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Hello, and welcome to our continued special coverage of today's unanimous guilty on all counts verdict in the New York criminal trial of former President Donald Trump. I am Rachel Maddow. I'm joined here by my colleagues Nicole Wallace and Joy Reid and Katie Fang and Chris Hayes. Also, Lawrence O'Donnell is with us. We're about to be joined by the star witness for the prosecution in this trial. Michael Cohen is going to speak with us exclusively, giving us his first reaction to this verdict tonight. Michael Cohen will be joining us here in just one moment. And he'll be here with us live on set. It was 04:20 p.m. eastern time this afternoon when the jury sent a note to Judge Juan Mershon. It said, quote, we, the jury have reached a verdict. 45 minutes later, at 05:05 p.m. the jury was back in the courtroom and seated. Defendant Donald Trump was there and seated as well. Judge Mershon then addressed the foreperson of the jury. It went like this. The judge, Mister foreperson, without telling me the verdict, has the jury in fact reached a verdict? Juror number one yes, they have. The judge take the verdict, please.

The clerk will the foreperson please rise? Have the members of the jury agreed upon a verdict? Juror number one yes, we have. The clerk, how say you to the first court, the first count of the indictment charging Donald J. Trump with the crime of falsifying business records in the first degree, guilty or not guilty? Juror number one guilty. The clerk, how say you to count two? Juror number one guilty. The clerk, how say you to count three? Juror number one guilty. The clerk, how say you to count four? Juror number one guilty. And so on and so on. The clerk proceeded to ask the foreperson the same question, guilty or not guilty for each of the 34 felony counts. And each time the foreperson replied, guilty, a unanimous verdict on all 34 felonies. That is how Donald Trump became the first american president ever convicted of a crime. He became the first president ever convicted of a felony. And then seconds later, the first president ever convicted of two felonies. Then every few seconds for a few minutes thereafter, he kept breaking his own brand new old record for the most crimes any american president had ever been convicted of.

Here's the signed verdict sheet filled in by the jury. 34 handwritten check marks, all in the guilty column, signed at the bottom by the prosecutor and by the defense attorney and by the foreperson. Though the foreperson is identified only by a number, not by his name, here was Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

First and foremost, I want to thank the jury for its service. Jurors perform a fundamental civic duty. Their service is literally the cornerstone of our judicial system. We should all be thankful for the careful attention that this jury paid to the evidence and the law and their time and commitment over these past several weeks. The twelve every day jurors vowed to make a decision based on the evidence and the law and the evidence and the law alone. Their deliberations led them to a unanimous conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, Donald J. Trump, is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree to conceal a scheme to corrupt the 2016 election.

Live press conference this evening from New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought and then supervised the prosecution of this case. Here's a look at how news outlets across the country are covering this historic news this evening. This is all front pages here. This is the New York Times. Trump guilty on all counts. This is the Washington Post. Trump guilty on all counts. This is USA Today. Trump guilty on all counts. This is the Wall Street Journal. Donald Trump convicted on all counts in a hush money case. Here's the Tampa Bay Times guilty Trump becomes first former us president convicted of felony crimes. Here's the LA Times. Trump found guilty on all charges. Here's politico.com Trump guilty all capital letters. Here's the Boston Globe. Same Trump guilty, capital letters. Here's Donald Trump's hometown paper, the Queen's Daily Eagle. Queen's man convicted. And here's the COVID of the next issue of the New Yorker magazine. The title of this is a man of conviction. Key detail here. Little hands, big handcuffs. Nicole, you and I were here as the verdicts were handed over, were handed in by the jury and had that first reaction to it.

I wonder in this few hours that we've had now since receiving this information as we've seen the Republican Party and Trump and his supporters react unanimously by proclaiming this to be an illegitimate verdict and an illegitimate court. I wonder if you have a sense of what this night's gonna mean for us.

I mean, for me, the Trump story has always been about asymmetry. And I think as we came to set when we learned that a verdict was in, our coverage would have been tonally the same if he'd been acquitted. Right? It would have been respect and reverence for Judge Juan Marshawn that we've all been articulating over the last several hours. It would have been respect and reverence for the jurors who said, yeah, pick me, I'll do it. And I think if there was criticism, it might have been, you know, that the process didn't yield a result that seemed plain to our eyes, right? That they had the paper, they had the emails, they seemed to have smoking gun evidence. But the Republicans, Trump's enablers, would have celebrated an acquittal, and they're only condemning a conviction because they don't like the result. And so I think what is important is for us not to look away from what is broken. And what is broken is that one of the two parties does not respect the rule of law, not because they didn't like what they saw, not because they saw something different in Judge Juan Rochon that we saw, but because they don't like the result.

And that is a flashing red light for our country.

Chris?

Yeah, I mean, I keep thinking about the immunity case before the Supreme Court and just still pending, still pending. I mean, one of the things that really, really got to me during those oral arguments, which I felt was really shameful in some circumstances, is multiple conservative justices basically saying, oh, come on, you can indict a ham sandwich that, you know, isn't the rule of law just gonna be used as this tool? And here you had, I thought, just a process that was run with incredible integrity. And basically, I think that the kind of liberal democratic order that we're trying to hold onto here rises or falls on our ability to agree to fair and neutral processes that we're all subject to.

That's democracy. It's a process based system. You're not guaranteed any outcome.

Correct.

You're guaranteed a fair process.

That's exactly right. And that's true in courts, and that's true in elections. And what we were seeing in the republican party is basically rejecting that notion that if you lose an election, the election's no longer legitimate. If you're convicted of trial, then the system is no longer legitimate, it's rigged. And this is a deeply held part of Donald Trump's personal view of the world. I mean, he said it about the emmys, right? It goes all the way back. It's not, and it's authentically held, I think, in his own strange way. But it is now metastasized to take over the party. And in some ways, when that is the party ethos, as we're seeing, you are kind of removing yourself from the sort of consensual, collaborative enterprise that we're all engaged in, in a liberal, democratic enterprise.

You know, thinking about that from both of those points, just thinking about our own coverage here on MSNBC and all the people that we've talked to, the legal experts, the observers, the pundits, I don't think. I mean, you could go through it with a fine tooth comb, but I don't think there was a moment in our coverage when all of us covering the daily trial, looking at the transcripts, looking at people who are in the courtroom talking, you know, getting reporters updates over the course of the day, I don't think there was a moment where we were like, mm, something went wrong there. There's something hinky in this trial. There's something that's been decided in a way that seems very suspect or like, wow, that's gonna get appealed, and that'll blow this thing up. There was never a moment like that, and that was true. Us not knowing what the result was going to be. Exactly. And that is to have a non results driven, honest broker, fair take on what's going on means that you believe in the system, and you're policing the system to make sure that it's fair, but you're willing to accept it when it is, regardless of what the outcome is.

And that is what it means to be a citizen.

Let me just say one more thing, because I don't want to overstate the case. Right. There are times where public officials are convicted of crimes and people rush to their defense. I mean, I saw this in mayor of Providence when I was in Providence, Rhode island. I've seen it in Chicago politics, and sometimes even other elected officials will do it. It's the unanimity here that I find unnerving. Right. Like, if you're a, you know, if you're a city council member and your neighboring city council member gets convicted on a crime, and you sort of think they got a raw deal and you show up to support them, that happens in american politics. It is the down the line, complete party line unanimity that has been expressed and imposed today about this. That this is from the moment it's announced, this is a illegitimate process that I find genuinely unnerving and distinguishing from normal politics around criminal prosecution.

Oh, I'm sorry, you go first.

I just wanted to say what we heard Alvin Bragg say. What we've said here at this table and on shows and on this network is we are doing, we are reporting, we are doing what we're doing without fear or favorite. And that's what Alvin Bragg said. And I think what's interesting is that has been the rey, you've seen a redefinition of courage, which I think is interesting. We've now had to redefine what courage means. It used to have a different definition, but now the things that we used to take for granted in terms of people believing in the rule of law, we've had to redefine what that means. But if you think about what Alvin Bragg did, he took a case with a team of prosecutors that worked. And I have an empathy for the lawyers.

Right.

Because having been a trial lawyer, the amount of work that took to be able to get this across the field, finish line is in. It's just an incredible amount of time and energy. But it was the without fear or favor approach that they took. They did not let themselves be skewed by the following analysis. Even if you have all of the elements of a crime, even if you have probable cause, even if you can be able to meet all of those elements, sometimes you stop yourself as a prosecutor and consider what the jury nullification could be on this. Do you have enough to be able to get a jury to care? And I sat here at this table when we talked about the opening statements, and I said, for so long, people pooh poohed the value of this case. It was the first indictment of four, the first to go to trial. But what they did during that prosecution's opening is they made you care. They made the jury care about this case when maybe the jury didn't care. And I think that was the critical moment.

And on the issue of fear or favor, the fear factor for the people who are involved in this process at every level, the jurors, obviously, jurors, family members, the judge, the judge's family members, the prosecutors, their family members, and the witnesses. We're going to be speaking in just a moment with Michael Cohen, who was the prosecution's star witness. And, I mean, Michael Cohen's saga is shakespearean. Part of the fear in terms of him being a witness is having come to this point in his journey with his former boss and mentor, man. He, by some accounts, the way Michael Cohen tells it basically worshiped for a long time while he worked with him for more than a decade. The confrontation with Trump itself, but the confrontation with Trump's supporters and what Trump has been willing to bring to bear on his perceived enemies in the world, is something that a witness like Michael Cohen is now contending with and has been contending with. And it is now presumably an order of magnitude different now that this unanimous all counts guilty verdict has been pronounced by the jury. We'll be speaking with Michael Cohen in just a moment.

Before we speak with Mister Cohen, I do want to talk to our friend, Lawrence O'Donnell. Lawrence, you were in the courtroom for most of the trial, including for Mister Cohen's testimony. I just want to ask, before we speak with Michael Cohen here live, is there a key moment from the witness testimony, from the way this court proceeding proceeded that led it inexorably toward this verdict today? Or did you think to the very end that it could go either way?

