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May 11, 2024 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:08:20
20240511_stormy-daniels-testimony-backfires-and-michael-coh
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Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at least.
Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show and a bonus episode this Friday night.
All right, we're gonna get to everything that happened in the Trump trial in two minutes.
Turbulence on the Plane 00:08:24
But I have got to start by telling you what just happened to me.
OMG.
So I was traveling this week.
As you know, I had to go out to LA.
I was a couple different places on business.
And a third party got us a private plane to fly home on.
Okay, so it wasn't booked by us.
It wasn't our thing.
It was offered to us.
And we said, okay, great.
And so Abby, who oversees everything and micromanages everything in our lives, she wasn't in charge, but of course she flew back with me.
OMG.
This just happened like an hour and a half ago.
My adrenaline is still flowing.
I think I speak for Abby too.
I don't think it's too far a stretch to say, like, we almost went down.
Like, yeah, we almost went down.
She and I were the only passengers.
It was like a six-seater.
It was a small plane.
And I, I, it was kind of a rough flight right from the beginning.
Like, there was no weather, but it was very like halty, you know, start and stop.
You could almost like feel the pilot like pressing the brake.
That's how it felt.
And then firing it back up.
And I'm not a great flyer to begin with in his defense, but it didn't, it just didn't feel good.
And then out of nowhere, our small plane does a hard bank onto its side, like a top gun maneuver.
And Abby and I are looking at each other, like, oh my God, what's happening?
And it starts beeping.
The plane starts beeping and beeping and beeping like there's an emergency situation.
And you know, we're like saying Hail Mary's like, what, what in the ever-loving no idea what's happening.
And it starts to do the fast acceleration thing.
And then like it's turning.
It's clear we're not.
This is not, we're not on course.
Something bad is happening.
I just don't know exactly how bad or what it is or why it is.
And clearly, Abby doesn't either.
And so then it gets back upright and things start to calm down and we lived and we're like starting to reclaim our natural breathing.
And finally the pilot turns around, starts explaining what happened.
And all we hear is another plane, a commercial airliner, almost hit.
We're like, what?
Something like that.
We're like, what?
What?
Right?
Because you can't hear in these planes.
He's got his headphone.
We're like, what?
Could you explain?
No, this seems important to hear.
So he finally gets up and he comes back to us and starts explaining what he was just saying.
And the explanation is, as far as, and there was a bit of a language barrier.
So it's like, forgive me, I don't, I wouldn't testify to these exact words in a court of law.
But he said there was a commercial airliner above us that we were on path to either hit or come very, very close to.
And sorry, this is loud in my ears.
I don't know what I'm hearing.
Anyway, and so he, the automatic pilot on our plane took over.
And that's what made us go on our side so we could avoid that plane's turbulence is what he said, right?
Yeah, yeah.
We could avoid that plane's turbulence.
And Abigail, do you want to come over here and show us what he did with the finger?
So he said, so he goes, we had to, so the automated pilot came over and turned us on the side because if we hadn't done that, show him what he said, we would have done.
Okay, so he's in front of the plane talking to us.
Okay.
And he goes, if we hadn't done that, we would have gone.
I'm sorry.
What does that mean?
You mean we would have gone down?
What pilot?
What kind of bedside manner is?
Ooh.
No, not okay.
Okay, my own departs.
Very important to me that you're.
We were like, what?
No move.
No.
No one wants to see their pilot making that finger motion on the plane.
No.
We honestly, like, Abby went to the bathroom where she prayed.
I prayed in my seat.
We held hands and we lived.
But then he took out a big three-ring binder that he seemed to be referencing in the midst of like what was a very dangerous flight, apparently.
And we were thinking, like, what are you looking up?
Near misses, you know, what to do so as not to hit a plane, how not to go, woo.
Casually went through it.
Casually.
Yeah.
Is there something we could Google for you?
Is it, can we help at all?
Anyway, it got to the point where we were like, just land the plane anywhere.
We don't care.
We'll get a car back.
It's fine.
We don't, you don't need to drop us, you know, at the scheduled airport.
I've never been so happy to be in an SUV, you know, when we got on ground.
And I thought about kissing the ground, but I thought it might be offensive.
Like it might be aggressive.
I didn't want to offend him.
I'm sure he did his best.
It just was not a great flight.
Okay.
It was not a great flight.
Doesn't seem like you should be that close to a commercial airliner where woo-woo is a possibility.
Okay.
Now it's funny.
I didn't feel like I could start the show without telling you this.
It just seemed like so like near death might be too strong, but it felt near death.
No, it was near death.
We're laughing now.
It wasn't.
No, it wasn't.
Abigail.
Abigail Finan does not always drop the F-bomb, but I agree with her.
Anyway, back safe and sound on this Friday.
And I hope you are too.
Okay, let's get to Trump.
Porn star and director.
What she really wanted to do was direct.
Stormy Daniels was back on the stand yesterday, Thursday and Friday, for fiery cross-examination by the former president, Donald Trump's defense team.
No, it ended.
Her piece ended yesterday.
And today's witnesses worked to set the stage for the key prosecution witness who has glaring credibility issues, and that's Michael Cohen.
So while he may not be as salacious as Stormy, although you could make the case, he's the most important witness of the case, which is a disaster for the prosecution because he has no credibility.
This is make or break time for the entire criminal case against Donald Trump.
Will these witnesses seal the guilty verdict against him, or could they turn the jury, even a single juror, firmly into the camp of not guilty?
We're going to get to it with some of our Kelly's court all-stars today.
Arthur Idala is partner at Idala, Bertuna, and Caymans and host of the Arthur Idala Power Hour.
Mark Eyeglarsh is a defense attorney at iGlarsh Law, which you can find at speaktomark.com.
And Phil Holloway is a legal analyst and host of Inside the Law on YouTube.
Guys, thank you all so much for being here.
Great to be here.
It was the first time I saw Abigail in so long.
Tell her he said hi.
That was like the reunion.
I felt like it was a little reunion.
I'm sorry.
A plane crash is what almost caused that from happening, but it was great to see Abby.
Great to be here as a pilot for almost 30 years.
I'm sorry to hear you had that experience.
I promise you, general aviation is not always like that.
Phil, what happened?
You can get sucked in another plane's turbulence and go down?
What?
This is brand new information to me.
Sounds to me like you crossed or were about to cross into the path of what's called wake turbulence behind a heavy aircraft.
And if your aircraft is really light, wake turbulence can cause real big problems.
And, you know, we have to go to great lengths to avoid it because it is, you know, it's a very serious consideration.
It doesn't happen a lot.
And that's why planes are supposed to keep their distance from one another.
But it sounds like today your pilot did the right thing and kept you safe.
That's good.
Oh my God.
I guess you think this is an air traffic control problem?
Oh, I wouldn't want to begin to speculate, but if you're going in and out of a congested area, air traffic control is responsible for keeping adequate separation.
So it sounds to me like somebody got their wires crossed somewhere.
