Maggie, you have been in that room every single day as we went from David Pecker to Robert Costello and the fireworks that we saw late yesterday afternoon and when he was on the stand today. What do you just make of what you've witnessed now that you're looking at all of it? Sure.

To the very first day that he fell asleep during jury selection.

And you angered when you reported on that.

Look, this trial has been long. It has been really long. It is not absurdly long. It's not the longest trial in history. There has been a lot that has taken place, I think it is easy to lose track of everything that's taken place because David Pecker was the first witness, and he was seen pretty widely as an effective witness for the prosecution. He told a very compact story, which is what the prosecutors have been telling. Hope Hicks backed up parts of that story. Madelyne Westerhout backed up parts of that story, even as they said things that the defense found helpful. Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels and Robert Costello are different stories. I don't think that the jury thought that Michael Cohen was a member of the clergy. And so I think that a lot of the commentary about how he performed has been based on this idea that he came in seen as pure and that this all fell. However, he did have a pretty rough couple of days, particularly yesterday, when he acknowledged that he stole from Donald Trump. I don't know how the jurors received that. Robert Carstello, however, did come in as a former federal prosecutor and lawyer and member of the court, and he had a very rough outing yesterday.

He had a better performance today. If If there is an acquittal or if there is a hung jury, then I think that the defense will point to the aggregate of those performances, Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen, and Robert Carstello as basically just creating this air of who knows exactly what happened here. I don't know that that's how it's going to go. None of us knows how it's going to go. There is this constant drum beat outside the courtroom of people shouldn't talk about both sides of this case. Well, you know what's amazing about a courtroom is there's two sides, definitionally, and we have no idea what is going to happen But Trump has used it to reinforce campaign themes, right? That he's persecuted. He has brought in a phallance of supporters every day. He has rolled very heavy with these supporters. He has his indicted top legal advisor who shows up with him every day to court. I don't know how the jurors see those atmospherics. We may never know how the jurors ended up seeing this case because they may decide not to talk. I can understand for their sakes why they might not because there's real risk to that.

There's a lot of talk about a possible hung jury. Hung juries are actually not that frequent. It gets talked about so much that you'd think it happens all the time. It really doesn't, but it does happen slightly more in high-profile cases.

One thing about the jury is it's been the same jury the entire time. No alternates have been used yet. We don't know, but it's remarkable. It's interesting watching the jury and how they reacted to Robert Costello because we probably saw more reaction then than at any other moment in the testimony, even when Stormy Daniels moments were happening. And today, you said he did better today. The bar was pretty low given the courtroom had to be cleared because of him yesterday. But there was a moment where the prosecutors were using his own emails against him, including the one where at the time he said to his partner, Are The issue is to get Cohen on the right page without giving him the appearance that we are following instructions from Giuliani or the President.

And the emails just are what they are, as Castello himself said repeatedly. And some of these were very hard to suggest there was an opposite context. I I will say there were a couple of moments when Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, interrupted him or cut him off when he was saying, There's context. Can I give it? I don't know how the jurors felt about that, because if he had something else that he wanted to say, they might take it as the prosecutors are not being that fair to him. The basic challenge here for prosecutors, there are many challenges, but one is that they are telling a very neat, compact story, which is just clear. This is what happened and this is why. Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels, in particular, putting Castello aside, Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen, they have complicated motives. And David Pecker also has complicated motives. And that makes it a more complicated story to tell. That having been said, there is a lot of documentary evidence. There is a lot of discussion about matters that I'm confident the former President would not want to be sitting discussing over the course of five weeks.

But what that looks like, we don't know.

Can we talk about how he never testified? I don't think between the two of us, either of us ever thought he was getting on that witness stand. But he put it out there a lot. It was the defendant himself who offered and said he was going to testify.