I did think it could go either way. Look, we now know, and we can say definitively, that Todd Blanche was defending a guilty client. Defending a guilty client is really hard. It is a very hard thing to do, and it's a very hard thing when you're defending a guilty client, to get twelve jurors to unanimously agree to find that defendant not guilty, which Todd Blanche asked them to do many times in his closing statement, and many times use the phrase reasonable doubt. And you always wonder what that phrase means to every jury and every jury. It's very common for a jury to want to hear that instruction on reasonable doubt, read to them again. But this jury was clearly unified, and they had to have been unified most of the way. There couldn't have been a lot of hard work to get through in that jury room, given that you basically got this verdict in about 9 hours, over 34 counts. They were being very respectful, I think, of the size of that indictment. I actually think, Rachel, as this day has been wearing on, that the key moment was Alvin Bragg, alone in a room with his own thinking, after all of this had been presented to him, after more than one team of prosecutors looked at this potential defendant and suggested ways that this potential defendant could be prosecuted, while some prosecutors in that office were opposing some of the ideas about the way this defendant could be prosecuted.

And so Alvin Bragg had a decision to make. It was his decision, and his decision alone to make that decision, to go forward with this case. And as I was sitting in that courtroom and watching this evidence unfold, I could see why Alvin Bragg made the decision to do this, why, when he looked at all of this evidence, his conclusion had to be, I can't possibly not bring this case. This evidence can't emerge later and the world can't see this evidence later and asked me why I didn't bring this prosecution. At the very same time, especially when Michael Cohen was testifying, I could see why the Southern District of New York federal prosecutors didn't bring this case because they were worried about how Michael Cohen would perform as a witness. What Alvin Bragg had to do when he decided to bring this case, he had to do one simple thing. Thats the hardest thing in the world. He had to bring a perfect case. He had to assemble the perfect team, including, by the way, the paralegals who were standing up there with him tonight at that press conference. It wasnt lawyers only. He had the paralegal assistants up there with him, too.

He had to assemble the perfect team, and they had to present a perfect case. There were plenty of moments in the trial that we wondered about, did this hurt one side? Did this help the other side? Now we know. Now we know. The prosecution did exactly what they had to do. They had to present a perfect case. And for a case like this, Rachel, you have to think about it as an airplane engine and what doubts you might have about an airplane engine. And an airplane engine has to work flawlessly. It's a life and death matter. The prosecution's job is to build a flawless airplane engine. And the defense's job is just to try to convince you somewhere that engine is leaking a drop of oil. That's all the defense has to do. That's all they have to do. And so it's perfection versus there might be a flaw, there might be a loose bolt. Perfection has to win. And that's what Alvin Bragg saw at the outset was there was a way to do this case. There was a way to try it perfectly. He tried it perfectly. Not calling Alan Weisselberg was the right call.

We now know he had to know it was the right call before the fact. We all get to sit here knowing everything. That was the right call by Alvin Bragg in this case. He had to know ahead of time. He could have said to Josh Stein, glass, you know what? A four and a half hour closing is too much. I need you to cut 2 hours. He didn't do that. He built his team. He trusted his team. He knew his team was capable of doing the perfect job that they had to do to get to all counts guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And, you know, this is the story in that room was the story of these two, two kids who grew up in New York, one, maybe the most spoiled brat in the history of american spoiled brats, Donald Trump. And across the aisle from him is Alvin Bragg. Alvin Bragg grew up on a block in Harlem that is called Strivers Row. His mother and father met in a small town in Virginia. In the 8th grade, they went to separate colleges. Alvin Bragg, senior, went to Syracuse University. They came to New York.

They lived, worked, lives as professionals, as most of the people living on strivers row do. And they all, on strivers row, had high hopes for their kids. And on strivers row, the kids learned, if you work really, really hard in school, if you work really hard, really hard, you will be able to do work that you can be proud of. And so Alvin Bragg has been aimed at this point. And, you know, for reasons that will never make sense in my memoirs, I decided today to spend the day at Alvin Bragg's alma mater for events surrounding graduation week at Harvard. When Alvin Bragg graduated from Harvard College, the school newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, ran a profile of him. And the title of that profile in his last week of college was the anointed one. And the article, the article that gives you what you think is the most hyperbolic title you could imagine for a college senior, then lays out for you who this kid is, who is graduating from Harvard College and on his way to Harvard Law School. And you finished that article, as I did a year ago, thinking, yeah, that's the right title.

That's who this guy is. And everybody there, everyone was. When he was in this week of his life, that final week at Harvard College, that's what people saw here. And that's what people saw, the people of Manhattan who elected him, that's what they saw. They saw somebody who was dedicated to doing this job and doing it flawlessly and so profoundly, modestly, in a country in the Trump era that desperately needs lessons in modesty, Alvin Bragg, is that lesson.

You know, Lawrence, it's such a good point that in this moment, when it is remembered in history, yes, the crimes will be part of the history, the criminals will be part of the history. Absolutely. But the people who are brave enough to take this through the criminal justice system, against all the threat that they had to face in order to do it, and against all the odds, and against the most powerful people in the country, some of the most powerful people in the world to do it, those are the people who, a few generations from now, I don't know that we'll still have movies, but they'll be the ones who are having blockbuster holograms made about them. Lawrence, thank you. Thank you, my friend. I know. We'll be back with you in a moment.

On the MSNBC podcast how to win 2024, political experts former senator Claire McCaskill and democratic strategist Jennifer Palmeri examine the campaign strategies unfolding in this all important election. The focus is on the voters that are not necessarily in your corner. Now, if Democrats are going to win in 2024, we have to be able to explain what is happening at the border and what the solution. Search for how to win 2024 wherever you get your podcasts, new episodes every Thursday.

Hey, it's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, why is this happening? Author Sasha Eisenberg on his latest book, the lie detectives in search of a playbook for winning elections in the disinformation age. The disinformation narratives that are going to be a problem for us electorally with the small share of persuadable voters are the ones that respond to some existing concerns or anxieties that voters have about a particular issue or about Biden. And we need to not chase the particular story or deepfake that's moving today. We need to have a messaging attempt that addresses the underlying anxieties that that voter has. That's this week on why is this happening? Search for why is this happening? Wherever you're listening right now and follow.

Joining us now here on set for his first interview since tonight's verdict was announced is the prosecution's primary witness from this case, Michael Cohen. He's joined here tonight by his attorney, Donya Perry, where grateful to you both for being here.

It's good to see you all.

How are you?

I guess the word is relieved. This has been six years in the making. Remember the very first time that I met with the district attorney's office? We talked about it when I was on your show after putting out disloyal. The very first time I ever met with the district attorney's office was while I was an inmate in Otisville. They came up to see me on three separate occasions. So this is a six year process within which for accountability to finally be had.

Were you surprised by the verdict?

No, I was not. I've spoken, I've been on so many of the shows on here on MSNBC, and I've told you all along that the facts speak for themselves. The documents speak for themselves. I've listened to so many pundits come on the various shows, including some of the hosts talking about X, Y and Z. They couldn't be further from the truth. And I would have conversation with my lawyer, Donya, on a regular basis, and I would say, I don't understand it. I just don't understand how come they don't see the same things that we're seeing. I understand that it makes great headlines and so on, but the facts are the facts. And at the end of the day, the facts are what prevailed here.

You mentioned the timeframe and what it's been for you. Before tonight, there was this criminal scheme that had been described by prosecutors, right, this illegal conspiracy to influence the election payments to benefit the campaign laundered through the Trump organization, booked falsely as funds for something else. It's been described by multiple prosecutors. But before tonight, there was exactly one person who had gotten in trouble for this scheme.

Only one.

Only one. It was you. You were not the beneficiary of the scheme, but you were the only person who'd been in trouble for it. I mean, the national Enquirer got immunity.

But you ended up in prison, as did Allen Weisselberg.

Yeah. Trump's attorney general, Bill Barr, told SDNY to stop the investigation after you were in prison, after you had gotten the sharp end of that stick, and to get Trump's name out of it. It's finally been eight years down the road from these alleged crimes. I just have to ask you, and I know you just said about how you feel about the verdict, but that's justice delayed. Is justice delayed, justice denied?

Clearly not. In this case, 34 counts, one after the other, after the other, after the other, of guilty. It's accountability. It's exactly what America needs right now. We need for accountability to be had by all those that break the law, because as we like to continuously state, no one is above the law. And today's verdict is demonstrates that.

How do you think Donald Trump is feeling today in the wake of these verdicts?

I can only go back to when Judge Pauley sentenced me to 36 months. You don't feel good? Sentencing is terrible. I, of course, took the plea, the 48 hours that was given to me, or they were filing the 80 page indictment that was going to include my wife. It never feels good. I did what I had to do to protect my family. This is very different. Donald didn't let it go in order to protect his family. He took it all the way. And Judge Juan Marshan, who is an absolute gentleman, to see him on that stand is to see poetry. It's to see a masterful judge who was quick with decision making. He was absolutely judicial perfection, and the jury had tremendous respect for him, as did I, which is what kept me off of all my social media. That and Donna, of course, telling me to stay off the street social media. It was really out of respect for Judge Mershon in the process that I did exactly that. And the jury respects Judge Mershon. And I believe a lot of the antics that went on in the courtroom, whether it was by Blanche or by Donald himself, with the eye closing, you know, the leaning back, the total disregard for the jury, I don't think he engendered any positive feelings by any.

Did you feel like him? I mean, some people said he was sleeping. Some people said he was resting his eyes. I don't know. There was a lot of different interpretations about what he was doing. Your interpretation of it in the room was that he was being disrespectful to the jury.

Yes. But I was also not concentrating too much on him as I was trying to keep track of Todd Blanche's meandering questioning. You know, that was very different. Go from 2016 to 20 18 20 19 20 20. And, you know, trying to keep track of the dates and the events. When you have that type of a meandering question, you know, questioner is not an easy process.

