Early Wednesday morning, President Joe Biden released a short video message aimed directly at his general election opponent.

Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. And since then, he hadn't shown up for debate. Now he's acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I'll even do it twice. So let's pick the dates, Donald. I hear you're free on Wednesdays.

Basically, the Biden team wanted to tear up the old debate schedule and decades of tradition along with it. The campaign said, way more people vote early these days, so they proposed two debates way earlier in the calendar, one in June, even before the conventions, and one in September. They also wanted to ditch the live audience and for microphones to be turned off when a candidate's time runs out, so it isn't a shouting match. Well, almost immediately, former President Trump jumped on Hugh Hewitt's radio show and said, while he would like to do more than two, he was in.

Do you accept? Oh, absolutely. I've been trying to get...

He's issuing it. I wonder whether or not he shows up.

This all moved super fast. And before lunchtime, both Biden and Trump had accepted an invitation from CNN for a June 27th debate in Atlanta.

In theory, third-party candidate Robert F.

Kennedy Jr. Could qualify for the stage, but it remains a long shot. So for now, mark your calendars. Trump, Biden, June 27th, 9:00 PM Eastern on CNN. But remember what Biden said at the end of that original video? I hear you're free on Wednesdays. It was a not-so-subtle jab at the schedule for Trump's Hush Money trial in New York. Well, that trial is moving along quickly. And this week, the prosecution's star witness took the stand. My guest this week is CNN's Kara Skanelle. She's been inside the courthouse every single of this trial, and we're going to talk about whether the dramatic cross-examination of Michael Cohen could sink the prosecution's case.

From CNN, this is One Thing.

I'm David Reind.

Is the courtroom as cold as Trump says it is?

It isn't. I think it really reflects the temperature outside. So one day this week, it was so warm. People were taking off They were blazers because the temperature was just reflecting that it got pretty warm outside. So it's not as cold. It was cold at one point, and he was right when he was complaining.

He said yesterday it was an ice box.

Yeah, definitely not for my taste. I had to take off my blazer. Okay.

Well, from one windowless room to another, I brought you here into our studio because we have reached a pivotal point in this trial. The prosecution is just about to wrap up its case. For those who haven't I've been paying attention the last couple of weeks, can you walk us through the story that they've been telling the jury?

We have just completed four weeks of testimony. The prosecution is called 20 Witnesses. They started off by bringing in the former publisher of the National Enquiry, David Pecker, a longtime friend of Donald Trump. He set up a lot of what the prosecution's case is about, these catch and kill deals. He testified about a meeting in August 2015. Then in this meeting, it's Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, and David Pecker. They all decide, according to David Pecker, that they are going to catch and kill negative stories about Donald Trump to help his campaign.

They basically pay for these stories so that they don't get out. It's basically the gist.

Right. David Pecker said they would write negative stories of Trump's rivals, positive stories of Trump, and then get rid of any stories, particularly about women, that could negatively impact his campaign.

On the political front, a jaw-dropping tape that could change the outcome of the presidential election. The video from 2005 reveals that Donald Trump used vulgar language to describe acts that some say amount to sexual assault. It really is a bombshell.

The Access Hollywood tape, according to the prosecution, was a pivotal moment in this. I'm automatically attracted to beautiful.

I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. You just kiss. I don't need to wait. When you're a star, they let you do it.

They also brought in Hope Hicks. She talked about learning about the Access Hollywood tape. She took the jury into a conference room in Trump Tower, where she went to Donald Trump, who was in a meeting with several people on his campaign, and brought the story to him. And she described how it turned the campaign into a crisis. And she said that Donald Trump was concerned about the Access Hollywood tape and the impact it could have on voters. That's key to the prosecution's case.

The accountant on the stand right now inside that Manhattan courthouse, Jeffrey McConnie, the man who handed Donald Trump weekly cash reports and cut checks for the Trump Organization is testifying for the prosecution following that money trail.

