'I have to jump in': Trump lawyer interrupted by MSNBC host while discussing criminal case – Raw Story
Matthew Chapman is a video game designer who attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and lives in San Marcos, Texas. Before joining Raw Story, he wrote for Shareblue and AlterNet, specializing in election and policy coverage.
Former President Donald Trump's one-time attorney Tim Parlatore clashed with MSNBC's Ari Melber on Friday over the issue of how the former president could effectively impeach the testimony of Michael Cohen, another former Trump attorney planning to give evidence against him in the Manhattan hush payment trial.
The dispute flared when Parlatore explained how the Trump camp could use yet another lawyer linked to Trump, Bob Costello — and Melber, himself a lawyer, was unconvinced.
"A Trump-connected lawyer who has his own credibility issues including publicly releasing what would have been attorney/client privileged information," said Melber. "But you're saying that that lawyer that represented Cohen, you're saying that could be useful as trial, why? Because he had that period of time and he would say this is the version of the story before the story changed again?"
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"He is able to give Michael Cohen nonpublic story at the time, when he had the most motivation to point the finger at Donald Trump, Michael Cohen signed a complete privilege waiver so he didn't release anything privileged and said this is the information that when the Southern District of New York was investigating this case, they interviewed Michael Cohen, then they interviewed Bob Costello and they had Michael Cohen sign a privilege waiver and then based on the information that Bob Costello gave them."
"That is why the U.S. attorney's office decided not to bring this case," he continued. "Because they knew they couldn't rely on the word of Michael Cohen. So even though—"
"Well, I have to jump in on this," Melber cut in. "Whether or not Cohen waived that for the purposes of his cooperation with the government, and I think most lawyers would say going out and talking about a former client and describing his mental anguish or potential alleged suicidal ideation is beyond the pale. And then two, it is a complex set of reasons why the SDNY didn't go forward with the wider case. That is the simplest way I could put it."
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Former President Donald Trump's trial antics are already starting to hurt him, former federal prosecutor Harry Litman explained to MSNBC's Joy Reid on Friday — and make life hell for his attorneys.
The problem is, he explained, Trump's repeated penchant for attacking witnesses and violating gag orders has led to prosecutors keeping a witness who will testify at trial secret, and the judge allowing that would effectively be a "serious sanction" against Trump's behavior that will make preparing his defense considerably harder.
"Harry, let's get in on what the prosecutors are thinking now," said Reid. "They have to give the name of whoever that person is." She noted that authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat summed up the situation by agreeing with the former president's niece, psychologist Mary Trump: "Some individuals cannot bear the feeling of being restrained by individuals."
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"As soon as that name is released, we know what he's going to do," Reid added.
"Well, a few things," said Litman. "First, their nonrelease, it's not a small point. You can guarantee that the two Trump lawyers are going to have a hellish weekend. It's one thing to prepare solidly to cross-examine someone you know will be, but it could be anyone at all. That's a serious sort of sanction for his misbehavior. But second, yes, it is exactly as you say, there's been on the one hand, Judge Merchan made quick work of things, but yet there are these eruptions of kind of chaos and stress and we have almost a tale of two trials. And as it goes forward, those will be the sort of high points that people remember and this trial could be really freighted going forward or it could stay smooth."
All told, he added, "It's been two different kinds of weeks, it seems to me."
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Harry Litman says Trump faces a "serious sanction" at trialwww.youtube.com
Former President Donald Trump has a number of defenses planned at his criminal hush money trial in Manhattan, and one of the biggest is trying to discredit his former attorney Michael Cohen, who arranged the alleged payments and will be testifying about them at trial.
But there's a straightforward way Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg can clap back at that, former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann told MSNBC's Ari Melber on Friday: pull out the evidence showing there's no way Trump couldn't have known what Cohen was doing.
"I think here, one of the things that you're going to hear about, is first, Donald Trump's management style," said Weissmann. "We're not talking about a person who is running Exxon, who had hundreds of thousands of people working for him. This is a small family business with somebody who is, I think by all accounts, very hands-on and very focused on the details."
ALSO READ: Revealed: What government officials privately shared about Trump not disclosing finances
Furthermore, Weissmann continued, Trump "wrote the checks. So you're going to see checks that he signed, and I think that in itself is going to be very compelling evidence, because he reimbursed Michael Cohen for the hush money payments, is what you're going to hear. But it wasn't on a one to one basis. Because they had to say, oh, these are legal fees, that meant that Michael Cohen was going to have to pay taxes on them. So instead of reimbursing Michael 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," said Melber.
"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."
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Four days into the historic trial of Donald Trump's criminal hush money case was enough. So his attorneys are desperately lobbing "Hail Mary" legal filings in an attempt to put the whole thing on ice.
"A fair and impartial jury cannot be selected in New York county as evidenced by the extreme difficulty in procuring a venire resulting from the the significant bias against president trump that permeates the jury pool," reads a motion put forward to the New York Court of Appeals on Friday night by former President Donald Trump's legal team.
Reporter Joey Pagliery first flagged the emergency brake efforts of Trump to scuttle the trial as it's already begun.
ALSO READ: Revealed: What government officials privately shared about Trump not disclosing finances
"Donald Trump's lawyers just won't stop throwing Hail Mary passes," he posted in a tweet Friday. "They just asked New York State's appellate court in Manhattan to halt the trial, citing an unfair jury selection of biased jurors."
Twelve New Yorkers and six alternates were impaneled to serve out the trial of the former president after hundreds were assembled and vetted; some picked and later excused.
Opening statements are expected to begin Monday barring any kind of major unforeseen event.
“This is really a concerted witch hunt, very simple,” Trump repeated to reporters in the corridor of the criminal courthouse at 100 Centre Street in Lower Manhattan.
The presumptive Republican nominee has been blaming every judge and prosecutor in his civil and now criminal trials.
He has been protesting how being forced to sit in the proceedings has taken him away from stumping on the campaign trail.
Trump continued: “What’s happening here with the judicial system is an outrage. This is the only way they think they can win but it’s not going to work."
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