The former
president Trump has watched
others testify in a civil fraud trial.
But now it'll be his turn.
Trump will take the stand
today in a Manhattan courtroom.
It is a pivotal day in New York.
Attorney general's case against him
and his business.
Trump is accused of committing fraud
by inflating his assets
to get better terms on real estate loans.
He's rejected
all the allegations,
insisting he's done nothing wrong
and that the case
is a political witch hunt.
A reminder, this is a bench trial.
There is no jury for Trump
to play to just the judge.
The judge
who has already fined Trump twice
for violating a gag order
that prevents him
from speaking about the judge's staff.
Joining us now,
former Trump
White House
communications director,
the founder and managing partner
of SkyBridge Capital, Anthony Scaramucci,
the idea that
there has been reporting
that behind
the scenes, Trump is not worried
about testifying.
He's excited to some degree.
His son has said publicly
Do you think he's cognizant of the fact
that there are actual risks here?
To some degree?
I do.
I think the president,
for all of the bluster and so forth,
I think he's going to be very well
coached on the stand.
I think he understands
the stakes of perjury.
He doesn't want to trip over a wire
into another potential felony charge
and so and he's also a stage performer.
So he will be ready for this
and he'll be way more subdued.
And I know
if you've caught him
at any of these indictments
or arraignments,
I'm not saying he's nervous
in those situations,
but he's definitely way
more subdued than the bluster
you would see in that one of his rallies.
So,
you know, there's a lot of facets to Mr.
Trump's personality.
I don't think you're going to see
the bombastic facet
during this testimony.
He in his first deposition,
there were two in this case.
He took the fifth like some 400 times.
Right.
The second deposition, he didn't answer
questions directly.
He talked about how great his presidency
was, etc..
What would you expect him to do
on the stand today or the fifth?
No, I think he's
I think he's going to answer questions
and he's going to do that, secure
this thing, Poppy, that he does.
I don't think he's going to
answer the questions directly.
He's obviously going to
state his innocence
but remember, this is a civil trial.
And if he perjured himself,
it flips over to a felony.
And that's a very big deal for him.
And he's got 91 other indictments
going on at the same time.
Now, there's bluster
inside the campaign
related to that as well,
because you just showed
polling if he gets convicted
that's going to be a hammer blow
to his potential election,
the January 6th. Exactly.
On the election fraud. Right.
So this is this is a minor case
that could end up being a big deal
if he missed testifies.
If he says something in court
that is under oath, that is false.
It's going to be a lot of trouble
for him,
particularly with a judge
that is already giving him to gag orders.
So, you know, I know the guy pretty well.
He'll be very subdued.
He'll be polite.
And respectful in that court.
That's my prediction.
Do you think if you're in finance, you're
in New York, this is Trump's world.
This is Trump's
kind of his entire being
is wrapped up in this New York.
It's Trump's world, unfortunately.
I understand that.
But I think that we've seen
we just happen to be living at it.
Yes, indeed.
Many days and shit
like that in the last six or seven years.
But the kind of visceral response
that he's had and people around him
saying this is so personal for him.
This is his
this is his business, this is his name,
this is his everything
you think
he'll be able to keep it together
or keep it a little bit more low profile
in the stands just like that?
Yes.
So that's my prediction
because of the nature of him.
I think people don't recognize that
when it's crucial.
Okay.
That second debate,
I'll just take you back to 2016.
We're in Saint Louis.
He's in. He's under the gun.
The Access Hollywood tape has come out.
He has to figure out a way
to stay in the race.
His poll numbers
had dropped
significantly after the Access
Hollywood tape,
and he put on a pretty good two
very good performance.
It just being objective about it.
So when push comes to shove,
he knows how to operate
inside the bands
of normal human behavior.
And so I predict he'll do that.
Joining us now is Trump's
former lawyer, Michael Cohen,
who recently testified against Trump
in the civil
fraud trial, the first time in five years
they were actually face to face.
He's the author of the book Revenge
and the host of the podcast Mea Culpa.
Thanks for joining us.
We start with what we heard
from Anthony
Scaramucci last hour,
played at the start of the show
that he predicted
Trump was going to be kind of
calm, cool, collected,
stay within the normal bounds of things
on the witness stand. What do you think?
You spent more time with him
over a period,
a lengthy period of time
than just about anyone.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, I don't see it
the same way as Anthony does. Yeah.
At the beginning, he's going to try.
He's going to try very hard
to stay within the lane
because he already knows that he's
he and the judge
don't clearly see eye to eye.
And so he'll try to stay in the lane.
But as the prosecutors
continue to drill down on him
with information and with allegations
that he overinflated his net worth
by billions,
that's going to irritate him
because his net worth, his statement
of financial condition.
It's really a combination of his ID,
his ego, his super ego
all meshed
into one narcissistic sociopath.
You testified in this trial
and you said on the stand, quote,
He being Trump
would look at the total assets
and he would say,
quote, I'm
actually not worth 4.5 billion
I'm really worth more like six.