The next phase of this case was the actual allegedly falsified document. So the prosecution brought in a former Trump Organization executive who, through them, they brought in these actual documents, the invoice that Michael Cohen sent to the Trump Organization to be reimbursed pursuant to a retainer agreement. That is what prosecutors say was false. There was never a retainer. They also showed the general ledger entries of the Trump organization and Trump's trust and his personal accounts that showed that it was a legal expense. They say that that was also false. Then the checks. These are checks that the majority of them were signed by Donald Trump. In the tub, it said it was a retainer. These checks were to Michael Cohen, $35,000 a month checks that were sent to Cohen, which they allege was part of this whole scheme.

Right.

This is the titular hush money of this hush money trial. The money paid to Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who said she had an affair with Donald Trump, which is something Trump has always denied. But she didn't have anything to do with the actual creation of these checks, right? Why was she on the stand at one point?

She was not a necessary witness that the prosecution needed to call. She knows nothing about the documents, how they were filed. But the reason they called her was because in Trump's opening statement, his lawyer said that she never had a sexual encounter with Donald Trump. It never happened. The prosecution said they needed to call her to establish her story, that they did have this encounter in 2006 in Lake Tahoe, and that was the point of calling her in to testify. She wasn't a critical witness. People make debate whether it was the right thing to do, but that was the point of her coming in.

Because this That was not really salacious, and the details were a little icky, to say the least, right?

It was fairly explicit, her testimony. Then on cross-examination, it became more of this debate of how much she hated Trump. Did she want to see him go down? Was she financially motivated? A bit of a distraction from just having heard and seen these documents that are at the heart of the case.

That brings us to Michael Cohen, the guy that's really at the heart of all this stuff. He gets up on the stand earlier this week. What did he have to say?

He is the prosecution's key witness here. He is the only witness that can directly tie Donald Trump to these allegedly falsified business records, to the crime in this case. Cohen's testimony here is pivotal, and it really depends on his credibility. When he was on the stand, he testified about a lot of direct conversations that he remembered having with Donald Trump. He said he called him twice the morning before he went to the bank, opened the account for essential consultants, and transferred the $130,000. He testified that he sought Donald Trump's approval all along the way. The prosecution on their direct, they got into Cohen's history with Trump, how much he admired Trump, but then also how things had changed, and then how Michael Cohen ultimately turned on Trump and himself pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations for part of these payments.

Right. I think it's important to remember that Cohen was Trump's guy through and through, like the ultimate loyalist, but that really soured in a major way.

Right. I mean, part of the testimony that he gave the prosecution, which was helpful to their case, he talked about some of these direct conversations, and among them, talking about, again, that Access Hollywood tape. When that came out, he said he spoke with Donald Trump. Trump told him it would be a disaster for the campaign, and he directed Cohen to stop this from getting out. Cohen also testified, and this goes to the prosecution's theory, that Trump wanted him to stall paying Stormy Daniels because if he dragged it out long enough that the story was in flux past the campaign, past election day, Trump, according to Cohen, said, If I win, it's not relevant. If I lose, who cares? That also ties the relevancy to the campaign.

They're trying to show that this was directly related to the election.

Right. I mean, he's charged with a felony count of falsifying business records. That means the prosecution needs to prove not only that they're false, but that they were made false in order to commit or conceal another crime. In this case, the prosecution's theory is that crime is election fraud.

So how did Trump's lawyers question Cohen on cross-examination then?

So their cross-examination was focused a lot on drawing out some of the negativity that Cohen has towards Trump, lobbying some insults that Cohen has made.

A remarkable moment just played out in court.

It really crescendoed in this moment on Thursday, though, when going back to some of these phone calls that Michael Cohen had with Trump, his lawyers honed in on one in October of 2016, October 24th. When questioned by prosecutors, Michael Cohen said that he was in contact with Trump's bodyguard, who was a way that he often reached Donald Trump. He said he called him, he was patched through to Donald Trump, and they talked about Stormy Daniels. Cohen said that he spoke with Donald Trump and that he told Trump that the Daniels matter was resolved and it was moving forward.

What happened just now, though, is the defense lawyer walked Michael Cohen through the text records and the phone records to create a really important timeline.