There was not adequate separation.
That's exactly right.
There clearly was not adequate separation.
And then, you know, Abigail Feynman and I were not, we were glad that we weren't separated.
I have to say, we were holding on to each other like old ladies, like, oh my God, this is it.
We're thinking about our kids.
It was cray cray, you guys.
I still have the adrenaline flow, like when something big happens to you and you're like, oh, God, oh, God, you know, I don't, I don't, I shouldn't operate heavy machinery right now.
So forgive me if the show is not as on point as it normally is.
Okay, back to Stormy.
We had our own Stormy day.
Holding On Like Old Ladies 00:03:38
She rapped.
It's over.
And I think my impression is I didn't get to see her in the courtroom as you did, Arthur, but my impression was she was a disaster.
She has no credibility.
She was thoroughly embarrassed on the stand.
And I don't even know anymore whether this jury is going to believe there was a sexual interlude.
I actually think the defense did a pretty good job of suggesting she made the whole thing up to make money and to wind up extorting Donald Trump for something or to just threaten him.
So I'll start with you, Arthur, because you were in the courtroom, set the scene for us.
And I know you spoke with Team Trump after the fact.
What do you think?
Well, you know what I think is it's funny because there were people who were sitting two seats away from me who were like, oh, Stormy did great.
They didn't lay a glove on her.
And then this guy, a former judge who's on my radio show every night, he's been in the courtroom every day.
And he's like, it's the best day the Trump team ever had.
So it kind of depends on who you speak with.
But the criminal defense attorney who conducted the cross-examination for President Trump is a woman named Susan Necklace.
She's very well known in New York and she's very experienced.
And I thought she was very good.
Don't forget, she started on Tuesday with her cross-examination.
And that was really all about money, Because on Direct, she said, Stormy said, oh, I really wasn't in for the money.
You know, I didn't answer your appropriate question.
Said, set the stage.
Let me set the stage for a second because I was in the courtroom for the first time and maybe the only time.
The jury, the jury.
I always look Megan on on how jurors dress if they're not told by the judge how to dress, because old school judges used to say, like dress like you're going to sunday services.
They don't do that anymore.
But the jury dressed in a very appropriate way, like you could tell they're going somewhere.
That's serious.
There's no jeans, there's no ripped clothes, there's no hoodies.
They're all dressed in like weird gown for business and when Susan Nicholas was really hitting it, it was a tennis match.
I looked at the jurors.
They're looking at Stormy, they're looking at the, the uh defense attorney.
Stormy was dressed in a black uh jacket with a bright green top.
She's a big woman, you know, coming on and off the stand, she's tall.
No one would ever use the word petite to describe her and at times she was there uh, especially towards the end when she was kind of figuring out like what this is all about.
And she was.
She was angling her body towards the jurors, answering the question.
But i'm crossing your arms.
You're for the listening audience.
You're crossing your arms yes, i'm sorry.
Yeah, so i'm crossing my arms and then cheating towards the jurors and starting more to talk to the jurors than to Susan Necklace.
Um, but the real, I thought the highlight of the cross-examination was towards the end.
There were kind of two highlights.
But she said to her, the question was, and you've written 150 adult film scripts yourself, haven't you?
And and Stormy was proud oh yes, I have.
Yes, I wrote them all myself.
And those are all fiction correct, correct?
Those are stories that you've made up about men and women having sex in different scenarios correct, correct?
So you're an expert creating fictitious stories that never happened, that aren't real.
And she goes, well, the sex is real in those stories.
Like, the sex was real here.
And if I was making up this story, I would have made up a better story.
But but the point came across that, like she's done this 150 times, she's made up these stories.
And then the other highlight, kind of, was just at the very, very end.
It was a question that Susan Nicholas wasn't looking for.
An answer was, you don't know anything about how Donald Trump writes his checks, right?
Proof She Was Paid 00:10:49
You don't know how they're logged in the books back in New York, right?
You have nothing to do with his finances correct, correct?
And she sat down.
Um, it was interesting.
I mean, you know, sometimes courtroom seems to be very boring.
It was not a boring day uh no, I mean that this is her testimony was anything but boring.
Mark, you do this for a living as well, and you're not wrong.
Like, ask a different person, you'll get a different take, and it tends to come down to politics.
You know, we're trying to keep it out of that.
We're trying to give sound legal analysis like, what actually, how did she objectively do?
I don't, maybe you can't take politics out of this because you've in New York.
The jury probably isn't in love with Trump.
There might be a couple, but if you can be objective about it, based on what we've read, how do you think she did okay?
I think that the prosecution jumped the shark by getting into the areas that they did.
And for those not familiar with that, the same cringy, bizarre feeling you got when Fonzie was water skiing over sharks, we got when Stormy Daniels in a fraud trial testified to the former leader of a free world laying in his boxers, posing on a bed, about to allegedly commit an extramarital affair.
We shouldn't have that image in our head.
It was problematic for the prosecution to get into those kind of details when I say to you in response to how does she do, it doesn't really matter.
And by that, I mean any good defense lawyer would get up and say, look what the prosecution did.
They wanted to show bad character like they did in the Harvey Weinstein case.
And they wanted to focus on something other than the issue of whether he knowingly committed fraud.
Why else would they bring her in?
There's proof that she was paid.
It wasn't necessary.
Look at the lengths that they're going to try to prove this case when they don't have any direct evidence.
So how did she do?
She looked horrible, as she should, the same way Cohen's going to look.
And I think that the defense could make a lot out of it in closing argument if they do.
So interesting.
So Phil, here's just an example of what Susan Necklace tried to do on cross-examination of Stormy Daniels.
She got into, for example, and there's a lot we can go through, but it will start here.
How Stormy Daniels missed, you know, I wasn't in this for the money.
That's not why.
You know, I sold my story, yes, but, you know, this wasn't an attempt at extortion and so on.
She zeroed in on the number of ways in which Stormy has made money off of this and has touted it.
And here's one example.
She showed tweets beginning March 30th, 2023, the day Trump was first indicted, celebrating the criminal case against him, per Katie Fang of MSNBC, who, you know, we're relying on the reporters for exactly the wordage that happens, the verbiage inside the courtroom.
Exhibit a photo of Daniels' online store with a candle that is titled Stormy, Saint of Indictments Candle.
Necklace, you're saying you are the saint of the Trump indictment.
Daniels, no.
Okay, so already you're not saying that your candle is Stormy Daniels indictment patron saint altar candle.
Like, what indictment are you talking about on the day after?
Anyway, so she denies that she's saying she's the saint of the Trump indictment.
Necklace, you are selling Team Stormy merchandise, making $40 each?
Daniels, no, I was making about $7.
Okay, but the point's taken, right?
You are selling Team Stormy, Team Stormy merchandise.
Necklace, do you plan to continue selling your story?
Daniels, I plan to continue to do my job and find my extra and fund my extraordinary legal bills.
Necklace, you have an online store.
