Maggie, have you- That's great stuff.

Have you seen this before? I have never seen this before. B, in a trial where Donald Trump is the defendant and the witness is the person who is drawing this outrage from the judge is not what I expected because we had been looking for Trump to be the person acting up in ways the judge would find upsetting. And he has a few times, but not like this. But it was not entirely surprising because anybody who has dealt with Bob Costello knows that he can be a wild card. And this is why a lot of people in Trump's world thought calling him was a risk. And We got to see what a risk it was because this all took place in front of the… Except for that bit at the end. But the objections all took place in front of the jury. The parts of cross that took place today by the prosecutors were not great for Costello. Michael Cohen, who is a key witness in this case, has gotten pretty roughed up by the defense, by Todd Lanch in particular, or specifically, I should say.

Today, he said he stole from the organization.

Yeah, and that was a key moment, and in some ways was more significant than what happened last week, which was a pretty dramatic moment. But to then go into closing with what Marshawn clearly thought was a sideshow, and he made that clear when he was talking about whether to even let Castello testify to certain things. Have Castello behave this way, and then just have Castello reinforce part of what prosecutors are arguing here, which is that there is a mobby aspect to this case and to a lot of the behavior by the Trump people. It just doesn't seem to help the defense.

It's like as if Fox News jumped out of the television and into the courthouse today. And that's been the risk all along of bringing in a character like Bob Costello. He is someone who obviously thrills the right with the way that he attacks Michael Cohen's character. I'm sure he thrilled Donald Trump with his testimony last week in front of the House Committee. But in a courthouse, that is not the tone and the demeanor. I mean, we talk all the time about how Judge Mershon is a very soft-spoken judge. He does not kill people. He does not raise his voice. And the general conduct of counsel, prosecution and defense, is even toned and measured, even when they are making objections. So for something like that to unfold in this courthouse. It's a sideshow to say the least.

What do you make of how the judge handled it?

Well, my first comment would be just another day at the office for Judge Mershon. I can't even imagine. I would levitate out of my seat if I had a witness who is a lawyer, an officer of the court, and knows better than to talk over me and give me the eye when he's sitting there. I think he handled it perfectly to warn him that he was going to hold him in contempt. The greater question is, from a tactical standpoint, why they called this witness. And jurors tend, and I've said this before, to cleave to the judge. The judge is their protector. The person who greets them sends them off at At the end of the day, they don't like when a judge gets walked on by a lawyer or, in this case, a witness. It leaves a really bad sensation, a bad taste in their mouth. To your point about stealing from Trump, that got washed over by this witness. There was a moment, and they took that moment away by calling this witness.

With all due respect, Your Honor, and I don't mean to talk over you. No, not at all. I'm the defense attorney. I'm like, Ladies and gentlemen, with the jury, Michael Cohen admitted to grand larceny. Grand larceny. He admitted that to the prosecutors within the statute of limitations. But do you hear any charges against him? He is so in their pocket. They're so indebted to him that they didn't even charge him with a very simple crime. He admitted to the crime. He admitted it to them. It's an instant.

Arthur, I don't disagree with you. That's a moment in the case. My question is why you don't rest.

Because Castello gives a counter narrative. Castello, look, I wasn't in the courtroom. You guys were. I don't know what that narrative is. And I will tell you this, Judge. When I am a defense attorney and I'm calling witnesses, and now after The jurors watch the judge go, Question, answer, question, answer, question, answer. And now I go up and I ask the questions, Objection sustained, objection sustained, objection sustained. You know what? I look at the jury, I go, They want this hushed up. They want this hushed up. They don't want you to know this.

That wasn't how the jury was looking at it in the courtroom. I mean, come on.

Just to make that clear. Let's talk about the substance of Costello's testimony, and let's talk about Costello. Anybody remember the Mueller report? He's actually a big figure. Maggie and I were just talking about this. The exchanges between him and Cohen are, according to Robert Mueller, a dangling of a pardon from Donald Trump.

He was allegedly the emissary from Trump world to Cohen to Dangle.

Exactly. And that's what you're going to hear in the cross-examination tomorrow, to add to this atmosphere of mafioso, stinking, corrupt relationship between Donald Trump and Michael Cohen.

For the record, Castello's Irish. So I know you're talking around mafioso and a guy named Castello. For the record, he's Irish.

I didn't. I'm a little sensitive to that word.

I meant- As a past President of the Italian-American Lawyers of New York.

It's a generic Organized crime.

