an exalted ceo, i didn t know what david pecker and michael cohen were doing at the ground level. what about this defense that the d.a. s office is stretching a misdemeanor and they haven t even picked one aggravating crime. i think tim is right. they re going to focus on the
can have multiple purposes. it could be for a married man who just doesn t want his wife to know. and so that is something that has been tried and failed before by prosecutors. and when you then abandon the election piece and you instead go for the tax piece, then you have to kind of really put in the what is the bright line between donald trump and his accountant. how many of these things were annotated by the accountant and how many of them did donald trump even know about that. he s running a major corporation. he s not personally keeping the books on every line item. yeah. tim, this is been reallying, especially given that you represented donald trump in those jack smith cases. we want to come to all of the sources that we can as we go over the next few weeks of the trial so i hope you ll come back, sir. sure. appreciate it. that is tim parlatory. andrew weissmann is on deck for the rebuttal.
which tape? there is the cohen tape where he said, hey, we re going to pay it off? michael cohen, you know, he has given so many different stories on this. when he was initially raided by the feds, he went and told his lawyer that this was something that he did without donald trump s knowledge whatsoever. and said that he did it that way because he wanted to hide it so that melania wouldn t find out about it. so, it is one of those things where you have to go with how many different stories does michael cohen say and how much could you really believe him. yeah, we have something on that for your explanation. because i m curious how i think they re going to use that as trial. but while many people politically in america, thought, wow, this guy michael cohen has turned it around and become such an informed and strong critic of donald trump, as you know, tim,
that said, in recent weeks more and more people who are witnesses, who have been interviewed, have suggested that an indictment s forthcoming, so i wouldn t be surprised if one does. of course a lot of folks change their thinking about the mar-a-lago probe once they knew there was a tape. thank you so much. thank you. stick around because i ll be interviewing former trump attorney tim parlatory about the call with trump and arizona s governor tonight at 7:00 p.m. eastern. a new report details the failings of the deadly and chaotic u.s. withdrawal from afghanistan. the report concludes that the biden and trump administrations were to blame. but this report contains sharper criticism of the biden administration s actions. cnn s senior national security correspondent kylie atwood has details. reporter: the report paints a flawed pictures of both the biden administration and the trump administration s ability to prepare for the withdrawal