You are bragging about getting President Trump indicted.
Daniels, I got President Trump indicted.
Necklace, aren't you bragging about that?
Daniels, no.
Just look at the damn candle.
Here's the last bit of it per New York Times.
Necklace, you're celebrating indictments by selling things from your store.
Then Daniels goes to, not unlike Mr. Trump.
So it's no longer no.
Now it's yes, I'm doing it, but Trump cashes in on things too.
And so that's, that's it on the candle and the money.
It is not a credible person, Phil, and we can keep going through the examples.
Yeah, there was testimony, Megan, that she would turn down or cancel media interviews because they weren't going to pay her.
Anytime a witness takes the witness stand, when they sit in that chair, their own credibility is always an issue in the case.
She may not be a convicted fraudster like Michael Cohen, which we'll see next week.
But look, if she has a financial interest in this case becoming, you know, high profile or anything else or just perpetuating this, pushing it forward, making sure that the case goes to trial.
She has a financial interest in that.
That means the jury can take all of that into consideration to determine her credibility.
On top of the financial interest that she has in all of this.
She never seems to be able to tell the same version of events about what's happened.
So you have what's called prior inconsistent statements.
These lawyers did a very good job, I think, detailing and chronicling those and going through them item by item by item to show the jury in a much better way than I could.
I can't keep it straight in my head, but they chronicled all of the different statements that she's made and how it has changed and morphed over time.
And I think this whole thing about her being a fiction storyteller in terms of writing scripts about fictional sexual encounters, I think that was a work of art by the defense team.
They did a fantastic job, Megan, in my opinion, with a witness who should not even have been on the stand in the first place.
What in the hell does Stormy Daniels have to do with bookkeeping at the Trump organization?
Of course, the answer to that is nothing.
And if the answer is nothing, she should not have been on the stand.
Judge Murchon has showed his bias.
He's biased against the defendant in this case.
And he's risking reversible error just by allowing the prosecutor to call her.
But at the end of the day, these lawyers have to deal with the cards they've been dealt.
They were dealt Stormy Daniels, and they dealt with her.
They showed the jury she can't be believed.
Yeah, but let me, Megan, let me just, let me stand up for Judge Murchon for a second.
He addressed Phil's point yesterday at the end of the day.
He said, basically, he blamed it on the defense team.
He said, you guys opened the door in your opening arguments.
You said in your opening arguments that you were going to prove that the sex never happened.
The judge said, had you not said that, I would have entertained your motion to preclude her from testifying.
And he basically scolded them.
He kind of chastised them.
I can't imagine President Trump was very happy with his team at the end of the day or they had to give a little spin to him.
But he said, so here's what happened in a nutshell.
At the end of the day, yesterday, I did have a chance to chat with some of the people on the team off the record.
And mistrials and things like that were some of the things that were discussed.
And the judge basically said to them when they moved for a mistrial again yesterday, they wanted to preclude all of her statement.
He threw it right back at the defense.
He does so, Megan, so you know his demeanor, unlike Judge Kaplan, who was the E.G. and Carroll judge, who was bombastic and caustic.
This judge is very quiet.
He's very calm.
He's very reserved.
And he just said, I would have entertained your motion.
I would have precluded her.
But you opened the door on saying the sex never happened, which is basically the prosecutor's motive.
And once you put that in issue, now I have to let them controvert what you have said is a lie.
Yeah, I see that.
But the other dispute that came up was to what extent, how much do you have to let in?
Do you have to let in that they did it without a condom?
Do you have to let in all these hellacious details?
And now the judge is like, I can't believe you didn't object.
It's like, well, we tried to keep this whole line out.
You promised us you weren't going to let it get too X-rated.
And, you know, they're kind of blaming each other, the judge and the defense team.
And he wanted an objection on every question.
There is a question in my mind about why the defense didn't object on every objectionable question.
I think it was because they didn't want to look like this was hurting them, right?
Which is a tactic that a lot of defense lawyers go with.
But Arthur, I'll start with you on it.
Why do you think that they let a lot of that in without objection?
Well, Susan Nicholas spoke, I think at the end of the day on Tuesday, and to your point, Megan, she's like, look, Judge, we spoke about, we all spoke about this before Stormy Daniels took the stand.
And I thought your ruling was you were going to allow all of this in, or at least the majority of it in.
So therefore we scaled back.
But she did, if you look at the record when I was in court, she did object to a lot of things, Susan.
And the judge was sustaining the objections.
I can't crawl into their head.
I don't know if it was strategic, like you said, because a lot of lawyers don't want to make it look like to the jury that they're hiding something or if it was a mistake.
But the judge specifically yesterday afternoon said, why didn't you object when he said conduct?
I would have sustained the objection.
However, all of us who are lawyers here have been in a courtroom where Judge Suisfante just goes sustained without anyone objecting.
You just kind of judge his mouth says sustained.
It doesn't let an answer come out.
So I don't exactly know what happened.
Been there and done that.
You're being pounded by prejudicial, grossly irrelevant testimony, and then you got to make the choice.
And, you know, you jump up and you object and you get a sustain and maybe even an admonishment by the judge saying, you know what?
Forget that last thing.
Forget the tiger wearing the Nazi helmet on the unicycle juggling balls.
You know, it's impossible.
And even for some who might have, you know, maybe was distracted in the moment, wait, wait, wait, what were we supposed to disregard?
The first thing they're wanting, oh, the condom, oh, you were.
You know, you don't want to highlight it.
You want to just let it go.
And then you've got so much to discredit her that sometimes you just have to live with it.
Sandbagging the Defense 00:10:42
You know they're not, she's not going to be worthy of belief.
But the biggest problem is this case shouldn't come down to whether they did it or they didn't.
Who cares at this point?
It's not going to hurt his political base.
They don't care.
Most people believe he probably did.
Who cares?
What it does is it hurts your credibility in a criminal case when the president's word is on the line.
That's what matters.
Did he commit fraud?
And if he's lying about the affair, well, that spills over in their minds.
I wouldn't have kind of drawn a line in the sand that this case hinges so much upon whether he did it or he didn't and whether they can prove it or not.
Whatever.
She's a liar.
Let's move on.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, they did put it in.
I mean, the defense said, no, it didn't happen.
And I'm sure it was important to Trump to say it didn't happen.
He's been saying it publicly.
And it will come down to he said she said, to the extent the jury is now going to consider that.
Although I agree with you, even if they say it did happen, that doesn't mean he's guilty of falsifying documents and the real crimes that he's charged with.
But her credibility does matter.
So, you know, if we're going to get into who he said, she said, then her credibility does matter.
And here's another attempt by the defense attorneys to eat away at it.
Okay.
They spent a little time on whether the two, Phil, had dinner together during that one night in which she claims they had a sexual encounter.
And she was quizzed extensively per the New York Post on whether she actually ate dinner in Trump's hotel room back in 2006.
She testified it was dinner, but we never got food.