Did you and Donia, I'll put this to you as well. In preparing for that cross examination from Todd Blanche, did you prepare emotionally as well as factually? It seemed like from us, just watching it, being in the courtroom and from our report and looking at the transcript, it seemed like it was a herculean effort to just stay calm and even keel in what seemed to be designed to provoke you and to confuse you.

A lot of our prep certainly focused on the facts, making sure. I mean, there's so much. There was so much prior testimony and interviews and statements. So we wanted to be up to speed on that, refreshed.

That's not an advantage when your client has spoken a lot in public.

He has. And. But, you know, it was important, and I emphasize this to Michael, and he handled himself remarkably well. But I wanted him to understand that his demeanor mattered and that he needed to maintain the same type of affect and composure on direct, as uncrossed, as un redirect, and on recross. And he did that. And I think I saw a connection between him and the jury. They believed him, and I think. And they were just with him. And so it was. Yes, there was a lot of emotion involved. Painful for me, as his lawyer, to watch the attacks on him, the constant. I mean, 85 times. He was called a liar in the summation by Todd. He's not a liar.

Nobody's a liar.

No one's a truth teller. He has told lies, and he admitted to it, and the jury believed him, and they returned the swift and just verdict. And so I think all the preparation was put to good use.

What Donna's describing there about the strategic necessity of you staying cool and having that same affect and everything, how hard was it?

Not hard at all. It's the media that wants to portray me as this sort of bombastic character. It's really not.

We've all heard bombastic, but you've heard.

It from my Mea Culpa podcast or political beatdown? Podcast. It's a. It's a Persona for it. I can't go with intelligence, so I have to go with bombastic. Right? It's not necessarily my effect. Yes, I get hot tempered. Yes, you've heard that a couple of times, you know, here and there when I was working for Mister Trump, but that's not generally my effect, and it really wasn't hard. I will tell you, though, 51 days of solitary confinement changes anyone and everyone. When you start to learn to live in your own head, which is a dangerous place for anyone, it's very easy to then turn around and say, I just need to pull back on myself. I need to pull back on getting angry at the nonsense of Todd Blanche. And it was not as difficult as I thought. Staying focused with his questioning, that was more difficult. The anxiety and dealing with the anxiety on this was difficult as well.

What kind of anxiety?

You know, when I'm nervous. I was nervous because so much was riding on the result of this, and I wanted to ensure that my testimony was perfect. I knew that there could be no deviation from perfection. And both Donya and I, afterwards, when the whole thing was over, we sat and we spoke for a little bit about my testimony and couldn't understand some of the criticisms. Oh, a minute and 39 seconds. How could you possibly have two conversations? Well, you can, especially when one is not a status call. It's just an update. Hey, just want to let you know everything's taken care of. We're good. That's the conversations that take place with Donald Trump. Not this long winded, including that tape that I had recorded him, which I had done, as I told you, for David Pecker, that was only, like, a minute and change, but that was a substantive conversation. So imagine what you could do in a minute and 39. And I thought Josh Steinglass did a fabulous job. By putting that minute, 39 seconds out there. Susan Offinger is just a phenomenal. The whole team, the whole team, the whole prosecutorial team were incredible.

As we would go through some of the documents, she knew off the top of her head most of the numbers, most of the exhibit numbers. Very impressive group of people.

What did you make of the decision by the defense? And we're all speculating that a lot of the defense strategy was driven by Trump himself. We are speculating about that because we don't know, but it just kind of felt like it. But they made a strategic decision to try to make the verdict a referendum on you, including saying, and being admonished by the judge for saying it, saying essentially the last word to the jury, do not send anyone to prison on the word of Michael Cohen. What do you, how was that for you? What do you make of that decision?

Again, I didn't really care, nor do I really care what Todd Blanche says about me. What I care about is my wife, my daughter, my son, my parents, my close friends. That's who I care about. And what they say about me. Donia. I care about what she says about me. I don't care what Todd Blanche says. It means nothing to me. I don't care what Don Ivanka, Eric, Don Junior, it doesn't matter to me what any of them say about me. I know who I am and I knew what I needed to do. So in this specific case, it was a very, and I had said it, it was a very foolish strategy. And he's not really known as a defense attorney. I think it's only his second defense trial, not a good strategy. And proof positive of that is the 34 count verdict.

The defense counsel we're talking about, Todd Blanche, did an interview on another cable news network this evening. I'll let you guess which one. And he said in that interview that every decision in the case, every substantive decision in the case is one that he made together with Trump.

Makes sense.

Well, I was going to ask you if you see Trump's fingerprints on some of the decisions that you're describing here.

Absolutely. The term gloat. It's a Donald Trump fourth grade playground bullying type of tactic. What's that? I did, I was going to call him a sloped, which is the stupidest lawyer of all time. You cannot listen to your client when you are trying to create a defense, a defense that, that is as important as this one is. The very first president of the United States, former president, to ever be charged with a crime, let alone convicted. Now on 34 counts. It was definitively the stupidest lawyer of all time, worse than some of the other ones that he has in his orbit. It just made no sense at all. And any good lawyer, if he would have tried to get ahold of Donia, she never would have listened to his desire for retribution or his desire to control how the case would proceed. That's not how you run a good defense. I would never have allowed it if I was still with him.

Let me ask you about an element of the defense that was mounted, which I think I found puzzling just as an observer, and it was about the access Hollywood tape. The defense argued that there was no new urgency from Trump to kill the stormy Daniels story after the access Hollywood tape, because the access Hollywood tape was no big deal, that it didn't have a big impact on the campaign, that it didn't change anybody's mindset about the relative potential damage that could be done by another sex scandal, particularly a sex scandal like this. And the reason that was, I think, puzzling to a lot of us watching it is because we were alive then, and it seemed like the access Hollywood tape was a very big deal then, and it would have rationally had an impact in terms of the way they were thinking about potential damage. In one of these stories, you were very close to Donald Trump at the time you were involved in the response to the access Hollywood tape. How does that comport with your lived experience?

Completely contrary to the reality. I was in London at the time visiting my daughter, who was studying at Queen Mary University for the semester. It was her 21st birthday, not to mention several days thereafter was my anniversary. So we were there celebrating as a family when this thing happened. I spent most of the vacation outside of the restaurants, on the telephone with people like Hope Hicks and others, trying to do damage control. And that was demonstrated, again by the evidence, whether it was text messages or, you know, corroborating testimony. That's what I had continuously said when I was on, like, Nicole's show or Joy show or any of the MSNBC shows. This is a case that is going to come down to the documentary evidence and the testimony of others. And what ultimately was demonstrated was the fact that all of the testimony by the other witnesses that I had involvement with corroborated what I've been saying for six years. And all of the evidence, the documentary evidence, emails, text messages, documents themselves, again, corroborated what I've been saying for six years.

This case was, I think, not derided, but downplayed by a lot of people when it became clear that it was one of four criminal indictments in four different jurisdictions. For Trump, this was seen as, I think, the lightweight case. There's also been a lot of discussion, even in the media. Do we call this the hush money case? Is this an election interference case? How should we shorthand this? Do you think that this case was substantively important, especially compared with the classified documents case and the January 6 case and the other ones that are out there pending that may never, ever come to trial? Is this one substantively important on its own?

So the answer is yes, it is. But I myself, on again, on various different shows, have said, why are we looking at these cases like, this is the Kentucky Derby, that we're handicapping the four cases? If, in fact, this was a handicap, it would be the fourth most obscene case that Donald is being charged with. Obviously, this case does not hold equal weight to the theft of nuclear secrets, the document, the Mar a Lago document case, or the insurrection, the January 6 insurrection. It just doesn't. Or even the attempt to overturn a free and fair election. Nevertheless, this is an important case. It is a legitimate case. And while I would have liked Alvin Bragg to have brought it a year earlier, because that would have been good for me, right. I would have been, a year earlier, finished with this. It's an important case. It's a relevant case. It is an illegal act that any one of us would have already been prosecuted for. And again, since no one is above the law, Donald needed to be held accountable, just like any of us, just like I was held accountable. The only difference I took responsibility in.

Terms of, I will say my colleagues here, I'm being very uncool and not letting you guys in here. I've got another question I'm going to ask you, but then I will let you talk to Michael as well. A lot of the reason that I think this is being greeted the way that it is across the country, three inch headlines in every newspaper in the country, it's not necessarily because everybody is totally engaged with the substance of the falsifying the business record. To occlude the commission of another crime, which is the actual details of this, is not what's driving it. What's driving it is, a, that he's the first president ever convicted of a crime, and b, what's he gonna do? People are very worried about what Trump may demand or expect his supporters to do in response to this, the sort of extralegal pressure and potential violence that he brings to bear on every situation where he feels victimized. Now is very much friend of mine in terms of us and the future of our democracy. I just. I'd like to hear what you think about that, how you calibrate that and how you have dealt with what I know has been the anxiety around the threat level for you and your family.

So I know that he's already asked a series of the Republicans that showed up to court with him to pass a law whereby he cannot be held legally accountable for any crime. I've never heard of anything like this. He has his own set of constitutional rights that none of us are afforded the same. This is going to be a whole new law class for all these poor law students right now. They're going to have to take another course, maybe don you end up teaching it at Harvard or something? Will he look to create violence? Sure. Will it happen? I don't think so. I don't believe that the american people are as invested in him as he believes. We've already seen what happened with the oath Keepers, with the Stewart Rhodes 18 years. Nobody wants to spend 18. I spent 13 months at Otisville, a satellite camp, but 51 days in solitary confinement, I assure you, nobody wants that for themselves. So no one's going to go out there and do something stupid, especially, let's say, here in New York. We have the greatest law enforcement in New York, our men and women in blue, the best, but they're also great in all the other cities and all the other states in our country.

Then we have the national guard, we have the military. No one is going to allow him to create the havoc that he wants everybody to believe that he has the ability to create.

Nicole, Michael, you were able.

Hi, Nicole. I didn't realize.

Sorry. I do that. Sorry.