And then you went on to testify
that Allen
Weisselberg, the former CFO of the Trump
Organization, would reverse engineer
the properties to make that math
check out.
Did Trump know how that all worked?
Of course,
what we would do is we would
take in a document from the year earlier,
and we would give it to Donald.
And that's where he would make
that mob style type of statement.
I'm not worth four and a half.
I'm worth five.
In fact, I could be maybe seven or eight.
You and Alan go back to Allen's office
and figure it out.
That's the way he would speak.
Now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist
to understand what he wants,
but then being with him for over a decade
or Allen Weisselberg, for decades,
we knew exactly what he wanted.
We accomplished that task.
We then returned to his office
in order
to provide him back with the document
for his signoff.
But then you also did testify
on the stand
that essentially Trump had not specific
he told you to do that.
He implied him and Trump
use that to go to the judge
and say, Look, you're clear me.
And the judge said, no way.
But it does seem like your
testimony contradicted itself.
No, because it's the word specifically.
In other words,
he never specifically used the words.
No different again than a mob boss.
Michael Allen, go to the back.
Reverse engineer by numbers
in order to inflate my assets.
It was the matter of the word
specifically.
And, you know,
I wanted to be truthful
when answering that question.
No, he did not.
But it doesn't need the term specific
in what is the difference between implied
right and implicit.
Would there be repercussions
if you had not done it?
And I think one of the questions is,
you know,
the implication
of what he wanted
that you knew because you and Allen
had worked with him for so long,
had you not delivered on that?
What would have happened?
Probably would have been fired.
But there was no such thing
at the Trump organization.
If Donald Trump tasked you
with something,
you did it
even implicitly even implicitly.
Let's turn now
to CNN legal analyst Ali Hoenig.
All right, Ali, talk to us.
How is this testimony
going to play out inside the courtroom?
Well,
this is going to get interesting
really quickly.
Now, in any case,
the party
who calls the witness to the stand
gets to question them first.
Ordinarily, that's the easy part.
That's what we call direct examination.
It's usually a friendly witness.
It's usually been prepared.
And only after that.
Do we get the cross-examination
where the fireworks start.
But really important
to know here, the party
that is calling Donald
Trump to the witness
stand is the attorney general,
Letitia James, his office.
So they're going to get the question.
Donald Trump
first and only after that
are we going to see
Donald Trump's own team
get to question him.
A couple other courtroom dynamics
that we need to watch for here.
First of all,
the dynamic
between the judge and Donald Trump,
there has been tension between them.
The judge has made several legal rulings
against Donald Trump.
Donald Trump
has several
made several
non-legal attacks on the judge.
Will the judge be able
to keep Donald Trump in line?
And finally, really important to notice,
this jury box is empty. There is no jury.
The judge is presiding.
He is also deciding the case.
So he will be watching the witness.
With that in mind,
Also, one of the things
we need to watch for
in the next couple of hours,
will Donald Trump take the fifth?
All indications are
that he will not take the fifth,
that he will testify
coming out of his camp.
But he does
have that right to take the Fifth.
This is a civil case,
but he still can say
if my testimony might be used against me,
I can take the Fifth,
as we just saw in that clip.
Phil, in this case,
when he was deposed, over a year ago,
he took the fifth over 400 times.
Important to know.
If he does take the fifth,
there's some risk.
The judge can do what we call
draw an adverse inference,
meaning the judge can assume the worst
about what Donald Trump's
testimony would have been.
So if he takes the Fifth,
there's a real downside here.
If he doesn't take the Fifth
and answers questions,
would you expect his defense
to be largely in line
with what his sons have testified?
The accountants did it, not us. I do.
I think we're going to see
a very similar defense here.
Let's remember the allegation again.
This is a civil suit.
The allegation
by the attorney general
is that the defendants, Trump
and his businesses
grossly inflated his personal net worth
by billions of dollars.
I think we're going to see a couple
of main defenses here
First of all, as his sons did last week,
Don Jr and Eric,
I think Donald Trump is going to try
to push blame down the line and outside.
He may say, look,
those financial statements,
I didn't prepare them.
I just signed them.
I relied on my accounts.
Only gets some so far, though,
because the Trump organization
as a whole is a defendant here.
I think we also are going to see
Donald Trump
try to defend the alleged overvaluation
of his properties, Paula.
Just talk about
if we look at Seven Springs estate
that was assessed at $30 million or so,
Donald Trump
and his organization have claimed
it was worth 260 million.
Obviously, a huge discrepancy.
Trump has actually said publicly,
I think my valuations were low.
If anything, we'll see.
But that's going to be an uphill climb
because the judge has already found
before this trial started
that Trump
committed, quote, persistent fraud
by submitting false
and misleading statements
of financial condition.
So Trump's going to have to argue
to the judge, essentially,
you got it wrong.
We under valued our own assets.