Well, on cross-examination, Trump's lawyer confronted Cohen with some text messages he had with the bodyguard just 10 minutes before that phone call where they were discussing some prank calls Cohen had been getting from a 14-year-old, and the bodyguard says, Call me. Cohen calls him. That call lasts for 96 seconds, a minute 36. And Trump's lawyer said to Cohen, This was a lie. You can admit it was a lie that you spoke with Donald Trump. Cohen said it wasn't a lie. He said he spoke to both Schiller and Trump.

The problem is Michael Cohen said nothing about the 14-year-old during his direct testimony, nor did he say so during his grand jury testimony. So prosecutors are going to have to go back and come back from this really important moment.

Certainly a blow to Cohen because Trump's lawyers made it seem like he made up that phone call.

So help me understand how big of a deal this particular incident is. Does it get to the heart of the evidence here, or is it just merely a matter of, here is an extreme example of Cohen being a liar?

Given how important Cohen is to the prosecution's case, it is important for the defense to try to undercut his credibility, to raise some doubt, some reasonable doubt in the juror's minds that they can't convict Donald Trump based on the word of Michael Cohen. The prosecutors would say that Michael Cohen is an important witness, but not the only witness, because they will point the jury in the direction of some corroborating testimony. David Pecker has told the jury that they had this catch and kill deal. It was to impact the campaign. Keith Davidson, Stormy Daniels' lawyer, will say that his understanding was Cohen was buying this to help the campaign. But when you get to the reimbursement scheme, Michael Cohen is the only person that has testified about Donald Trump's sign off of this payment and his knowledge of it. Cohen testified to this meeting in Trump Tower, where he said that Donald Trump had approved the payments where he would be reimbursed monthly for the next year. He also testified about a meeting in the oval office with Donald Trump, in which Cohen says Trump had told him he would be paid in checks. To back that up, there is a calendar entry that shows Cohen had a meeting at the oval office, and there's also a photograph that Cohen took that day in the White House briefing room.

But no one else can testify about conversations that were said and Trump's direct knowledge.

It's like the prosecution had no choice but to put him on the stand because he is the only one who can testify to that stuff. But of course, it's a risk, as we've seen in the cross-examination that he can be dinged for all his past lies and things like that.

Right. The prosecutors tried to get at that before. One funny thing, we don't hear from Michael Cohen until week four in this trial. We've heard from a lot of witnesses, 19 others. Several of them gave descriptions of Michael Cohen as a jerk, as an a-hole. Nobody wanted to talk to him as a difficult person.

This was the prosecution's case.

This was the prosecution's case, warming the jury up to him. They even told the jury in opening statements that some of their witnesses, including Michael Cohen, had a lot of baggage. The jury got a flavor of that coming in to know that Michael Cohen was not going to be a saint. A lot of cases don't have cooperating witnesses or people who are testifying that are saints. That's something that prosecutors always have to deal with. It's just a question now of, did Donald Trump's team get enough nicks in Michael Cohen's credibility to have a juror have pause of, do you convict a former president and a current front runner for the Republican Party based on the evidence that they've heard and on Michael Cohen's testimony?

Once they do rest their case, what defense is Trump going to put up? Do we know?

We don't know. His lawyers have suggested that they could call one or two witnesses, but they said they're not sure they're going to do that. Now, also the big question, does Donald Trump take the stand and testify in his own defense? His lawyers have said that's not been determined yet. We have seen Donald Trump in some previous cases, civil cases, not criminal. He has taken the stand. Other times, he's chosen not to. The decision has not yet been made. But the judge said on Thursday afternoon that both sides should be prepared to give They're closing arguments on Tuesday. So this is moving forward pretty quickly.

We could be on verdict watch sooner rather than later, it sounds like.

Yes, we could be on verdict watch as soon as early next week, and there could be a decision.

Well, obviously, a huge moment as this thing nears its conclusion, and you'll be there to see it all. Cara, thank you.

Thank you.

One Thing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Paulo Ortiz and me, David Reind. Our senior producer is Fez Jamil. Our supervising producer is Greg Peppers. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan Dizula is our technical director, and Steve Ligtai is the executive producer of CNN Audio. We get support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manisari, Robert Mathers, John Dianora, Lanie Steinhart, Jamis André, Nicole Pessereau, and Lisa Namarau. Special thanks to Elizabeth and Katie Hinman. We'll be back next week.

I will talk to you then.