Per the New York Times, Necklace is addressing something that Daniels has long said, which is that she did not eat while in Trump's hotel room in 2006, presenting evidence that Daniels has at times described that episode as having been, quote, a dinner.
Necklace highlighted exchanges both during Stormy's 2011 interview with InTouch magazine and then later on CNN in which Daniels said she and Trump, quote, had dinner and that the encounter was during dinner.
So in other words, her, did you have dinner or didn't you?
Right.
She's been saying up until now that they had dinner, that this all happened during dinner, but now she takes the stand and testifies it was dinner, but we never got food.
And Necklace's cross was the details of your story keep changing.
And she said, well, it was dinner.
It was dinner time, but I maintain that I didn't get food.
And Necklace said, your words don't mean what they say, do they?
There was an objection, but the point had already been made that you are, you wiggle.
You set the stage for things that don't pan out.
And I think the clear implication here, Phil, is you claimed to people that you went over there for dinner to make yourself look like something other than a slut.
That's what you did.
You went over there.
You knew very well going into Donald Trump's hotel room on the first day you met him.
You didn't meet him for quote dinner at a hotel.
You met him for quote dinner in his hotel room and you lied to say there was dinner because we all know there was no food.
There was only one thing.
And you were fine with that, as your earlier interviews make clear.
I think this is a clear attempt by Necklace to show she lies.
She lies to make herself look better than she is.
We all know why she went to the hotel room.
It's done.
Go ahead.
What do you think, Phil?
Yeah, so I think that in order to show that she's making all these prior inconsistent statements, which go to her credibility or the lack thereof, sometimes the lawyers have to get down into the weeds.
But unfortunately, to do that in this case, you wind up rolling around in the mud, basically, with all of these salacious details.
And it takes the trial into a place further, into a place that it never should be in.
We shouldn't be going into the gritty details of the sexual encounter or the lack thereof or whatever happened, because all of that stuff is irrelevant.
I think to the point earlier, the judge, I think, sandbagged the defense a little bit in the opening statement.
If your case is being billed as a hush money trial, your client is accused of paying money to hide a sexual affair, to hide the fact that, or the alleged fact that there was sexual intercourse, you've got to talk about that in opening statements.
So I think it was unfair of the judge to then put that back on the defense and say, oh, no, you opened the door.
No, Alvin Bragg made it that way.
He's the one who made this case, the so-called hush money trial, that it was a payment to cover up a sexual affair.
So you've got to talk about the sex in the opening statement.
But what I don't understand is why there was not some type of motion and lemonade, which is a device that lawyers can use prior to anybody's testimony to limit the testimony to things that are relevant.
I just don't really understand why we haven't seen a lot of that in this case, because the judge let this trial get way, way, way off the rails.
At the end of the day, probably it helps the defense more than it hurts them.
But I think it was unfair to blame them for opening the door to getting into all these weeds and let Mark go and then I'll get to you, Arthur.
Go ahead, Mark.
Okay, Megan, when you said what you said, and I didn't know it before you said it, that the judge was saying, you know, had you not said an opening statement that she was a liar about the affair, then, you know, I wouldn't have let all this in.
So now that changes things.
And as a defense lawyer, I was sitting here thinking, how would I handle it?
And I would have to convince my client, albeit Donald Trump, that if we bring up and we say, you didn't have an affair with her, that is a total lie, then that's opening up the door to the graphic detail because at that point, when it becomes an issue in the trial, how can somebody prove that something happened without giving the extraordinary detail?
So how I would have handled it in opening, knowing that those horrible details are coming in, that's the worst case scenario for my client.
I would say this is not about whether the affair occurred or not.
And if we get into that, that is going to take away from the issue in this case is what exactly what the prosecutors want.
The issue is whether the payment was committed in a fraudulent manner.
Like I would have kind of neutralized it.
And I know that wouldn't have pleased my client.
Maybe Trump would have made me get up there and say he didn't do it, but I would have been in his face saying, no, you got to let me do it this way.
Otherwise, we're going to hear about your boxers and whether you are condomless or not.
So your positions.
How brief it was.
I agree with you.
Keep going, Arthur.
So I agree with what Mark just said, but it's, look, it's rough.
A little story out of school.
You know, Joe Takapino was the original lawyer on this case.
And I went to high school with Joe.
I worked in the DA's office with Joe.
And, you know, he's not on the case anymore.
And Joe and I are both from Brooklyn.
No client is going to tell us how to try their case.
Lawrence Taylor, he told me how to try my case.
He was fantastic.
He was one of the best defense defendants I had in terms of helping me.
But he didn't tell me what to do.
He suggested what to do.
Donald Trump is a different character.
So I think they have a rough, rough road to just put that aside.
Although I agree with Mark, Phil, there was emotionally made to limit this.
And one of the things that I'm pretty sure the judge limited was she wanted to describe Trump's private parts and not in the most complimentary way.
And the judge was like, no, absolutely.
I'm not going to allow that to happen.
When she really looked like a BS artist.
And that's why sometimes it's better to have a woman cross-examining a woman, because if I would have done it with Phil or Mark, we would have been accused.
I think it's called slut shaming or something like that.
What Susan Necklace was able to do was she said, so you testified in direct examination that you went to the ladies' room after your non-food dinner.
And when you came out, the 60-year-old billionaire, and you shouldn't say that, but you're getting the picture, was sitting on the bed in boxer shorts and a t-shirt.
And you were so stunned as you got lightheaded and almost blacked out.
She's like, that's after you made, what was it, over 200?
We have that.
Movies.
Okay, wait, I have a lot of people.
And it was just like so audience.
I'm full of crap.
It was a great moment.
Yes, completely agree.
Very good moment for Necklace and Team Trump.
Per the New York Post, she asks, since Daniels has seen naked men and women in adult films all the time, why would it be surprising to her to see a man in boxer shorts and a t-shirt to the point where she felt so lightheaded she was going to faint?
Necklace, you've acted and had sex in over 200 porn movies.
Daniels, it was closer to 150.
Okay.
Necklace.
And there are naked men and naked women having sex, right?
Daniels, yes.
Necklace.
But according to you, seeing a man on a bed in a t-shirt and boxer shorts, you got lightheaded.
Daniels said she felt shock, surprise when she saw Trump in the bed and when she came back into the hotel room and said it was a power shift because she earlier felt she had, quote, control of the situation.
Daniels, quote, if I came out of the bathroom and saw an older man in his underwear that I wasn't expecting to see there, yeah, she's signing on to her lightheaded lie is my opinion.
Then she pointed at Trump, who apparently was paying rapt attention to this testimony and added that Stormy did, she sees her husband naked all the time, but that if she left her bathroom at home and saw Trump today lying half naked on her bed, she would be alarmed.
Now, this, of course, is part of this BS, that this was traumatic to her.
After she's been on the record, we covered this yesterday, repeatedly saying this was a non-threatening situation.
She bragged about it.
She said he was nice.
She said she was stimulated by him.
