MSNBC commentator and former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann mentioned the testimony of Hope Hicks dealt a “body blow” to former President Donald Trump in court on Friday.
Trump is on trial and charged with 34 prison counts of falsifying trade information to obscure hush cash funds to hide extramarital affairs. The prosecution says Trump facilitated the payments because he did not need word of them to come back out in advance of the 2016 election.
One of those funds used to be made in October 2016, when then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid grownup movie actress Stormy Daniels $130,000.
On Friday, the jury heard testimony from Hicks, who worked for the Trump Group on the time of the funds. Trump had informed her that Cohen made “out of the kindness of his personal coronary heart.”
Prosecutors asked Hicks – who at one level cried whereas testifying – about that declare. She appeared greater than skeptical of it.
“I didn’t recognize Michael to be an particularly charitable individual or selfless person,” she told the courtroom, adding that he’s “[t]he kind of one that seeks credit.”
During cross-examination, Hicks perceived to again up the prosecution’s argument that Trump organized the hush money fee to forestall it from being an election difficulty.
“Mr. Trump’s opinion was once that it was higher to be dealing with it now and it would’ve been dangerous to have that story come out before the election,” she said, appearing to undercut the claim Trump was once looking to cover the affair from his spouse Melania Trump and no longer affect the election’s outcome.
Lawrence O’Donnell asked Weissmann to weigh in on Friday’s version of The Last Phrase on MSNBC.
“I’m sure you’ve considered so many witnesses getting emotional for therefore many reasons in courtrooms,” he mentioned. “And every so often it’s this weird cross-current of pressure in that room and it surprises the person who it occurs to as a lot as anyone else.”
I didn’t truly care why she used to be crying. And I believe it’s too overplayed. I truly cared in regards to the substance of her testimony and I additionally thought of how her crying was once kind of icing on the cake for the D.A.’s place of work. I’m not whatsoever suggesting that they sought it, but her testimony was once a body blow to the safety right here as a result of she put the guilty information of the hush money payments into Donald Trump’s mouth and she or he recounted that testimony to the jurors….
In the case of proof, I was once excited about what she stated was devastating, and there’s no question that her crying would underscore to the jury, in my opinion, that she used to be not there as a result of she wanted to lend a hand the federal government, that she had all loyalty for the Trump Organization.
And so, it was once going to make it inconceivable for the defense to actually say that she was mendacity to help the federal government and to harm Donald Trump. That’s not why you cry. So, I simply concept it was once an exclamation point to what had simply happened in court, which was I think just very a lot a very, very troublesome witness for the security as a way to overcome.
Watch above by the use of MSNBC.
The put up Andrew Weissmann Calls Hope Hicks’ ‘Devastating’ Testimony a ‘Physique Blow’ to Trump: Crying Was once ‘Icing on the Cake’ first appeared on Mediaite.