No, it's been fun to watch this conversation. I want to ask you about some, for some of us, I'm sure everyone is riveted. I want to ask you about your pain because you were able to talk about it in a way that just most humans aren't able to talk about it. And you were able to bring the jury into your journey of reverence. You describe your time with the trump.org as something that had a lot of, I think you said, incredible experiences. You were able to be multidimensional in a way that nobody in the press gives you credit for. Right. The whole frame around you is, you know, no credibility. Oh, Todd lynch got him. It was really like a nanosecond when Todd lynch wasn't failing and people thought that you shot your credibility. I wonder how you, you one were able to be that vulnerable, right, in a criminal trial, being watched around the world and sort of share all that. And I wonder how you. I know you see a lot. I know you take in a lot of coverage. I wonder how that felt.

Difficult. You know, one of the things during prep sessions with Donia, and, you know, her office was, don't quibble over an answer. If you did it, own it. And it's very difficult. Don't get me wrong. Nobody wants to acknowledge that they did something wrong, that they did something bad, but there's no point in quibbling. And as a lawyer, former lawyer myself, who's done a handful of trials and especially a lot of depositions, you know how to get the person on the next question, the question after that, and so on, there was no point in quibbling. Did I lie to Congress? I sure did. I did. I also pled guilty to it, and I served as time, as part of my sentence for it. So why am I going to quibble about that? There's no reason to do that. It's not easy that I can tell you and where this whole narrative about everybody, that's the problem also with so much. Everybody wants to sort of be the prognosticator. They want to be like the great Karnak, where they put the hat on and they're able to look into the crystal ball and say, oh, Michael Cohen is going to be x, y and z.

Things that Donia would turn around and say to me, no, no, don't do that. Just be yourself. Connect to people, which anybody that was in the courtroom, when I would speak to the jury, they would sit up and they would engage because they knew that the story that I was telling them, the narrative that I was telling them, was truthful. And how did they know that? They knew it because they had heard it from a handful of witnesses before. The documents prove what I was saying. Like the story with my daughter about wanting to go work in the White House, there's like ten days worth of back and forth conversation with my daughter. I say, dad, it's not what I want. I know what I want. It's a hybrid. I'll explain to you. Because she was in college at the time, in her senior year, I said, I'll explain to you, but it's going to be really good. It'll be good for us as a family. So things like that destroyed Todd Blanche's ideas on how to come at me and how to try to impugn my credibility, and it failed. And I don't think if you probably asked Todd whether this is the way he really wanted to run this defense, I can assure you he would say no.

But it was never his call. It was Donald's call. And despite now that he lost, I'm sure we're not going to see much of him anymore.

You think Trump blew Blanche's case?

Yes.

Michael, hi. Good to see you. Donya. You have talked a lot on my show and on all of these shows about Donald Trump's complaints about a two tiered system of justice. As we've all said, you are the only person who has actually served time in jail for these sets of offenses, but you were also returned to jail by the then Justice Department under Donald Trump because of writing your book. And so you have seen the politicization of the justice system firsthand. What do you make of the people who are now calling this a politicized system, a politicized use of the justice system, given that you literally did face a politicized attempt to reimprison you because of your book?

Right. Well, we all know that Donald is the great deflector. And one of the things that he does is he even took, for example, the heading of my book, Revenge, how Donald Trump weaponized the United States Department of Justice against his critics. He's using the COVID of my book as a way for him to deflect, to say, oh, it's the Biden administration. The Biden administration is now weaponized against me because I'm leading in all the polls and the whole nine yards that he does. Right. But that's Donald Trump. He's deflecting because he knows what he did. And he got Bill Barr. Look, Jeffrey Berman is part of Rachel's statement. Jeffrey Berman acknowledged that Department of Justice, that Maine justice, reached out to the southern district of New York to whitewash Donald's name from any of the allegations that were being. They wanted to go back in time and undo the sentence that I had already pled guilty to in order to whitewash Donald's name out of it. That's the most dangerous thing that anyone could ever do, especially as a president, to weaponize. And let me tell you something, this is very dangerous for what's potentially coming down the road.

If, in fact, God forbid, a million times that Donald ends up coming back into the White House, he will weaponize it against every single person at this table. He doesn't care. He's vindictive. He'll tell you. And he's written about in his own book, if you punch me, I will hit you ten times harder. If he has the power. And it's again, hits his own words. He wants to rewrite the constitution. He wants to go ahead, and he wants to strip the legislative branch and the judiciary of their co equal powers under the government, confer all power to the executive branch. What happens to the rest of us? We end up, as he likes to say, you'll end up in Gitmo. He's going to put everybody in Gitmo, lock everybody up, because they're a critic of him. I want to ask a sort of detailed weedsy question, but I've been thinking about it the whole time. You talked about the documents. The smoking gun document, the one that's got Allen Weisselberg's handwriting, your handwriting, where you break it down. Where did that. Did you know that document existed? When did you become reacquainted with its existence?

Tell me about that document. So, that document. I was asked by Allen Weisselberg to bring that document to him in order so that we could present it to Mister Trump for repayment.

It was a bank statement showing the money transfer, correct.

On the new account that I had opened. And then the transfer. Then there was some outstanding funds that was owed to Red Finch. We all know that story there, too. But Alan came up with the concept of grossing up the 130 to the 260, the 50. And then Donald had cut my bonus that year by two thirds. I mean, this made absolutely no sense as well. He's now heading to the presidency. I had been involved in it going back to 2011. I had laid out money on his behalf for the CNBC poll and all that. And he cuts my bonus by two thirds. Didn't never understood why. And it was really, for me, it was more an emotional thing. I was incredibly angry at this sort of behavior towards me. It made no sense at all. So Alan, after I had come back from the New Year's Christmas vacation, asked me to bring in the document. We wrote it down on there. Did I know that document still existed? No. Yeah. When did you. I became reacquainted with it when I was asked to meet with the district attorney. So they have it. So you meet with them and you don't know that document exists?

You don't remember. It's not like you. Oh, I remembered it. You remembered it, but it's not like you saved it somewhere. It's like, this is my receipt for this. They just come to you and they're like, hey, look what we have. And you take us through this. In fact, in fact, the second document I think it's number 36, which is the right 35. 36. The second document, the one that has Trump at the top of it, that's Jeff McConney. I never saw that document. I didn't even know that document existed.

McConney authenticated that because he testified and said, yes, this is how I wrote it.

Correct. Wow.

In terms of the grossing it up for taxes, the way the prosecution explained that was that this is another way, you know, that this was faking a reimbursement to make it look like income. That implied that this was essentially a form of tax fraud. You said Alan Weisselberg came up with that as a reason to do it. Why was he thinking along those lines and why did he come up with that?

Well, I don't know, but one of the things that we have to understand is that in the office, we used to call Mister Trump and Alan Weisselberg Frickin Frack, they did everything together. There was nothing that was a surprise. They would pretend it was like bad acting. Right? It was like, you know, acting 101, where Allen would come in and say, donald, you know what? We're going to. We're going to pay Michael in twelve. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great idea. As if he didn't already know what was going on. The concept of grossing it up was in order for me to take it as income, which I did, and I paid my taxes on my 50% city, state, and federal tax. That's how they wanted me to do it. So I said, okay, that's what I did.

Lawrence O'Donnell is standing by and wants to ask you a question. Lawrence, let me throw it to you, Michael.

Thank you.

Lawrence. Are you going to go through my entire life history, too, because I'm a New Yorker as well?

Exactly. Well, Michael, I have to say on that point, after your first day of testimony, one of the things that I said on the show that night was that the Michael Cohen that I saw in the courtroom that day, every New Yorker knows that guy. Every New Yorker knows a version of that guy. There's a guy like that who lives in all of our buildings. We all know that guy. And I just want to emphasize this point for the audience. I have a question for you about what people thought was the most dramatic part of your cross examination. But, and I guess Donya Perry deserves some credit for this on the no quibbling strategy. And you really took to heart that there was no point in quibbling because you were so constantly humble and respectful and friendly to Todd Blanche. I mean, tonight's audience might not get that feeling, but so many of your answers, like, five answers in a row, are just, yes, sir, yes, sir. Yes, sir. It's yes, sir, no, sir all the way through. And there was a humility in your presentation of that that I believe was registering with the jury.

I certainly believe that now, since the jury obviously found you credible. But, and I do want to confirm what you said about what felt like your connection to the jury when you were turning and speaking directly to them. I was taking that in, and I was taking in their attention to you. And, you know, the mystery, as we all know, is just, well, okay, are they believing him? And I think this verdict says that they were. But, Michael, I want to take you to what everyone considered and concluding me at that moment, the most dramatic moment in your cross examination. Now, I didn't think it was as big as other people thought, because cross examination is never the end of the story. I was waiting to see what would happen on redirect, and it changed a lot to your advantage on redirect. But you know what I'm talking about. It's that Todd Blanche moment on the minute 32nd phone call that you identified as happening at 08:02 p.m. and Todd Blanche insisted to you, based on text messages that were part of the record before that, that when you got Keith Shiller on the phone and you asked to speak to Donald Trump about the Stormy Daniels payoff, that, in fact, you were calling him about harassing phone calls and phone treatment that you were suffering at the time.

And surely you spent that whole time talking to Keith Schiller about the harassing phone calls, and your testimony then changed in the moment to, you talked about it to Keith Schiller, and then you talked about it to Donald Trump. And there were legal analysts on other networks, Michael, who were saying, that was it. That was the knockout punch. Michael Cohen's destroyed, and I'm not talking about Fox, but your credibility was supposed to have been destroyed in one question and answer. And I'm just wondering, for those of us out here, what was it like sitting in the witness stand, in the witness box there, when you. When you saw how that was landing? Did it feel like it was landing like a knockout punch or something that you had to somehow try to repair?