And she was thinking about, oh, gee, I hope he doesn't offer me money.
But if he does, I bet it'll be a lot while they were having sex.
This is not a woman who's blacked out and has no feeling in her fingers or toes as she's now claiming.
So then one other thing, per CBS, Necklace pushed Daniels about this claim she had blacked out during the alleged act, saying you told a different story in 2011 to InTouch magazine.
Feeling Threatened Again 00:05:26
Daniels, well, there were parts I didn't remember.
There were parts I didn't remember.
So you forgot all the relevant parts back in 2011 about the sex act that allegedly happened in 2006.
But now here in 2024, this is MK talking, you remember it all?
Remember it so much better now?
You've remembered all the stuff.
She goes on to say, you made all this up, right?
Daniels, no, forcefully.
Necklace, you made all of this up, right?
Daniels, no.
Necklace, your story has completely changed, hasn't it?
Daniels, no.
And Daniels says, you're trying to make me say it's changed, but it hasn't changed.
But it has changed, you guys.
It's changed.
It's changed a lot, Phil.
Yeah, she can't say the same thing the same way twice.
And so what happens if she takes the stand and she says, no, my story has never changed.
And then of course the defense lawyer can chronicle everything that has changed.
You said this on this day.
You said this on the other day and so on and so forth.
It's absolutely the kind of thing that will destroy a witness's credibility.
And in a rational legal system that you might find somewhere other than in downtown Manhattan when Donald Trump is on trial, that would be the kind of thing that would cause a prosecutor's case to just implode.
The parties would go out in the hallway and say, look, we got to cut a deal or do something because my case has just gone to hell in a handbasket.
But in New York, in Manhattan, with this jury, I don't think that's even like crossed the minds of the prosecutors because they know that no matter no matter how sideways this case goes, how unbelievable or disbelievable their witnesses are, they think that with this jury, they've already got it in the bag.
And that's why I think it's just so unfair that it's probably beyond redemption at this point.
Here's another piece of it.
I mean, we talked when Phil was on the show the other day about this new Me Too suggestion.
You know, it's implicit.
She can't say it explicitly, like I was me too'd by the guy, but she's now talking about the power differential between them and how, you know, okay, he didn't behave in a threatening way, but he blocked my path out of the hotel room because I emerged from the bathroom and there he was on the bed and the hotel room door was on the other side of him.
Hello, that's called life.
You walk around the bed and you open up the hotel room like we've all done a million times at the door.
It's not that hard.
It's not threatening just because somebody's there trying allegedly to do what it was clearly both of your mission to do when you showed up and didn't have dinner.
So here is Susan Necklace zeroing in on testimony Stormy gave on direct, which I had missed, about this is another one of the reasons she allegedly felt so threatened and like couldn't leave and therefore she had to stay and have sex with him.
He had a bodyguard outside the door.
See guys, and apparently this was.
This is also threatening in some way, even though Trump was non-threatening.
This also led Stormy to believe, I, I guess I can't leave.
So the Trump uh defense attorney this is Necklace Dill.
Did you testify on direct that one of the reasons you did not leave the room is because you felt threatened by Trump's bodyguard being outside?
Uh Stormy, absolutely.
And then she refers to a Vogue 2018 interview.
Stormy, did you say in this interview that you never felt threatened at all during your alleged sexual encounter?
And she says, I don't control what parts of quotes they use.
I don't know what that's supposed to mean, but it sounds like a no.
It sounds like no, I didn't.
I didn't say I never felt threatened.
Let me refer to the quote from the Vogue article which we pulled.
This is the author of the article, the journalist writing quote.
Our interview is almost over, but I have a nagging question left to ask.
She's always insisted that the sex was consensual and that her story has nothing to do with the Me Too movement, but ever since I watched Daniels tell Anderson Cooper that she felt a sense of obligation to Trump quote I had it coming for making a bad decision, for going into someone's room alone, end quote.
She said i've wondered why she didn't just leave.
Did Trump do something that made her feel like she had to have sex with him?
Daniels is emphatic, no, nothing.
She says, quote.
Not once did I ever feel like I was in any sort of physical danger.
I'm sure if I would have taken off running he wouldn't have given chase, and even if I had, there's no way he could have caught me.
Contrast that to one of the reasons I didn't leave is because I felt threatened.
His bodyguard was out front.
You guys, this is that was.
That was good in the courtroom yesterday.
That was a.
That was a highlight.
That was another one of the highlights like, especially the part when he wouldn't have caught me, since she's, you know and and I said this in the beginning she's not a small woman, she's not like this little petite, you know, four foot 11, 99 pound woman like she's.
When she got off that stand, she's tall, she got broad shoulders.
You know, she's not that little scared little girl.
And I did something a little crazy last night Megan, don't get mad at me, tell us about, don't tell Nana but I I googled Stormy Daniels wow, I mean.
Proven Payment to Cohen 00:14:59
Oh mistake, you're gonna have to explain this to Marianne.
Yeah exactly, I believe me.
I hit delete the history delete um, you know.
So if any of the jurors disobey the judge and just do that and see what's there, I mean I didn't put in Stormy Daniels naked Stani Daniels sex, I just put in her name and it's all naked crazy, horrible pictures of her.
You don't have to google her to learn all that.
Arthur, she gave out.
When you see it off his case.
He's yeah, it's recent right, thank you, thank you, but it really looked on his computer exactly.
All of that just comes back to like oh, my god, this woman is so full of crap.
Like oh, she was afraid she fainted when she saw him.
Dinner in her world means the time of day, not whether there's food or not.
And you know, don't forget, because I was on a panel last night on CNN and they were ragging on the defense team and i'm fighting back because, number one, i'm friends with Susan, but number two, I thought she did a very good job.
The judge is going to instruct the jury in New York.
If you believe a witness is lying about one thing, you can discount all of their testimony, you can disregard all of their testimony and he's going to say that about every single witness, including Michael Cohen.
And I will say, since I threw CNN in there, one of my colleagues on CNN I was very happy he did this said, if today the prosecution rested after Stormy Daniels there would have to be or today there was a couple other witnesses, today there would have to be a trial order of dismissal, meaning the case never gets to the jury because at this point the prosecutors say they have two witnesses left.
There has been zero, zero evidence that Donald Trump knew how these checks.
They've proven he signed the checks.
They've proven he knew what the checks were for.
That's not the crime.
Crime is how it was recorded, five blocks from where I am in Trump Tower in his office, in the logbooks, and they have to then prove they were logged in that way to commit a secondary crime.
There has been no evidence of that whatsoever to date.
They are putting all their faith in Michael Cohen.
And if you're putting your faith in Michael Cohen, you better do what I just saw my seven-year-old do and say the rosary in English and in Italian, Megan, I gotta ask, I gotta ask, I gotta ask Arthur and Philip a question i've been dying to to know what, what they think about this.