Sure. And it was saying to people as recently as about a week and a half ago that he really wanted to testify and that he was likely going to. And most on his team did not want him to because they were afraid that that was going to be the end of the case if he got on the stand. Defendence, he still has the same presumption of innocence as any defendant because that's what the system is. But if you are someone who is going go out there and repeatedly claim falsely that you're being prevented from testifying, that you're gagged so you can't testify, he could have gotten up there and he could have answered all of this, and he chose not to.

And instead speaks outside the courtroom on a daily basis.

And complains that he's unable to speak.

Yes. Right. And says multiple things that just aren't true if you've been inside the courtroom. We also have other legal voices that are here tonight, veteran New York defense attorney, Arthur Idala, and also CNN's senior legal analyst and former assistant US attorney, Ellie Honig. Ellie, a big thing that happened today that was not as insane as Robert Castello's testimony, but maybe more important, was what the instructions are actually going to be from the judge when he speaks to the jury next week. I mean, can you just put it... It's basically telling this jury in non-legal terms what the statutes are and what they're making their judgments based off of.

The jury instructions are so important. They're dry, but they're crucial. They're the last thing the jury will hear before they disappear into that jury room to deliberate. We, as a criminal justice system, we do the best we can. We try to have the judge explain it in non-legal understandable terms. Some part of the jury instruction is easy to understand. For example, it's up to you, the jury, to assess the credibility of the witnesses. Anyone can understand that. Other Our hearts get really deep into the weeds, usually when we get into the elements of the crime. What happened today when the parties were arguing about what the jury instruction should be and should not be, absolutely blew my mind. I need to call this out. We, collectively, prosecutors are pushing the boundaries of due process here. The general back and forth in the courtroom today was the defense lawyers, defense lawyer saying, Your Honor, please tell the jury specifically what the other crime is. Prosecutors have to prove falsified records for another crime. Defense lawyers were begging him. They have to know what the other crime is. And prosecutors were saying, No, let's keep it very vague and general.

It's a bizarro world. I know that there is some aggressive reading of the New York statute that says, Well, the jury doesn't really They have to know what the other crime is. But to me, that suggests that the DA's office is hell-bent on getting the conviction now and worry about the fallout later.

Caitlin, that's exactly the opposite of the way it usually is. Usually, it's the prosecutors who want things more narrow and the defense attorneys want things wider. Here, it's just bizarro world. But in terms of him not testifying and saying he's going to testify, look, that's defense attorney 101. You want to keep your adversary on their toes. You want them preparing. Even though they got 18 prosecutors on this case, you want them spending time preparing to cross-examine the defendant.

They would probably love to cross-examine the defendant here. Maybe or maybe not because Donald Trump does things that no other human being could pull off sometimes.

He testified in the Carroll case, and he got an $83 million judgment.

Excuse me, but it was in front of Judge Kaplan, who in the first time ever said to a lawyer, I want to know everything your client is going to say before he testifies, and I'm only allowed you to ask him a three questions. That was When you talk about lack of due process, that was ridiculous.

Okay, but the jury decided how much money was happening there. But let's talk about what's happening here, because if you're the defense attorney and you're making that argument about what the instructions can be and what this looks like for the jury, it could truly decide this verdict and what that jury walks out of that room.

Absolutely. I think Ellie's description was exactly right in terms of where we are seeing, not necessarily coming to your description conclusions, but it is absolutely true that prosecutors are asking for a very very broad interpretation of what could be allowed. At one point, you heard Emel Bovie, one of the defense lawyers, say today that essentially, and I don't remember exactly how Mirshawn came down on this, but the argument was, You're leaving this so vague that one interpretation is that he could have broken a civil election law, not even a criminal violation. It just gets into very complicated areas. I mean, this is one of the challenges of this case, is that in trying to explain it to people, it is very complicated. The charges are very complicated. It's because they've never happened before. Prosecutions don't get crowdsourced, but when you're dealing with, typically, but when you are dealing with a former president and a current presumptive nominee, the circumstances just are what they.