Not even close. When. When that question about the minute and 30, I recall, and I stayed emphatic that I spoke to Donald Trump. I know it the same way. You know certain things that happen in your life, like the day that your child was born or the day you got hit by a car. Right. You know, those dates, it's embedded into your head. I knew, based upon the facts that I had spoken to Donald Trump, and I wasn't going to come off of it. And what Todd Blanche did is say, well, that's impossible, because here there was a 14 year old that was calling the office, calling my cell number, my office line. He was just wreaking havoc until he ultimately made a mistake and had his cell number or his office home number on it. But I never changed my testimony. I stayed true to what I had said, which is, I spoke to Donald Trump that night. We were fortunate because, you know, we had the weekend within which to look, and we found that five minutes earlier, Donald Trump had gotten off the stage. And it makes perfect sense that I could have.

And I did speak to him, so I stayed my ground. I don't know why these pundits decide, oh, my, it's good for television. That's about it. It's not just because they say it doesn't make it so. It doesn't make it into a reality. It's just their opinion. But the funny thing is, their opinion isn't predicated on any fact. It's just their opinion. That's a shame on the media for even allowing it to happen, because it's not the reality. The reality is everything that I had said on that stand in 21 hours of being there was corroborated by documents. It was corroborated by others testimony. So I don't think Todd Blanche landed a single blow, which is very difficult in a cross examination.

Can I butt in for 1 minute?

Michael, I'm sure. I was just going to say, michael, I'm sure that all those pundits who said it was a knockout punch in your credibility ability was completely destroyed. We'll all be apologizing to you, I'm.

Sure, just like they're still apologizing for me being in Prague. But, don, you want to say something?

I just wanted to add on that, because I do think, you know, that that inter. That exchange was met with so much derision. And exactly as you said, lawrence, you know, that was a knockout punch. That was the gotcha moment. I think more than anything, it proved that Michael was telling the truth. It was. There were so many ways that the jury knew that Michael was telling the truth. But in that moment, Chris, you talked about documents that were used in prep to refresh Michael. That hadn't been. He had not seen those text messages, which, by the way, were text messages that he had provided voluntarily to the DA's office, so he wasn't hiding anything, but he hadn't been refreshed. But even before he was redirected or anything, he said, no, no, no. Those. Those things can both be true. They can happen at the same time. So it wasn't something he rehearsed or was, was discussed. It was. It was organic, it was natural, and it was true. So it's easy when you're telling the truth to not be knocked off your balance. But I think that that moment, more than anything, corroborated the story.

Tanya, do you think Todd Blanche was graded on a curve? Because there was a real assessment that he flopped the day before, and there was this real. I don't know if it was sort of subconscious feeling, to be fair.

Right.

So he landed this one. I don't even want to call it a blow, but he made this one point. Do you think Todd Blanche was graded on a curve by the press?

You know, I've known Todd for 20 years. He was my paralegal for my first criminal trial at the us attorney's office.

Is he good?

He was grieving.

This is one big, giant family lawyer. The lawyer world is small.

We were all there at the same time. He's a good lawyer, and he's just smart. He's careful, he's thoughtful. So I was surprised at the way that he conducted his cross examination, and I think that is what happened. I think everyone was scratching their heads saying, where's he going with this? It's all over the place. The timeline is off. The blows aren't landing, as everyone says. And then there was this moment where clearly everyone acted like it was an ambush. It was a surprise in the sense that he had not seen those text messages in eight years. But it was not more than that. And he. I don't even want to say he rebounded, because I don't think he faltered.

Michael, let me just ask you again. This is about both this trial and about your long experience with Donald Trump. We've seen him have some big falls in life. We've seen him declare bankruptcy a whole bunch of times, involved in humiliating scandals of various kinds. But when it came to actually really being knocked flat, it's been twice. One is losing the 2020 election. The way he responded to that was by creating an alternate universe in which he did not lose the 2020 election. And the country is still paying the price.

Three times.

Three times.

Right. Losing the 2020, the New York attorney general case, and now the 30 foot count.

The New York attorney general case with the massive civil penalty against his. And so now this criminal, you're right to point that out in terms of the devastating nature of that blow in that civil case, hundreds of millions of dollars that he owes. And now in this criminal case, in the civil case, and in this criminal case, he does not have the option to do what he did with losing the 2020 election. He does not have the option, as joy was saying earlier, to say, oh, that didn't really happen. Let's have an alternate universe in which this civil penalty didn't happen, this civil finding of liability didn't happen, and this, these criminal convictions didn't happen. From your sense of how he moves through the world and how he deals with humiliation and failure, what do you think he has left to do that he can do in response to this that we should be prepared for?

He's just going to blame everybody other than himself. It's the judge. Mershon is corrupt. Judge Angoron is corrupt. Michael Cohen is a liar, a felon, just a rat, and everything else that he has been calling me for over six years, he will blame everybody else other than himself. He does not understand the concept of accountability. Somewhere along the line, I guess, his parents didn't teach him that there are consequences for actions. On the consequences question. It struck me. I was in the courtroom the day that you were, were one of the days you were testifying, and there was this line of people that had come in to support Donald Trump who were clearly auditioning to be vice president or something. Something, right? They want to be what you were at some point in your life, right? A guy that serves Donald Trump, works for Donald Trump.

Yes.

Bosses Donald Trump. And you're up there being like, this is how it worked out for me. And they're sitting there watching you as you're talking about, like, I did solid. I was in solitary. My law license got taken away. All the things I did for this guy, and they're sitting there being like, that's me. I want to be that. I want to do that. And when you look, Alan Weisenberg's in Rikers, you're sitting here, you talk about the 51 days you did in solitary. Jeff Sessions no longer has a job as first attorney general. Bill Barr is. Rudy Giuliani is going to be disbarred. And all of these people that were loyal to him, they end up getting run through the machine, they end up getting ground up into dust, but not him. What does it take to get through that simple message of self preservation, not an ethical commitment, but just like you are next, dude, do you think about how you could possibly communicate that effectively to the people sitting there auditioning to be a person that answers to Donald Trump? So in 2018, you may remember, I remember before the House oversight committee, and it was live, I turned around, I looked at Mark Meadows, and I said, I know what you're doing.

I know the playbook that you're trying to run because I wrote it. And look what's happening to me. In a few weeks, I'm going to prison. I strongly suggest you think before you keep acting the way that you are. And he didn't listen. And now look what happened now to Mark Meadows. You have Jenna Ellis. You have Eastman. You have Christina. Bob, you have Rudy Kaludi. You have everybody. Anybody that goes into his orbit loses everything. And so I would turn around and say to them, this isn't the job that you want. Just look at what happened to me. Look at the arc of my life. I retired. I was 39. I'm not a rags to riches story, thanks to Donald. I was a riches to rags stories, thanks to Donald. And let me tell you, you asked a great question. What's it going to take, 51 days of solitary confinement, as well as having the president of the United States weaponize the Department of Justice by using a willing and complicit attorney general to violate your constitutional rights to create a counterfeit document, a fraudulent document, demand that you sign it. And if you don't, they take that fraudulent document, they remand you back to prison after putting you into a freezer for a few hours and then ultimately shipping you back up for more solitary confinement.

That's what it's going to take.

Can I ask you one more question, Michael? And this is not about you specifically. I did listen to your extended conversation with Stormy Daniels that you did on your podcast. And she hasn't done a lot of talking outside of court, but she was treated the same way you were on the stand when she took the stand in this case. And you all mentioned the three times Donald Trump has been knocked down and a fourth, which was Eugene Carroll, who also got a very, you know, a very large civil verdict against Donald Trump. So he has not been lucky in his dealings with strong women who have been willing to fight back.

I'm a guy, but, I mean, I.

Know, but I'm gonna ask about her for just one moment. What did you make of her willingness to step forward and deal with the same thing that you did? As you said, you were humiliated. They attempted to try to humiliate you on the stand. They also did that to her. And I just want to get your assessment of her as somebody who's interviewed her on a journalistic side for your podcast and somebody who saw that she went through that even before you hit the stand. What do you make of what she, of her role in this case?

She's unflappable. It's interesting, you know, people discount her because of her profession. And it really bothered me a lot when it's like, oh, the porn star this, the porn star. What they were trying to do is to discredit her in the eyes of the jury. In fact, once again, I think it was a very poor decision by Todd Blanche or Susan Nicklaus who they had, because he couldn't have a guy saying that. But they would go out and they would say the same things. I think it was a very poor decision to go after her. People don't know unless you've read her book, she's actually wickedly smart. I think she graduated valedictorian of her high school class. She's much smarter than they are. Now, whether you like her profession or you don't, I'm not sure why it's anybody's business, but she is not somebody that's easily pushed around. And she demonstrated that she was unflappable. She was rock solid. She was going to speak her truth, and she did.

Was there any doubt when you were, you know, you had a campaign email, you weren't on the campaign, but they were, they were focused on trying to win this election. Was there any doubt among the people who were on Donald Trump's team that he had, in fact, had that sexual encounter with Donald Trump? Because they made that an issue in the case. They tried to deny it.

Yeah.

And that, again, was something that I'm certain that Donald Trump dictated to the various different attorneys. I want it this way. I want it that way. And why they listened, especially after you see what had happened to someone like myself. Why?

Yeah, why do you think? I mean, what do you think I'm getting whiplash? Do you think Ivanka and Melania were begged to attend trial?

That's a great question. I mean, you know, it's funny because Katie Fang posted something about how Don Junior must have lost paper, scissors, rock, and he had to go one in. They took tremendous offense. This. This is what they took offense to. Right? Ivanka never showed up. Jared, I don't think showed up, and neither did Melania. And you have to ask yourself the question why? I can understand why Melania didn't, to be honest with you, hush money cases, the whole notion of Donald having this sexual relationship, not just with Stormy Daniels, but with Karen McDougall as well, I'm sure Melania was trying to preserve her own sense of identity and maybe to protect Barron as well.

Although honestly, if you want to treat that decision with the honor that I think it deserves at a human level, you then wouldn't, as Trump's defense counsel, invoke Melania Trump repeatedly, which they did, blaming her for coming up with the locker room talk defense Hollywood.

And they introduced her to the jury. That's why I wonder why she never showed up.