Okay, let's say, Trump came to you for advice around the time and he's saying, okay, we're gonna pay off Stormy Daniel, either because I had an affair with her or because she's making this up and it's a money grab.
Either way, we need to pay her off.
What are we going to write as the reason?
I'm thinking legal fees.
Would that work for you guys?
And i'm asking you this, I mean, put aside your politics, put on your lawyer hat.
Is it legal fees?
Is it a campaign con?
You know, contribution.
I've said publicly that it's less of a campaign contrib campaign expense, excuse me, than it is legal fees.
It's more legal fees than campaign fees.
Payment, it's payment in consideration of a contract, because that's what these non-disclosure agreements are.
They're contracts and they're used by people all the time and it's not a valid binding contract unless there's what we call consideration.
In other words, you got to.
Let me just.
Let me just add one tweak before you finish your answer.
It's it's it's even more clear because he he didn't pay Stormy directly.
The allegation is that Michael Cohen paid Stormy 130 000.
Michael Cohen was Trump's lawyer and then Trump reimbursed his lawyer.
So now we're even closer to legal fees.
I'm paying my lawyer and it wasn't fees, it was expenses.
Legal expenses go ahead.
So when, when he writes that check, if he's making it to Michael Cohen or whatever, you know, he's not necessarily.
He doesn't know if he's paying say, the the bill that uh is for services or whatever it's the amount that He owes Michael Cohen for whatever reason, who was his lawyer.
He's the president of the United States.
He's signing checks that are just stuck in front of him.
It's not his job at the Trump organization to characterize things in a certain way.
That's somebody else's job to do that.
And so if I'm representing him, I'm not going to probably say you need to characterize it in this way or the other.
It's the accountant's job.
That's a good point.
So, Arthur, where's that evidence?
Where is that evidence of the accountant saying, Mr. Trump called me and told me, you know, or Weisselberg, who was the CFO, saying he called me up and he told me to mark this down as a legal expense?
Well, answering your direct question, Judge Kelly, you know where that evidence is?
Literally, literally, in Rikers Island.
Weisselberg is in Rikers Island right now.
He's in Rikers Island.
If you want to know a little more breaking news, sitting next to Javi Weinstein in Rikers Island, the employees would like to.
No, that's the true.
They're too old guys.
They're two guys in their 70s.
They don't put them in general population with everybody else.
But anyway, I mean, my kingdom to be a fly on the wall of one of those cells and listen to the conversation between Trump's CFO and Harvey Weinstein.
Let me throw a little fly in the ointment because obviously what Phil and Mark are saying is correct, right?
A normal NDA goes that Donald Trump, he's the recipient of the non-disclosure agreement.
He would write the check out to my law firm.
I would then write the check out to my escrow account.
I would then write the check out to Stormy's lawyer and then they would give it to Stormy, which is what Stormy testified to.
She goes, I didn't get any check from the Trump organization.
I got it from my lawyer.
Here's the fly in the ointment.
It's not like Donald Trump wrote a check to Michael Cohn.
Michael Cohn, on his own, took out a home equity loan for $130,000.
So that was one piece of the payment.
Then there was some other $50,000 technology fee that I still don't know what that is.
So that's $130,000.
That was to make him whole on the taxes that he charged on the fee.
That's not what the $50,000 is for.
They then double the $130,000 and make it $260,000.
They double the $130,000 and make it $260,000.
And then they had $50,000 for this technology fee.
And then they had $60 for a real legal fee.
So that's how we get up to this $40,000 number.
So I think what the prosecutor is going to argue is that what it really should say in the ledger book is exactly what I just said: $60,000 legal fee for Michael Cohn.
And then $130 and $132, a $260,000 reimbursement to Michael Cohn for laying out the money for Stormy Daniels.
That's insane.
That's insane.
Go ahead, Mark.
Let me explain something to you.
I have never been a Trump supporter.
So what I'm saying is extremely objective.
I am overwhelmed with frustration at this criminal prosecution because if you're not standing up against this, then just wait.
You've now lowered the burden of proof, you know, to get somebody that you want to get.
You've got to stand up for this.
At a minimum, hindsight's 2020.
Okay, that's how you want us to handle this prosecution.
All right, in the future, we'll make sure we dissect and all, but it's not a criminal act.
That's what's missing here.
There's no criminal intent.
Donald Trump is not the person who made the entry in the ledger at the Trump organization.
He is, he has no criminal intent to do it.
There's not even a showing that he did the things that he's accused of.
But at a minimum, he doesn't have the mental state that's required for a crime.
This is all so far attenuated now when you've got just a piece of a larger payment to Michael Cohen and you've got the home equity loan and all this stuff.
It's so far attenuated from anything that can objectively show criminal intent.
And if you don't have criminal intent, you don't have a crime.
All you've got is the act.
You've got to have the act and the criminal intent together before it's a crime.
And that's why all these prosecutors in the Southern District and even Alvin Bragg in the beginning, I think, declined this prosecution because they knew that it could not be proved.
You cannot prove that Donald Trump had a guilty intent when any of this all happened because it was so buried in a much larger, I guess, book of business with Michael Cohen.
Michael Cohen is the one, if anyone, who is responsible for causing it to be misbooked in the Trump books, if that's what happened, it's not Donald Trump.
It would probably be Michael Cohen, but they have not shown anything near criminal intent.
And that's why other prosecutors have tied up.
They're trying to show that Trump was a micromanager.
I think in the absence of proof that he actually saw how it was recorded in the books or told Weiselberg or somebody, put it down as a legal expense.
They're trying to just show in general, Trump's a micromanager.
And the defense is trying to say, no, he wasn't.
That's not going to get them there.
That in general, he was a micromanager and therefore he must have seen this line item in the accounting books.
But I want to go back to a couple more points.
Number one, just to finish up on Stormy, a couple things.
You know, Miss, I blacked out.
All my blood left my extremities.
You know, the room was spinning.
That's her current testimony.
The defense, Necklace, pointed out very effectively that in Stormy Daniels' book, she describes part of the encounter with Trump, writing that she made him her bitch.
Miss, it was so traumatic.
I blacked out, has written, he was my bitch.
So per the New York Times, Necklace is suggesting there may be an inconsistency between those two positions because Daniels wrote about being aggressive with Trump when they were first together.
Andrew Giuliani, who's been doing great tweeting from inside the courthouse, this is Rudy's son, the Trump's defense team.
In your book, did you say that you made him your bitch?
Daniels, yes.
Made him your bitch in your sexual encounter.
Yes.
Defense lawyer.
But now you claim that even though you made him your bitch, now you're saying that the room was spinning and that you passed out on the bed after sex.
Daniels, I maintain that he never physically threatened me.
She's trying to have it both ways.
She's being too cute here, you guys, right?
He never threatened me, but I blacked out.
He never threatened me, but I lost the blood flow to my extremity.
He never threatened me, but I couldn't leave because the bodyguard was out there.
He never threatened me, but I couldn't get past him to get out the door because there he was in his underwear on the bed.