Can I just make a point, though? To Arthur's point, it is true. They called him because he tells a counter narrative, and he tells a different version of a story than what Michael Cohen does with similar facts. He tells a version which is actually it was Michael Cohen reaching out to me, and there's a more extensive version. But that wasn't Look, the caveat, we don't know what the jury thinks, and we need to say that over and over again. At least in the courtroom, that wasn't what came through because he was stepping on himself. It wasn't just the objections. At one point, Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor who was doing the cross-examination of him, was asking a question, and he spat out, speaking to the mic. The jurors, two of them looked at each other when he did that. I don't know how much of that counter-narrative came through. I understand what you're saying. I think the client was very happy, but I think what the defendant is happy with and what the rest of his team is happy with is not always the same thing. That's all I'm saying. One other point that I would just make in terms of what the judge said about how Judge Mershon handled it.

I think that Mershon has actually been bending over backwards, to be fair, to defense. The defense cannot stand him, and that's very clear in everything. I think that with a lot of things he has done, he has tried not to be in confrontation with Donald Trump. How you justify kicking out the press and keeping in Donald Trump supporters when you say, clear the courtroom, I don't quite know how that works.

The judge was also, even before Costello took the stand, he expressed some concern for the defense that this was not a wise course of action. He basically was like, Are you sure you want to go down this cul-de-sac of this pressure campaign, allegedly, that Michael Cohen said he was subject to, he tried to warn them, and they didn't listen, and they put him on the stand anyway, and now we will see what the result will be.

And the other moment that I noticed today was with the clip from C-Span, that there was an inability, apparently, to stipulate, and then they stipulated later, they thought better of it, which you'd get it sidebar and say, Are you kidding me that you won't stipulate to this? And I understand it's a death cage match, and nobody wants to stipulate to anything at that point. But I'm not sure that that's a good tactic to do, and maybe that's what the former president wants.

Let's talk about the Michael Cohen stealing from the Trump organization. I mean, how important is that?

Well, I think it gives the defense the opportunity to say he's not just a liar, but he's a thief. So you double up. It is important, and it's going to come out in closing arguments, and they'll lean heavily into it. I just don't know whether the jury doesn't have baked into the narrative already. This is a bad guy, and they're not particularly surprised about it. From my perspective, I don't know that it's as severe as it was made out to be in the moment today. I would agree with that because just being in the courtroom, I felt like there was a little bit of a dichotomy between people who were in the room and outside of the room.

And I was in overflow, but I was hearing the arguments as they were happening. The gist of the story was both bad for Michael Cohen and also bad for Trump, because at the end of the day, the story was essentially that Michael Cohen got a company to pay for Trump to do better in some stupid poll that no one cared about. And Trump didn't want to pay the company, and that Michael Cohen eventually gave them $20,000 in cash and then took the money that the Trump organization repaid him. Bad for Michael Cohen, but also the between the lines part of it is that Trump probably would not have paid them at all. Yeah, but how about this part of it? Their whole theory- That doesn't make Trump look good at either.

Their whole theory has been, and we've covered it for four weeks, Trump is so careful for this money. He knows where every dollar goes. He signs every check, the Tiffany frame, $650 All of a sudden, 30 grand disappeared, and he didn't know that.

I actually agree with you on that, and I think that I was surprised that the defense didn't actually double down on that because you're totally right that it's not actually clear whether Trump knew Michael Cohen was actually paying that company. The defense never really went down that road to say, Well, if Trump is so careful, why didn't he know about this $50,000 and where it went?

It is worth remembering Remembering, the prosecution did mention this in his direct testimony, so this was not a hidden, a bombshell. The other thing is, cooperating witnesses often do terrible things, and they get passes all the time. Isn't that right, Arthur?

I mean, let you know. It's true. Jeffrey, listen, I just need to say this for my own peace of mind. If Donald Trump is sitting in that seat, if Barack Obama was sitting in that seat, or Joe Schmo was sitting in that seat, whoever it is, I don't care what party you're a member of. If I am the district attorney, the way I was raised in the law, You do not bring the very first case ever against the President of the United States under these facts and circumstances where your main witness is someone as flawed as Michael Cohen. If I brought this case to Joe Heinz, the Brooklyn DA, in 1995, he would have said, Artie, we're not calling for it.

I'm sorry. I also just do think that, yes, prosecutors did mention this. They didn't exactly signpost it, so it still read like something as a surprise. And also the Keith Schiller text last week that got introduced, that were Todd Blanch's big pseudo Perry Mason moment. I don't know why the prosecution didn't bring that out in the first place, too. There have been a number of missteps by the prosecutor. It seemed like the prosecution missed that. They missed that, I think, completely. They may indeed have missed it, but it's not because they didn't have them.

Big, big mistake.

Everyone, thank.