You are getting whiplash. I know. I'm going to make it worse because Andrew Weissman is also not in this room, just like Lawrence isn't in this room, but wants to ask you a question. I think we can bring him in. Andrew, you are allowed to ask Michael Cohen a question.

Okay.

Hi, Michael. And hi, Donia. I had a question for you about the actual last witness in the case, on the defense case, Bob Costello. And we all got to read a series of emails, some of which you were on and some of which were happening behind your back, which I think the juries were led to believe and I think probably concluded that this was this huge effort that was undertaken by him, by Rudy Giuliani and by the defendant, Trump, to keep you from cooperating so that you would not flip. And I was wondering if you could just take us back to that time as to what was it within you that knew to not go with Bob Costello and go with Guy Petrillo and to really sort of end up breaking with Trump world and seeing that this was not the road that was sort of being orchestrated for you was not where you wanted to be.

It's a great question, Andrew. And from the very first meeting that I had with him and Jeffrey Citron, all they wanted me to do is to sign a retainer agreement. And all they were interested in doing, all Bob Costello was interested in doing is promoting himself and his relationship with Rudy Giuliani. Now, I never liked Rudy. I never trusted Rudy. I've watched him tried to manipulate the game when he was trying to get more involved in the Trump sphere. Every time that Bob Costello would mention Rudy Giuliani, you may remember there was one, there's a picture of his cell phone where he's trying to prove to me that he just spoke to Rudy. I realized that what they're doing to me is what I've seen in the past. And that was also, when they did the same with, I think it was either Paul Manafort or Steve Bannon with interrogatories when they were working with the lawyer in order to ensure that Donald's responses to the interrogatories matched that of, it was either Bannon or Manafort. It was one of the two. And it, it was just, you know, when something sits wrong in your gut and you got to follow your gut, you know, it's like in an exam, they tell you, always go with your first, your first answer.

You know, when you start scratching them off, that's usually the wrong answer. My initial impression was stay away from. I wanted to keep him around so I could sort of pick his brain, whatever's there. But what I was most concerned about was the fact that he was going to run back to Rudy, who was going to use that information in order to ingratiate himself into Donald, because I just realized I was being set up.

Can I just confirm that it was Rudy Kaludi? Rudy Kaludi, drunken Giuliani, Michael Cohen and Donya Perry? Thank you both for being here. I know this is an unusual interview we made. You put your head on a pivot and talk to all of us.

Well, I feel okay because I had my crack a Jack lawyer next to me, so I felt very protected.

This is, as you mentioned at the start, this starts a different part of your life now, this putting this behind you. And we wish you all the best.

Michael, thank you. Great to see you.

Good luck. Thank you, Donia.

Thank you.

Donald Trump has been found guilty of all 34 counts in his hush money cover up trial, and he remains the presumptive republican nominee. On MSNBC's podcast prosecuting Donald Trump, veteran prosecutors Andrew Weissman and Mary McCord break down what this verdict could mean for the former president and the american people and what kind of sentencing he might face. Search for prosecuting Donald Trump now and follow new episodes drop on Tuesdays.

Hey, everyone, it's Tremaine Lee.

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All right, we're going to speaking with Jamie Raskin in just a moment. I'm really interested in getting his reaction in terms of what happened today, somebody who's been so much a central part of trying to get accountability for Trump's alleged crimes in Washington and also explaining them and explaining constitutional law to the american public. And the role of Jamie Raskin is in a really singular position. But as Michael and Donia leave us now, Nicole, I just, I mean, he's, he's got his own place in history here. I described it earlier, shakespearean. He's still in the middle of it, I guess.

Look, I mean, and I think what I loved about your conversation with him that we could all sort of drink in was he's complicated. And I think that Trump's legal team as a legal strategy erred in flattening him. The jury was able to see his peaks and valleys. The jury was able to experience his story. And it's in part because of the work of his lawyer, Donya Perry, in preparing him to not flatten the Trump experience. I think it aided his credibility to say, I loved parts of my time with Trump because everyone, that everyone told the same story, a Michael Cohen told it, I think, 17th, right. I think he's the last witness, right. But in terms of telling the same story about the Trump Tower meeting and about catch and kill, and you've already heard from him. I mean, he comes in at the end. And I think there was such a gap between the way a lot of people in the media have, not any of us, but the way the media in general has covered Michael Cohen and the way he was introduced to the jury with all of his sort of peaks and valleys.

And I think that they didn't look away from the valleys. They didn't look away from the crimes. They didn't look away from the things he did wrong. And Anya Perry and the prosecutors prepared him to talk about and to own the crimes he committed on Trump's behalf. And in the end, the jury was perfectly capable of assessing what he did wrong, who he did it for. And then they were instructed by Judge Marchand to corroborate it. And you have to look back at those four pieces of evidence that they were looking for and wonder if that wasn't what they were trying to do.

And Nicole, you know, what's so interesting is there is such a connection to the January 6 case and that everyone involved were Trump people other than even stormy Daniels was involved with Trump. None of these were people who went into this as his enemies.

Absolutely.

Just like the January 6 case. Right? These are all people who were in the administration who were allies of Trump, who wanted him to be president, who wanted him to win. And when they went before the January 6 committee, the truth they had to tell was damning to him. And this was the same thing. I mean, David Pecker was almost worshipful of Trump still, even as he was.

Testifying for the prosecution, as was hope Hicks, as was hopes, as was Jeffrey McConnell.

And they were damning, and yet they still were Trump people.

You know, I never want to, there's a sort of tendency, I think we have to say, well, history will judge things a certain way. We don't know, because really depends on.

Who writes it turns out.

But I do think about John Dean a lot because John Dean was the guy that turned on Exxon and said, this is, you know, he came clean and he's remembered for that. That's, that's John Dean's. That is John Dean. That's, that is what he's remembered for. John Dean got up to a lot of funny business before that moment, which is way less remembered.

There's a reason he was in a position to do that, because he was involved in all the crimes.

John Dean was, he was chin deep in that stuff. He had a moment of conscience. He came forward and he told the truth about what he was seeing. He was remembered as a hero for that reason, as doing the right thing when it mattered. And I think there's something to take away there.

And Michael Cohen's testimony here was subjected to a very high level of scrutiny by this jury upon direct instruction from the judge. Judge Mershon said, you need to keep in mind here that Michael Cohen, for all the other things, all the other ways he's been described here, is an accomplice in the charged crime. And so, therefore, you may not accept his testimony. You may not accept his testimony except if it is corroborated by other evidence and testimony. That is the, you can't take it alone. You cannot take it on his word. And as Michael just explained to us, every single thing that he testified to that was substantively important to the charge was corroborated by other people and by documents. Joining us now is Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He is the top Democrat on the House oversight committee and the sort of constitutional law explainer in chief to the american public. He served on the January 6 committee. He was the lead manager in Donald Trump's second impeachment trial, which was about Trump trying to overthrow the government by force. Congressman Raskin, it's an honor to have you here tonight on all nights. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Rachel.

Let me ask you, first of all, if we have been talking about this in a way that is wrong, or if you feel like the media reaction, the expository work we've all been trying to do, explaining what happened here and its importance has been off base. If there's a bit of it that we've been getting the wrong way around.

No, I resonate very much with the conversation I was just listening to. Look, I take great pride in what's happened because I feel it's such a sweet vindication of the rule of law and all of the complicated parts of it that frustrate people, because it slows things down. Like the presumption of innocence. Like the fact that you need to get a unanimous verdict among twelve citizens randomly drawn. Like the fact that the defendant doesn't have to testify and can elect not to testify. Due process and the right to appeal, which undoubtedly, Donald Trump as a convicted felon now will exercise in order to exercise his appeal rights, and he's got every right to do that. But I think we can feel proud that the system of justice and the rule of law within liberal democracy has survived. And, you know, I've also felt proud, actually, about being a politician, because most politicians dont behave like Donald Trump. And of course, the very first thing he ever ran for was president, and that was an act of great hubris which paid off for him. But look, most of us actually go out and try to get things done for our constituents, and then we ask for votes.

We dont view this as an exercise in celebrity and glamor. And yet Trump, to the extent he got involved in politics, was all about shaking down the president of Ukraine to make up lies and dirt about his opponent, or paying hush money to keep the truth out of the mainstream of public opinion, or inciting a violent insurrection to overthrow an election, and to try to conduct a coup against the peaceful transfer of power. Most politicians don't behave like that. And if you don't behave like that, you might not be the richest person in the world, and you might not get to own your own hotels and islands and so on, but you can serve people, and that's what it's about. And the minute that a politician no longer acts like a servant of the people, but rather master of the people, like a monarch or king, that is the time to evict, eject, reject, impeach, convict, prosecute, get them out of the way. Because democracy is all about serving the people. And those of us who aspire and attain the public office are nothing but the servants of the people.

In your role as a politician, as you put it, you have played key roles in efforts to hold Trump accountable. The January 6 investigation, the second impeachment of Trump. Obviously, there's a lot of people who are looking at the reaction from Republicans tonight, who are looking at the Trump instant efforts to fundraise off of this conviction tonight, who are looking at the predictions that Trump and his allies and even some independent observers have made, saying that this will make him a martyr, this will somehow help him politically. How do you view that? Well, first of all, how do you view that? Do you share that perception, and how do you factor that into the sort of calculus as to how much work should be done to hold him accountable, particularly when we don't have any real expectations going to end up in a prison sentence or keeping him from running again or anything else that might matter to him a great deal?

Well, I think you got to celebrate the jury system, which, you know, when the country started, and in its british antecedents, a lot of juries were composed of people from a particular craft or profession. You literally had to know about bricklaying in order to judge a bricklaying case and so on. And in the american example, we draw from the whole community itself, the cross section. And that's one of the beautiful things about. But what we saw happen today, I mean, we brought impeachment charges against Donald Trump for inciting insurrection against the union. And the vote in the House of Representatives was 232 to 197. We got all the Democrats, we got ten republicans. That was okay. But there were still 197 people who saw the insurrection happen and saw exactly what Trump did, who voted no. And then we got over to the Senate, and again, the evidence was overwhelming, and we had a 57 to 43 vote, which, as you know, was not enough. We were ten votes shy of the two thirds requirement. But look what happened in that jury today. It was unanimous. It was twelve people who were drawn without any political or partisan resonance or implications to their appointment.