It's all being fed to the jury like he never threatened me, but he did because I'm a woman and he took advantage of me.
Go ahead, Mark.
What were you going to say?
Yeah.
All right.
First of all, to Arthur's point, we love the instruction as criminal defense attorneys that if someone makes an inconsistent statement, you could disregard all of their testimony.
If that were to happen in this case, it wouldn't actually hurt the prosecution.
They can disregard Stormy Daniels because the check was paid to her, and that's really the only relevant issue.
They can't say the same when it comes to Michael Cohen.
That guy has to be the linchpin.
He has to come up with such garbage to suggest that Trump told him certain things that then makes the link to prove what's missing in this case, the beef of this case.
In that case, when he starts to say things that are just preposterous, that's when the defense scores huge points because he has to be eviscerated.
Stormy Daniels, not so much.
Another point I wanted to raise.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yep.
Go ahead.
I'm just going to say what they've set up so far.
What the prosecution has proven beyond a reasonable doubt are a couple of things.
Number one, there is this meeting in the White House with Michael Cohen that he's going to testify to.
They showed law books.
They had witnesses saying, you know, he came in on that day.
So they've shown there's the meeting.
Oh, this meeting.
And they said this beating.
There was a beating.
Okay.
There was a beating with an M. I'm from Brooklyn with an M. Right.
So you never know with Cohen and Trump.
Who knows?
You're right.
They've proven Trump signed, I think it's a dozen checks for $35,000 each made out to Michael Cohen.
They've proven that beyond a reasonable doubt with different witnesses with documents, et cetera.
They've proven that he's cheap, that he doesn't like to spend money.
His main secretary at the White House yesterday testified about a back and forth between the secretary at Trump Tower in Manhattan and the secretary in the White House when he's the sitting president of the United States, who's a billionaire, allegedly, about a Tiffany frame, a picture frame as a gift and whether $650 was too much to spend on a gift from Tiffany's.
And they've given many examples of that about his, does he want to cancel his golf club dues while he's the president?
He says yes as soon as possible.
So they've proven he's a penny pitcher who signed checks to Michael Cohen, who had a meeting with Michael Cohen.
They've proved all of that.
The only way they could tie him into this crime is, or any criminal act, is that Michael Cohn's got to come in on Monday and say we had this meeting and two things happen.
He told me, make sure nobody knows.
I don't know how I gave you the money, et cetera.
Of course, to Mark's point before, they're not going to write in the ledger book $130,000 to keep Stormy Daniels quiet about me having sex with her in a hotel room.
I mean, that defeats the whole purpose.
For the purpose of the election, to interfere with an election.
That's right.
You, Arthur, you and George Conway, big Trump critic, were on CNN together and had a fight about Michael Cohen and his credibility because he's up Monday.
Michael Cohen's next up.
He's coming up on Monday and he really will be the star witness to show the audience a little bit of that.
Look, at the end of the day, what's a reasonable doubt?
I think it's going to be hard for the jury to believe that Donald Trump didn't know that these payments were for George.
At the end of the day, an experienced lawyer of your magnitude, you know what you would say?
If you were trying this case, you know what you would say to the jury?
Ladies and gentlemen, the jury, you're one of the luckiest juries around because you got to meet Mr. Reasonable Doubt.
You saw him walk in here.
You saw him take the stand.
If there's any human being on the planet Earth that should be, his picture should be next to the definition, reasonable doubt, it's Michael Cohen.
And if you have reasonable Cohen, you can cross-examine Michael Cohen.
Why?
His history of being a liar, being a fraud, he just goes to the defendant.
The defendant's credibility is if unless he takes the stand is not on trial.
It is.
So my first question is, you were sitting next to Jeffrey Toobin.
Did he keep his pants on the entire time?
Oh, Megan, you know, I'm always straight up with you, and he's been so nice to me.
Checkbook Journalism Explained 00:11:08
And the last three weeks that I've been doing.
I don't care.
That is a joke.
I don't want to joke with Michael Toobin.
No, no, no.
He's very sweet.
He's super loving, especially to himself.
He's actually, he's actually made, the last three weeks, people have noticed, he's actually made a lot of the points for the defense.
When I first went on the first week, I don't care whether he's pro-Trump.
Unlike all of those hardships, I don't make my assessments of people based on their love or hatred for Donald Trump.
He's a disgusting fan.
He's a pro-defense.
Okay.
Okay.
That's your opinion.
I'm not going to go there.
He's made a lot of pro-defense.
Mark, I'm listening to you, Mark.
Yeah.
Mark, I'm listening to Mark.
Thanks, Mark.
Yeah.
Okay.
So now wait.
I got to make one other point because this is a point zooming out about journalism.
When David Pecker took the stand, you guys remember this, the former guy who ran the National Inquirer, he talked about how he's the one who was paying off women or doormen to try to protect Trump.
He didn't actually cut the check for Stormy, which is why Michael Cohen stepped in and did it.
The media started to sneer at the National Inquirer's tactics.
And I'm not defending their tactics.
You know, we all know what the National Inquirer is and what it does.
But I made the point at the time that their sanctimony was a bit misplaced because I knew very well from my time over in broadcast news and cable for that matter, that these networks, especially the big ones, also pay for stories.
And they may go out there on the air and act holier than thou.
Like we would never do that.
We would never pay for a story.
But they do.
And I said at the time, you know how they do it?
They pay licensing fees for somebody's exclusive photos.
And it's just a backdoor, scuzzy way of doing what you're not allowed to do through the front door.
Okay, and here is one example of one MSNBC or Alex Wagner talking about this disgusting checkbook journalism at the time Pecker took the stand.
Number one, for all journalism students out there, checkbook journalism, not a thing.
It is not a thing.
The strategy from Trump's team, at least as I understood it today, seems to be to normalize outlandish things.
The arguing that NDAs are just a common practice, that lots of wealthy people do them.
This is nothing abnormal.
Everybody has NDAs.
You guys may not have heard about them before, but it happens.
This is a thing that is done.
Just because Trump had a bunch of people signing NDAs doesn't mean there's anything suspect about that.
Catch and kill.
It happens all the time.
There's nothing illegal about this scheme.
This sort of thing happens all the time.
This is from Todd Blanche's mouth to the jury.
And then my favorite, there is nothing wrong with trying to influence an election.
It's called democracy.
That is not how the world works.
Okay, she is completely clueless.
All right.
Number one, as you guys know, NDAs happen all the time, especially at NBC.
Some of the people on this panel may have had to sign one.
I'm just saying.
And I could give you a long list of women who have been silenced by NBC News, her news organization, because of what her male colleagues have done.
All right.
So wake up, sweetheart.
Read a newspaper every once in a while instead of struggling on the teleprompter like you always do.
That's one thing Keith Olberman was right about.
Secondly, nobody ever does catch and kill.
NBC is the poster child for catch and kill.
You caught and killed the beginning of the Me Too movement and the Harvey Weinstein story to protect Matt Lauer.
