Joining us now, Michael Cohen's friend and former lawyer, Lanny Davis. He prepped Cohen for a 2019 Congressional hearing. Lanny, first of all, you and I spoke this early this morning on SiriusXM talking about what to expect. At that time, you were pretty critical about the fact that you thought that it seemed like Michael Cohen was on the defense. He was not just the witness, he was the defendant, and that they were going after him. They did just that.

Well, they changed the subject to what the case is about. The case is about whether or not Mr. Trump, for political motives, decided to pay Stormy Daniels to prevent her from revealing the affair. And the political motives makes it a crime. Hush money alone is not a crime. There's been so much evidence besides Michael Cohen of political motives, starting with David Pecker, including Hope Hicks and several other witnesses. So there's evidence that it was a political crime. The federal prosecutors called it a political crime, and Michael Cohen went to for that. The federal prosecutors said that individual, one otherwise known as Donald Trump, directed, that's the federal prosecutors who worked for the Trump administration, used the word directed. So when Michael Cohen says anything and the whole pattern for the rest of his testimony testimony you're going to see, wraps up what we've previously seen in documents, witnesses, text messages, some of them from Trump loyalists like Hopeicks.

Sorry, there was pre-crap collaboration, but I do want to know, he was very calm. He was very measured. You and I talked, you were in court yesterday about this very point. This is not the Michael Cohen people are accustomed to seeing on the airwaves. Is that why they started out trying to antagonize him on the cross?

I'm sure they're trying to antagonize him. But let me remind you that this is his third rodeo, third time. The first time was on television, live under oath before Congress with the Republicans, Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, future Chief of Staff, with a sign behind them that said, Liar Liar, Pants on Fire. For the next eight hours, all they did was call him a liar. I sat behind him, you may see me once in a while, and when I heard his tone going up, we had a little signal. I would touch his back. I wasn't there today. It sounds like somebody was naming me, and just as well, I wasn't there. But Michael was resolved. On Mother's Day night, we talked, I have to admit. And he said, I'm going to stay calm, just as I did before the Congressional Committee.

But I do have to- Sometimes, actually. I'll only to tell you to calm down just a little bit. I have to add an addendum, though, to what you just said, Landy, because the crime here is not just that the payments were made for political purposes, but that the records were falsified and that Trump either knew about it or directed it. That's the part where it becomes Michael Cohen's word against, well, maybe not Donald Trump, but they're going to impeach his credibility on that very issue. That explains why prosecutors are going at this issue of how can you trust that Michael Cohen is really reformed, I want to read a little bit of what he said about why he changed his mind about Trump. He said, My family, my wife, my daughter, my son all said to me, Why are you holding on to this loyalty? What are you doing? We're supposed to be your first loyalty. You were there for some of this when it was happening. Why should the jury buy that and not buy the idea that, Hey, he turned on Trump and he made $3.4 million?

Well, first of all, my decision to represent Michael and put him in front of a Congressional committee was all about whether he would be believable. He persuaded me that he was contrite because he was willing to say in public on television, I'm ashamed of what I did. And I saw his family and their reaction that it was time for him to tell the truth and stop lying for Donald Trump. So he had to turn his life in a different direction. Whether the jury believes it's sincere because he still feels anger towards Donald Trump and whether they say, Yeah, I can get why he's angry, that's going to be an issue for the jury. But I am telling you that there is a part of our American judicial system. We're pretty bad people, and I wouldn't say Michael is bad, but people have made a lot of mistakes, some of them in organized crime, are the top witnesses for the prosecutors, and they're told the story of truth, and they have to be believed despite their prior misdeeds.

Can I ask you about his decision to say I'm not sure. Sounds like me. Might have been me. Those kinds of answers. You weren't there in court today. But was that the right choice to make in terms of how he answered those pretty direct questions about things that he said on social media and elsewhere?

So with all due respect, you're paid to do what you do to ask a question like that, and it's a professional question. I take no objection. I'm not going to second-guess somebody under that pressure in the beginning of his testimony and judge those the answers. Would I have preferred him to say yes or no? Of course, I'm a lawyer. But when he testified for eight hours in front of the worst personal attacks on his family and his truth by Congressional Republicans, he held up pretty good. So I think those answers, with all due respect, over a period of time, he got pretty good grades for today staying on a level playing field and not playing with the facts and telling the truth.

Do you have a Sharpie? Because you want to remind the audience that Donald Trump signs his checks with a Is that why you have this today?