They were just citizens, and they studied the facts, they scrutinized the witnesses, and they came back with a verdict that vindicated common sense. And so you got to put your faith in the people. It doesn't mean it's fail safe. It doesn't always work. But the people here have done their job, the jury did their job, and that judge did an excellent job of clarifying every step of the process.

In terms of faith in people, there are nine people who the country doesn't have a lot of faith in right now, at the United States Supreme Court, we are, are awaiting their verdict on, among other things, they're ruling on, among other things, the case as to whether or not presidents are immune from prosecution, aside from the question of potential refusal from Justices Alito and Thomas, which I know you have written about and been advocating on very strongly, what are you expecting from the Supreme Court in terms of the immunity ruling? And what should the public understand about what impact that might have on this verdict today and on the other pending cases against Trump?

Well, the main thing we can expect from it is delay and postponement. And, you know, that is clearly the political logic that was operating when the Supreme Court didn't simply summarily affirm a brilliant DC circuit court opinion, a unanimous, bipartisan decision which held, of course, the president is not above the law. Of course, the president cannot order out for assassinations and remain immune from prosecution so long as hes not impeached and convicted in the Senate, something that has never happened in our history with our four impeachments that went to Senate trial. And yet, so theyve slowed everything down, and theyll probably slice the baloney real fine and take up a whole bunch of completely unnecessary questions, rendering advisory opinions, as they're not supposed to do about, well, you know, what? If it were a crime that was clearly outside of the president's duties, if it was inside the president's duties, if it was on the line, if it was near the line, they will make it seem like a far more complex case it is than it is. In order to justify the postponement in delay, which was really the whole purpose of taking it up, they should have just denied Cert, as they do in more than 99% of the cases.

They should have summarily affirmed what the DC circuit had done in that magisterial, totally comprehensive opinion.

Congressman Jamie Raskin, it's an honor to have you with us tonight, sir. Thank you. Thank you for the time. I appreciate it. All right, we've got much more of our special coverage ahead. I have to, to tell you, Mary Trump is going to be joining us soon for her very first interview since her uncle, Donald Trump was convicted by a jury of his peers. Again, this is our ongoing special coverage of today. The unanimous guilty on all counts verdict against former President Donald Trump, the first ever american president to be convicted of one crime, let alone 34 felonies. We'll be back. Stay with us. Before Donald Trump himself was convicted of 34 felonies today, the list of his close allies who were convicted of or had pled guilty to crimes was unusually long for anyone in public life, let alone anybody who was an elected official. Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was charged, convicted and sentenced to prison. His campaign vice chairman Rick Gates was charged, convicted and sentenced to prison. Advisor and campaign aide Roger Stone was charged, convicted and sentenced to prison. His White House national security advisor Mike Flynn was charged and convicted.

His campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos was charged, convicted, sentenced to prison. His business's CFO, Alan Weisselberg was charged, convicted and sentenced to prison. His business itself was found guilty of criminal tax fraud. And real estate organizations can't go to prison otherwise it might have. And of course, Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who we just spoke with here on set, he was charged, convicted and sentenced to prison for a criminal scheme that prosecutors described as directed by Trump, for which Trump was the beneficiary. Cohen was then the star witness in the prosecution's case in which Donald Trump was just convicted on all 34 felony counts himself. So as of tonight, Donald Trump himself has now joined that ignominious list. It now sort of feels inevitable looking back at it. But until it happened tonight, nobody could be sure it ever would. That said, he seems to know it was coming, right? He seems to have known something. There's this remarkable headline in the New York Times just this week, quote, Trump's Trump leans into an outlaw image as his criminal trial concludes, the former president has increasingly aligned himself with fellow defendants and people convicted of crimes.

As we headed toward this unanimous all counts guilty verdict tonight, Donald Trump has recently, in fact, been bringing convicted and accused felons with him to campaign events, including people accused of murder. He's even been bringing ex cons and convicted felons with him to stand behind him in court at his days in court for this criminal trial. And this is clearly a political strategy. He thinks this is a tough guy. Look, that will work for him. Presumably, he also kind of has to lean into it, right? You can't pretend not to be a criminal while you're a criminal defendant. Why not just run with it? I mean, so this is now who he is surrounding himself with. And part of his message is pick me, I'm on the criminal side of the ledger. Pick me and my criminal friends, we'll take care of this legal system that you've got here. Convicted of 34 felonies tonight. Joining us now is Donald Trump's niece, Mary Trump. She's the author of a book about her uncle called too Much and Never Enough. How my family created the world's most dangerous man. She's also the host of the Nerd Avengers on marytrumpmedia.com. and I should tell you, this is Mary's first interview since this verdict today.

Mary Trump, it's nice to see you. Thank you very much for being with us tonight. We appreciate you having you here.

Oh, it's great to be here.

Rachel, what was your reaction when you first heard the news?

I was, as you can imagine, relieved, happy, and it took a minute to sink in. But it also, as the counts went one through 34. Guilty, guilty, guilty, et cetera. The weight of this moment really sunk in. It really hit me. This has so much meaning for all of us. I'm incredibly proud of my city and my state. I am really just relieved on behalf of the american people. This is such a long time coming. And I know that he's been found guilty of the charges that were presented to the jury, but in some ways, it feels like it's standing in for all of the other crimes this man has gotten away with his entire life. So there was something just incredibly gratifying and moving about it. And I've heard people say that we can celebrate the jury system, we can celebrate the jurors and the way this trial was handled. But it's a dark day in America that somebody in Donald's position has been found guilty of these crimes. And I would respectfully disagree. I think it's a great day for America. I think it shows us that in some instances, when it really matters, the system is holding, and that even somebody like him, who has with impunity, gotten away with some of the most egregious crimes over the course of decades, has finally, at long last, been held accountable.

What impact do you think this will have on him personally? You understand his sort of demeanor and his history in a way that the rest of us don't. The rest of us have only ever seen the public side with him. How do you think this will change him or land with him? How do you think he'll respond?

You know, it's interesting. I heard Michael Cohen say earlier that Donald is somebody who will never take responsibility and will always deflect and cast blame to anybody else. And this is something he learned at the knees of my grandfather, who taught Donald the same thing. Just never take responsibility for anything. We saw that during his disastrous four years during his administration, he never takes responsibility for anything. And because of that, along with the fact that, again, he has operated with impunity for so long, I think it's going to take a while for this to sink in, and I think we're going to see a very similar dynamic to what happened after the 2020 election. There is a moment in private when he understood that he had lost. He will understand that he has indeed been found guilty on 34 criminal accounts. I'm sorry, I shouldn't smile, but it makes me smile to say that out loud. But the humiliation of that is going to hit him so deeply, as it did four years ago, that he, as I believe you said earlier, will have to create his alternate reality. And unfortunately, we see that this is not something that just impacts him.

This is something that has drawn in millions, tens of millions of people, and it has left all of us at risk. So I think we need to expect the same thing here. He will do everything in his power to spin this so that it is well. He'll try to make it an advantage to him, and we need to guard against that. And he will also stop at nothing to change the subject. So I do not agree that we don't have to worry about violence here. We need to worry about his willingness and eagerness, actually to use his power and his platform to get other people to carry out his threats. We saw this yesterday when Officer Fanon's mother was swatted shortly after he showed up to speak his mind outside of the courthouse yesterday. So there's a lot going on, but we can never, ever underestimate or overestimate. Sorry. The extent to which Donald will use any means at his disposal to deflect and get his way.

Mary, it's Alex Wagner. Thanks for joining us tonight. We know from reports and from witnessing ourselves that your uncle was resting his retinas. To be generous for many points during this trial. When the verdict was read, however, he was very much eyes wide open. He was paying attention, and he was largely expressionless. Maybe that's because there weren't cameras in the courtroom or maybe just, just because he was intently focused. Do you think he is afraid right now? There is the very real possibility that he will serve prison time. It may not be this year. We don't know when it will be. But given what Michael Cohen served for the same crime, I do wonder if you think he quietly is very scared.

Well, he certainly should be. And whether he expresses that consciously or not, I don't know. But certainly on a deep level, he is afraid because, Alex, this is a moment he has been dreading his entire life. Donald has always known that he is nothing of what he's claimed to be. He is not a tough guy. He is not an outlaw. He is somebody who is terrified of humiliation. He's somebody who understands that in the language of my family, being a loser is absolutely the worst thing you can be. He cannot pretend otherwise. And I think he also must sense that this is a very big domino that's fallen here. And we may see, or hopefully we will see a very swift unraveling of his support. I think we're going to see a lot of trial balloons in the next few days from Republicans who may not want to be associated with somebody who is a convicted felon running for the presidency. But there are all sorts of reasons for Donald to be afraid right now. And I think chief among them, even though this is not something that can happen in reality, he understands that in my family, if you're a loser, that's something that's going to get you killed.

Metaphorically speaking, of course, Mary, it's Lawrence O'Donnell.

And I wanted to follow up on that loser point because I watched your uncle in the courtroom for so many days and with Michael Cohen on the stand and others, and your uncle was sitting there as a salesman that he always is. He's always been trying to sell something. He was trying to sell those twelve people on a story he wasn't willing to say himself. He wasn't willing to get on the witness stand and testify about. Michael Cohen did testify. And now when Donald Trump heard that word guilty 34 times, he discovered that it didnt work, that he spent all these weeks in this room trying to sell those people. And it didnt work unanimously. They did not buy it. And the same time when he heard those 34 guilties, he had to realize they believed stormy Daniels. They believed everything she said. Every one of those details about inside the hotel room, they believed Michael Cullen. They did not believe my side of the story that I was trying to sell them. And so he comes out the loser in that charm and selling contest with that jury. And I'm just wondering what that does to him because that goes to the very core of what he thinks his talent is, which is convincing people of things.

