Michael, I want to
get your take on on
how we started the day today,
with, the judge ruling
that Trump
was in contempt of court
for the 10th time,
connected to violating the gag order.
And while he threatened jail.
Well, he has mentioned
the possibility of jail time before,
since he didn't believe that $1,000,
would actually make a difference
to Donald Trump.
today,
we seem to see him
make the most serious threat yet.
I just want your read on.
On the judge
of the judge's posturing today.
And whether you think
it actually is a real possibility
that Donald Trump
gets put behind bars here.
So what the judge did
today was very smart.
I think there were three
possible contempt charges.
One, with respect to comments about,
Michael Cohen.
One with respect to David Pecker
and one with respect to the jury.
He only found him in contempt
with respect to the jury,
saying in the sense
the other two are more or less fair game.
But he said to him, look,
enough's enough.
And if this persists,
I'm going to have to do something
that is going to catch your attention.
And that is the possibility of jail.
Now
he he recognizes that going
to a federal prison or a state prison
would be very problematic.
But each courthouse
that I've ever practiced in has a lockup,
essentially a jail
cell behind the courtroom,
which is where they hold
people who come from jails
and then have to testify in the courtroom
so that they don't escape.
The judge could say, you know what?
I'm stepping you back,
putting you in that cell.
You'll sit there for an hour
and get a sense of what
this will continue to be for you
if you don't honor my order.
So there's a possible interim step,
that that can take place a time timeout,
if you will,
to think about it in this back jail cell.
And we'll see if Trump
really gets the message.
I want to bring in CNN legal
analyst Norm Eisen, who has been in court
and is here with me now.
He's the former House
judiciary special counsel
in Trump's first impeachment
trial
and has litigated the cases
against Trump previously.
Also, former white House ethics are norm.
All right.
You and I were talking beforehand.
Really interesting day.
Over the course of it,
we were kind of wondering
how the judge would fare
on these new for alleged
gag order violations.
We saw him hone in on one.
What was your reaction to him
sort of drawing the line
and saying, look,
at this point,
the next time you do this,
it is going to be jail.
Omar, in a trial
that has had more than its share
of dramatic moments
already, we're only
about a third of the way through.
This was
perhaps the most intense confrontation
that we've seen yet.
Donald Trump has
very persistently violated
this gag order.
There's only $1,000 per,
violation that the judge can fine him.
He warned
when he found the first nine violations
that he would up the ante.
Today, he found a 10th violation.
And he told Trump,
if you keep this up,
you are going to force me
to put you in jail.
As difficult
as that will be for the trial,
for the personnel and for the country.
Yeah.
and that was just
how the day started today.
because then, we've been hearing
testimony from Jeffrey Mcconney,
the former,
longtime, controller
at the Trump Organization
and the way we've sort of been listening
to it
and sort of framing it in discussions
is there's exciting testimony.
There's not so exciting testimony,
but still important testimony.
And as,
Mcconney has been going
through some of the specifics
of the financial relationships
between Cohen,
the Trump
Organization, Trump himself,
coming from his personal account.
what is your read on the testimony
that we've seen so far from Mcconney?
Well, after the intensity
of the judge's confrontation
with Trump and the look that Trump gave
the judge, it was intense on both sides.
It was that identical look,
as you saw in his mugshot.
Omar, after that,
we settled into an extremely important
but very mundane part of the case.
And that is this is,
after all, a prosecution
for 34 false business records.
Now, to be felonies,
there has to be an intent
to cover up another crime.
The entire trial
so far, the first two weeks of testimony
have focused on the other crime,
the alleged election
interference, crimes
under federal and state law.
Today, Jeffrey Mcconney,
accounting professional,
took us through the accounting crimes.
It was mundane.
It was ordinary. It was low key.
But I was watching the jury,
and the jury was paying
very close attention.
The prosecution kind of gave them
their dessert first,
and now it's the vegetables.
But the jury is focused on that.
And of course,
that's critically important
because you've got to have the jury
following the,
trail of breadcrumbs on these 34 false
alleged false documents.
And we've seen over the course of today
that the jury, has been following
some of the documents
that have been presented on screens
that they've had, to your point,
keeping up with
what's been presented in court,
but you also brought up something,
really interesting
because, look,
it's been billed
as the hush money case in many circles,
but it has to do
with election interference.