That's what Ronan Farrell posited in his book.
You denied it.
He proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.
You guys are the inventors of catch and kill.
And third, checkbook journalism and your sanctimonious denial.
She's so clueless.
This is what Stormy Daniels testified to, per Katie Fang, who works at MSNBC.
So you should pay attention to her.
Necklace, and you also participated, Ms. Daniels, in making an NBC documentary about yourself, which aired on television just recently, right?
Daniels, yes.
They gave me $100,000 for back footage, but I wasn't paid for the interview.
It was for footage.
These people are disgusting liars.
They wouldn't know themselves if they saw themselves in the mirror.
They are guilty of all the things they now pretend make them so disgusted.
I'm disgusted with them.
Who wants to take that one?
Megan, listen, the MFNBC, they live for all of the sort of the drama and the seediness of all this stuff that's come out.
And it goes back to what is relevant at this trial.
Yes, of course, it makes for good TV.
It makes for interesting discussions on MSNBC about checkbook journalism and NDAs and all that, but they're getting so far afield from what's actually relevant in this trial, which was did Donald Trump commit a crime by causing the ledger at this Trump organization to be fraudulent and did he have criminal intent.
Stormy Daniels wanted to make money.
She wanted to be paid.
She wanted to engage in this checkbook journalism.
So quit trying to make her out to be some victim in all of this because she was doing it to make money.
And of course, because she's trying to earn money, it goes directly to her credibility.
MSNBC and all the other folks that want to make this about the habits of the national inquirer and all of these things, it's so irrelevant that it's just maddening because the Trump trial should have been over in about five minutes.
Stormy Daniels' testimony should have been limited to how and under what circumstances she received a check from her lawyer.
But instead, it's been allowed to grow and morph into something that is so far afield from what Trump may or may not have done that it's an embarrassment, quite frankly, to the legal system and the legal community.
This is not how trials are supposed to work.
This is not how justice in America is supposed to work.
And because it's come down to this, it's absolutely the kind of thing that I wonder if we'll ever be able to have faith and confidence in the objectivity and reasonableness of our justice system again.
And I'm not sure if I can do it.
I punish the prosecution in closing argument, less Stormy Daniels, because again, whether she's believed or not is only about the affair.
I punish the prosecution in closing argument.
I undermine their credibility that they're so desperate, they're willing to do whatever it takes to get Trump void of the evidence that they need that they put this woman on solely for the salacious details to make Donald Trump look bad.
How dare they do that in a criminal case?
You all should be offended to Philadelphia.
And I think people need to remember.
They need to remember the media is complicit in all of it.
That media is who large numbers of the populace are relying on for their facts about this case, for what's really happening inside.
NDAs are an abomination.
Who would ever use them?
This from the NBC, right?
Who would ever do a catch and kill from NBC?
And checkbook journalism is disgusting.
They do it all the time.
That's what Trump is up against.
All right, wait, before we go, because I know we're short on time, we got to spend a minute on Arthur Idala's huge win.
My God, speaking of Harvey and Trump, Idala won his case.
We talked about it right after you argued it with Mark.
We talked about it the day you won the reversal in a tight-tight decision by the highest court in New York State.
And I haven't had the chance to have you on the air.
We've spoken privately to say congratulations.
It's a huge win, not just for Harvey, but for any guy, frankly, woman accused.
And so put it in perspective for what it means in general and maybe even in the Trump case.
He worked so hard.
He worked so hard on this case.
That's true.
I thank you, Mark.
I actually think it's to Phil's point a little bit.
And, you know, I was quoted that day that we got the reversal, which nobody was more surprised about than I was because of how hated Harvey is.
You know, you could say Trump is hated.
Harvey was much more hated.
I mean, half the country voted for Trump almost.
You know, no one was looking to help Harvey Weinstein out.
And what to Phil's point about how the criminal justice system is being weaponized to go after politicians or just people we don't like, like Harvey Weinstein.
The fact that the Court of Appeals says, no, we're not going to let you throw the law books out the window because we've targeted one individual.
I mean, Megan, at the intermediary court, the appellate division, the first time it was a five-woman judicial panel, they went five-nothing at all the law and all the decisions were good.
So I was like, how am I going to get four of the seven judges on the highest court to agree with us?
But they did.
And here's my point, and I love this point.
I really do.
After we were reversed by those five women, I know I do.
You'll hear it.
The woman, the person from my office who wrote to the Court of Appeals asking for leave was Diana Fabi-Sampson, a woman.
The judge who gave us leave to the Court of Appeals was Janet DiFiore, the chief judge who retired because she felt like it on her own afterwards.
The woman who wrote the appeal, who wrote the judgment for the court, was Jenny Rivera, who was a very strong women's rights person.
And three of the four judges were women who agreed with us.
So it was women who really repaired the injustice that was done.
Again, not just to Harvey Weinstein, but to the whole system.
And it does tell Judge Mershon: like, we have the guts to do what we think is right, no matter who the defendant is.
And I think that was a big message for the whole country.
Arthur, is there, I know that they say they're going to retry him.
And I know he's still got the LA sentence hanging over his head, but I've heard you doing some saber rattling about him possibly becoming a free man.
Do you, I mean, would you put money on that?
It's just that there's two things real quick.
Number one, you know, Judge Kelly, the jury, besides there already being appellate issues in California, the jury in California, this will make Mark Eyeglass's hair really stand up, were voidered and told this defendant, Harvey Weinstein, he's already a convicted felon on a sex crime in New York.
So imagine starting off with those three strikes against you.
I know you could all be fair and impartial.
So that in and of itself should ask for a retrial.
But let me just tell you how crazy New York is.
Do you know that there's the senator, the same one who chased Amazon out of Queens with AOC, has introduced a bill to change the law in New York that prior bad acts should be able to come in in sex crimes cases in New York?
That he introduced that today, just so that they could introduce these women again when Harvey goes to trial in September.
Asking for a Retrial 00:01:02
Nuts.
Wow.
So we weaponized the legislature in addition to weaponizing the courts at the expense of the rights of the accused to have a fair trial.
It's unbelievable.
Well, we're going to continue to watch it.
You guys have been amazing.
Arthur, congrats.
A huge, huge win.
And I do believe for due process.
Also, not a Harvey fan, but believe they got to the right decision.
Mark and I were privately texting.
We're so proud.
We're like, you know, your grandparents, like our little boy, he did it.
Beware.
We were very happy for you, Arthur.
Thank you.
Super happy for you.
Okay.
Guys, thank you.
Appreciate you all being here.
And thanks to all of you.
We'll see you again on Monday where we'll have full coverage of everything that's happening that day and all the days.
And until then, try to keep your feet on the ground.
Maybe don't take a flight this weekend.
I don't have total confidence in air traffic control.
I don't want to blame anybody, but I'm just saying, not for nothing.
Go to church, say prayer, hug your family.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
No BS, no agenda, and no
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