How many years have we been doing this together? Like, literally. I don't know.

I can't recall right now.

That's not the answer to it. Of those years we've been doing this together, how many times have you seen me with the Sharpie? Literally every time. It is my thing. Like Donald Trump and Brett Kapp. I make fun every time. You do make the joke every time. And Brett Kavanaugh is another Sharpie user as well. It's a fun fact. An alternative theory about the cross-examination, which is that attorneys don't need to finish their argument when questioning a witness. They can lead the witness up to the point that leaves an open question, Where were you on Monday? Where were you on Tuesday? Where were you on Wednesday? And then stop right there. And in your closing argument, you say, Therefore, on Thursday, this is where the witness was. I think what they might have been doing is leaving some breadcrumbs that they can tie up in their closing argument. But to Devlin's point, there are still many areas in which they can quite aggressively tack the witness, and even just running down a litany of the people that he has been found to lie to. Did Sir, did you lie to your wife? Yes. Did you lie to the IRS?

Yes. Did you lie to Congress? Yes. Are you maybe lying to this jury now? Whoa. Hold on there. They can quite effectively, with just a matter of questions, really undermine the witness.

Let me ask you, Lanny, Their arguments are pretty strong to suggest that they're trying to say, Look, they want to take away this façade of a calm person. You're talking about motivated by the fact that you thought he was a changed man. Does he have to be a changed man to be an effective witness to the prosecution here?

No, he This has to be himself, and he has fundamentally changed. I said to you that for a whole day in front of Congress, he was unrecognizable. He answered questions that were quite provocative. He was called all sorts of names. Jim Jordan wasn't exactly civil with him, and he kept his calm. I also would repeat to my fellow lawyers here, I sat for two years with the prosecutors as they presented and constructed a case that didn't require Michael Cohen to testify. If he wasn't on the witness stand, the documents show that there was a campaign motive, Pecker and Hope Hicks alone. And the issue of whether these were attorneys' fees or reimbursements was resolved by Rudy Giuliani on national television. Well, of course they were reimbursements. You don't need Michael Cohen for either of those elements of the crime. The booking of the charge, Michael Cohen wasn't there when they were booked falsely as legal expenses. Of course they weren't legal expenses. But don't forget Weiselberg's handwritten notes that proved they were not legal expenses. They were chewed up and divided by 12 had nothing to do with legal expenses.

You had me to that last sentence, Lanny, that Alan Weiselberg's handwriting alone is enough to convict a witness, to convict the defendant. Pardon me. And I just think The notion that... Your points were all well taken, but the notion that documents are sufficient is simply not something I can agree with. I think the documents are incredibly persuasive.

But they don't lie.

They don't lie. And you can't cross-examine documents, and the document's incredibly persuasive, particularly that Alan Weiselberg one. But the person who was in the room is probably the most compelling piece of evidence you can have, and how much the jury trusts that person will determine whether the case rises or falls. I got to say this.

I have convicted people with just documents, by the way. I'm sure. Tax cases. But what's unique about this case is you have documents, common sense. You have documents that suggest that Donald Trump knew what was going on, just the documents themselves. But Elliot's absolutely right. You need an editorial person to explain why a certain document was done this way, why we signed it this way, and where the rubber meets the road. It goes back to what I said five minutes ago. If the jury believes that Donald Trump had a conversation with Alan Weiselberg and Michael Cohen about the purpose of these invoices, he's guilty in a New York Minute. If they don't believe him, then we could have a home jury.

Really quick, to your point, there's a big difference between common sense and reasonable doubt. I think the case has been proven to common sense spectacularly. These questions about how much do we trust the witness? I mean, we trust the documents, but how much do we trust what we're hearing is where reasonable doubt comes in. That's why no matter what the strength of the evidence is here, there are enough questions that at least a reasonable jury ought to at least say, Wait a second, I don't know.

Last word, Lanny Davis.

If you fall asleep at night and there's no snow on the ground, and you wake up in the morning and there's snow on the ground, this jury will convict beyond a reasonable doubt. The evidence here is so strong for that inference that I think it's a strong case. If I don't have my glasses on. There has to be an analogy.

There's all kinds of questions in which my perception of it might be tainted.

Well, your Sharpie does the.

Okay, hold on. I'll leave it there. I told you, the Sharpie invites the critique, but ladies, I'm just asking you. Thank you so much.