It has to do with the hush money that,
of course,
we've been talking about,
but also with what the charges,
are centered on,
which is the falsifying
business records here.
do you see this as the transition
into the falsifying business records,
the alleged
falsified business
records portion of this case?
Or is this just sort of a tidbit here?
it's fascinating
how they've chosen to do it.
The answer
is that they are now introducing
the second main feature
or part of the case.
And we're going to see alternation
between these two
different parts of the case
as we go forward.
The alleged campaign and election
and tax crimes.
The tax crimes came up today two
that make the falsification a felony,
plus the falsification itself.
Without that part one,
the drama of the hush money payments that
the prosecution claims
were campaign and election interference.
Well,
sometimes they call them
election fraud
or illegal election influence.
That's the allegation.
Without that,
these 34 documents
that we heard about all morning
would just be misdemeanors.
It's that intent to commit another crime.
Yeah.
You know, as you know,
because we've talked about it,
my view from the get go
has been it's a mistake
to call it the hush money case.
Hush money is not a crime.
And the point of the hush money
was, according to prosecutors,
to interfere
with illegally influence an election.
That's really what they've been arguing.
But today's document evidence
just as important to prove beyond
a reasonable doubt
if they can get their 100%.
I also want to bring in, Jeff Swartz.
he's a former
Florida judge and law professor,
who joins me now.
and, Jeff,
I'm curious from from your perspective,
I want to get your take on
one of the things we heard from,
the witness today, Jeffrey Mcconney,
is that these payments,
in many cases, were coming
from Donald Trump's personal account.
And I'm curious, you is
do you see that as significant?
It's very
significant because the chances are
that there's nothing
coming out of his account
that he isn't
actually signing for himself
and that he doesn't have knowledge of.
as we all know, Mr.
Trump has a reputation
of being rather frugal,
especially when he's
not spending money on himself.
So here I think that
because this is so important to him,
there's no way money's
coming out of his account
that he doesn't know about.
And look, we've, we've talked about it.
You even joked about,
in some cases that the testimony
today is a little bit more, mundane,
but still very, very important.
I want to go a little bit back
to to what
some may have seen as exciting, testimony
when Hope Hicks was on the stand
on Friday.
what what
do you think the prosecution
was able to get out of her?
And what do you think
the defense was able to get out of here?
Because they did seem to score
a few points in their direction
during that testimony.
Well, the defense scored points
in getting hold picks
to say that Michael Cohen,
ran off on his own, that he was robo.
he didn't do anything
to fix
something that he hadn't broken himself
kind of
got into what his role was
with the Trump Organization
and how important he was,
but to the same extent,
she gave them
the flavor of what was going on inside
the Trump Organization,
as all of these different
things were coming to light,
things that were dangerous to his,
campaign
and how he was concentrating
on his campaign, not on his family,
and that it was all consuming
during those last couple of weeks
of the campaign.
That's important, because the key to this
is that the purpose
that is the
more substantial purpose
of what they were doing
was to hide contributions
they were making, in essence,
to the campaign,
and that they were hiding these payments
to influence the campaign.
And she gave them,
just a big shot of that. On Friday.
Yeah.
And she had that
interesting perspective as being both
the press secretary on the campaign.
But of course, the communications
director, once
she was in the white House as well,
where she, as she testified,
had, access
to what she said
were some reflections,
over the timing of
when all this was, was going on.
Norm,
just before we
go, you're about
to head back into court right now.
as prosecutors reentered
the courtroom,
we've been on a break to this point.
what are you looking for?
And the remainder
of of McConnell's testimony today?
I'll put on my defense lawyer hat,
because most of my career,
I was a defense lawyer. What?
We haven't yet heard from Mcconney.
And I think where the defense
is going to open
when they get to cross-examine him
is, did Donald Trump ever tell you
that he was signing this check
in order to make an illegal contract
campaign contribution? No.
Did Donald Trump
ever talk to you
about why he was signing this check?
No.
Were you there
when Donald Trump
and Michael Cohen supposedly
discussed these payments? No.
So the
the defense is going to hammer,
as they did with Hope
Hicks at some of the gaps
and the helpful information
that they can elicit.