Lawrence, it's such an excellent point. We see, and he has learned what happens in a situation in which he is not fully in control or he doesn't have other people controlling the environment to his benefit. And we saw this, I think in part by his complete lack of understanding that he even needed to try. I think if you want the jury on your side, you're not going to fall asleep during people's testimony. You're not going to attack them ever in any way whatsoever. You're going to be attentive. You're not going to complain about the conditions inside of the courtroom, because he's not the only person who needed to be there, but he's the only person who was there because he didn't have a choice, because he's the one who committed these crimes. We can now say everybody else had to be there also because of what he had done. So he just didn't understand what it means to cater to people in an environment he doesn't control. And I think it was his lack of control that made it impossible for him to rise to the occasion. And of course, we know he was never going to testify.

So he really needed to just sort of behave like a respectful, decent human being who is taking this seriously and not just sort of skating on his hope that the jury was going to be so intimidated by him and his power in his position, and it failed miserably. And I think he's going to understand that. He will blame his lawyers, he will blame the judge. He will blame everybody on this tv program right now. You know, he'll blame everybody. He won't take responsibility, but he will understand the limits to his own personal power. And I think that's going to freak him out.

Hey, mary, it's joy. Thank you for being here tonight. You know, if he's had a reckoning emotionally, even privately, after this conviction, he will have another on July 11, when he is sentenced, and then four days later, he will accept the nomination of the republican party. Prepare us for what the propaganda field will look like. How will he explain this and call upon his party to explain this to that crowd at the republican national Convention? What should we expect to hear as an excuse for what happened, what had just happened at that .4 days earlier?

Joy, it's a great question, and it's sort of related to what we were just talking about a minute ago. He is going to feel completely unbound now by any sense of having to operate within somebody else's system to the extent that he even bothered. But once we get to sentencing, I think he's also going to realize that the other thing he wasn't able to control and wasn't able to behave in the context of was the idea that he might be facing prison. And the irony for him, of course, is that if he had behaved like a normal human being throughout this trial, I think that the risk of prison would have been fairly low. But because of his egregious behavior, because he broke that gag order, eleven times because the judge had to make that ruling and because the judge deferred any significant punishment, I think the chances that he gets a prison term have increased exponentially. So he's going to have to deal with that as well. So whatever happens, though, the convention is going to make 2016 look like child's play and joy, as I think you said earlier, the hideous chance of lock her up, the utter lawlessness and vindictiveness that was directed at the democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, was like nothing we had ever seen before in this country.

It's going to be so much worse, so much darker, and especially given the fact that we've already seen what he's been doing. He and his minions and his enablers in the Republican Party have been telling us the last few months exactly what they plan to do with this country if we are reckless enough to give them power again.

Mary Trump, hi, it's Ari Melber. We try not to speculate too much, but you can. Do you have the view that Donald Trump, based on what you know, would be likely to fire his lawyer lawyers in this case soon? We've seen some already depart, like Joe Takopina used to be on the New York case. And if he gets legal counsel to show contrition, to authorize his lawyers to express that at sentencing, is there any way that you think he could play that out, pretend to feel that way for a day?

You know, Ari, I think he's constitutionally incapable of such a thing, even if it redounds to his benefit. And one of the biggest clues to that end is the way his lawyers behaved in the courtroom, clearly at his direction, even though it went against what they should have been doing to protect their client. I mean, they made, I'm not a lawyer, and even I was able to identify serious missteps his lawyers made because Donald was directing them to say certain things or behave in certain ways, and that's because he cannot face the truth about who he is or why he was there or what he's facing. So I don't think there will be any mitigating. There will certainly be no pretense, even pretense at contrition. And he's just going to put himself in even more jeopardy whether or not he retains his counsel. I don't know. If I were them, I wouldn't want to continue working for him, but I can't imagine they're having a very good night, let's put it that way.

Mary Trump, we're really glad that you were able to be here with us tonight. It's a privilege to have you here on such an important moment in history. Thanks.

Thank you all. I appreciate it.

All right, now that Trump has been found guilty, one of the things we've been talking about, Joy, you were raising this with me in your conversation with Mary as well, is the next step in the process, of course, sentencing. Trump's sentencing hearing has been set. It'll be July 11 at 10:00 a.m. eastern. Until then, Trump has bail conditions, of course. Cause he's a criminal defendant. His bail conditions have not changed. He's still out on his own recognizance without bail. So he's free to move about the country the way he wants to. But he was found guilty today on all 34 counts that he was charged with. And each of those counts, in terms of the sentencing, carries with it the possibility of up to four years in prison. Judge Marshawn is likely, if he does impose any prison sentence, he's likely to impose sentences concurrently. That means that he wouldn't be stacking up four years and then four years and then four years and then four years. That would mean that Trump would be serving each of his up to four year sentences simultaneously, not as 136 year string of back to back sentences. In terms of whether he actually will be incarcerated, whether he'll end up behind bars in a prison somewhere.

That is unclear. It's not necessarily required by any means. Judge Mershon could impose a sentence of probation with no prison time involved. That would still mean Trump would become the first former president required to regularly report to a probation officer. It could mean that the bar for him to be jailed if he committed other crimes in the future could be lowered to the floor. Him being on probation would mean the ability to jail Trump would effectively be instantly effectuatable if he committed any other crimes, which is a weird way to live, let alone a weird way to live as a presidential candidate, or indeed potentially a prison. Potentially a president. Sorry, all of that. How Trump's sentence will eventually physically manifest and restrain him in one way or the other, all of that is likely far off. Trump will almost certainly appeal the verdict today. That appeals process will almost definitely push all of this past the election. Being found guilty does not bar you from running for president. But what does Trump's sentencing mean in terms of what actually happens before the election? I mean, practically speaking, it means that Trump will be back in a Manhattan courtroom with the news of these 34 guilty verdicts back on the front pages across the country at his sentencing hearing on July 11.

Four days after that, on July 15, unless the republican party changes course, that'll be the start of the Republican National Convention that will nominate him for the presidency. Joining us now is somebody who has direct experience with these matters. She's a former assistant district attorney in the Manhattan district attorney's office, Katherine Christian. Katherine, thanks for being with us on this. Let me ask if I've explained those basics of what comes next, the probation report, the sentencing phase, and what we can likely expect from that phase. Is that all correct as you understand it?

It's correct, except you probably see Donald Trump's lawyers file a motion to set aside the verdict, which is allowed before sentencing. It's under the criminal procedure law, is a 330 motion. So that could delay the sentence because they're going to file it. And then, of course, the prosecution will have a chance to respond to it, and then Judge Michonne will make a decision on that. So that often will delay the sentence. Everything else, the probation. And probation doesn't mean he's getting probation. They're just the ones tasked with doing the report for the sentencing, for the judge to determine what is the appropriate sentencing. So except for that one little filing of the motion to set aside the verdict, it will go according to how it always is for regular defendants.

And that filing of the motion to set aside the verdict, that's separate from and in addition to the oral motion that we heard in the court today after the jury verdict where Todd Blanche on Trump's behalf asked for an acquittal.

Yeah. And it's unclear because I was literally in the subway when my phone blew up. He had originally, you recall, moved for what's called a trial order of dismissal, and the judge reserved decision on that. So it's unclear whether the judge finally said denied, but that's also outstanding. But in addition, they can file now that the verdict is in a motion to set aside the verdict. And then when that is denied, which it ultimately will be, and he's sentenced, then their appeal will be filed in.

Terms of the appeals process and the sentencing process. As you said, the sentencing sentencing will go ahead in anticipation of his filing the appeal. They won't delay the sentencing to follow to come at the end of the appeals process.

Yeah, the sentencing comes before appeal. In fact, you can't file your notice of appeal until you have now been sentenced. And it's official, he is now sentenced, convicted felon of 34 counts. And then he files the notice of appeal. And assuming his lawyers, whoever's going to do the appeal, you know, responds on time and gets the filings in. I believe the appellate division, which is called the appellate Division, first department here, will decide that appeal probably by January or February of 2025. Again, assuming that everything is done on time by the parties, the court is ready, but the parties have to file their briefs and do everything they're supposed to do on time.

If he is elected president in the election in November, and that appeal, as you said, would otherwise in the normal course, be expected maybe in January, by 2020, January 2025, do you think that his election as president has an anticipatable effect in terms of how the appellate division will handle this matter?

I don't think so at all. Remember, this is state, and they will decide that either, you know, the jury was right and your conviction has been affirmed, and then he will get a chance to try to appeal to the higher court in New York, the highest court is called the court of appeals. So theyre going to treat him like any other defendant who files an appeal and files everything on time.

Is the appeals process like the process that we just saw in Judge Roshans courtroom, one for which the defendant has to be president? No, present. Not president.

No. He has a right to, but he does not have to be present. In fact, defendants usually aren't present at the appellate court when their appeals are argued. They have a right to, but he won't be there.

One last specific question on the probation department. They prepare a report, essentially an internal report, or is it public facing? That's essentially meant to help the judge and the judge's decision on the sentence. What can you tell us about that.

Filed, and it's still kind of old school in the criminal term in Manhattan. It's filed with the court. It's called the investigation and sentencing period. And then the sentencing report was filed. Both the fence will get it, the prosecutor will get it, the court will get it. And ultimately, that report is in the file, the official court file.

KathErINe Christian, absolutely, absolutely essential to have you with us here tonight. Thank you so much. Much, much appreciated. We've got much more ahead next hour as our coverage continues of the historic conviction of former President Donald Trump. A unanimous jury verdict today convicted on all 34 felony counts.

Hi, I'm Jonathan Caphart, and I'm excited to share some great news. Both the Saturday show and the Sunday show are available as a podcast every weekend. I look forward to bringing you the most important political news and the newsmakers who are creating policies that affect your life. For me, it's all about the conversation. That's when news is revealed and understanding begins. Search for Saturdays and Sundays with Jonathan Capehart and follow.