Transcript
Donald Trump’s defense
team has one job tomorrow,
and that is to whittle away
at the credibility
of the prosecution’s star witness,
former Trump fixer Michael Cohen.
Court is dark today,
but back in session tomorrow
morning and Cohen
will be back on the stand
for more cross-examination.
Former Trump attorney
Tim Palmer Latorre is joining us
now to talk about what is ahead.
First, Tim, let’s look back a little bit
and see how it’s gone so far.
How has Cohen come across?
Has he been credible, in your opinion?
Yeah, I think it’s difficult
for somebody with that history
to generally come across as credible.
But from you know, from what I hear,
he has been connecting
with the jury and,
you know,
really kind of telling them the story.
So it is something that,
you know, they’ve done
a good job of trying to corroborate
the pieces that they can
and hope
that the jury
will connect with him
on the pieces that they can’t.
He has kept his cool
as well,
which I think has worked in his favor.
Does Todd Blanchard need to approach this
a different way
or change strategies
to try to effectively
ding Cohen’s credibility?
Yeah.
If you if all you do is just focus on,
you know, things
that people have said before
and just attack their character,
you’re not really getting
to the heart of his testimony.
And so I think what Todd
Blast really needs to do
is to refocus on inconsistencies
within the testimony itself,
take things that he said on direct.
And if you can show the jury,
you know, really that
he lied about anything
during the questioning
by the prosecutors.
I think
that’s going to be much more effective
than just simply saying,
you know,
you said this on
TikTok about Donald Trump.
You said this on tape.
Talk about about me
or something like that.
COHEN Todd,
I think that he does
have some good things to go after.
Yeah, there certainly
he did do it a little bit.
We saw that or we read that.
COHEN
Cohen talked a little bit about how,
you know,
he still lives in a Trump building,
how he had read
Art of the Deal twice
and had deep admiration for Donald Trump.
Those were all revealed actually
in cross-examination by Trump’s lawyer.
And Cohen said as well
that he had been under the spell
of the cult of Trump.
I was just reading it
because obviously
there’s no cameras in there.
We can’t see it on video.
But I sort of wondered
if that didn’t make him appear
sympathetic to the jury
rather than the opposite.
What did you think?
I think it does, because he
has to explain
why the massive change of heart.
You know, he has to there are so many
inconsistent statements in his past
from the time when he was loyal to Trump,
to the time that he was, you know,
antagonistic to Trump.
So he really has to explain why that is.
And I think
that that’s something that Todd Bland
should go into much more detail on,
on cross-examination,
getting a lot more deep
than just simply saying,
you know, that I was very loyal to him.
And then I sat down with my family
and I changed my mind.
I think there’s a lot more to it
that he’s got to unpack
and explain the dichotomy there.
So much of what’s happening
doesn’t actually have anything to do
with what the jury has seen.
You had the House speaker
writing to court with Trump,
along with Vivek Ramaswamy
on Tuesday, the day before, with Senators
Vance and Tuberville.
I’m sure there’s going to be more
who’s who tomorrow.
What does it say to you
about where
the Republican Party historically
the party of law
and order, is at the moment,
where you have top leaders
accompanying Trump to
his criminal proceedings?
Well,
I don’t know how effective
that’s going to be for the jury.
I mean,
I heard that
there is an incident
where a couple of elected officials
walked in
and made kind of a bustle,
not waiting for a break.
And so I think that
when you do that kind of thing,
it does have the potential
for a negative impact on the jury.
And again, I’m a lawyer.
I’m not a political guy.
So, you know, what?
What effect does that have on the party
as something for somebody else
to comment on?
But I don’t think that doing
that kind of theatrics within
the courtroom is going to necessarily
be helpful,
especially when you have the judge
who apparently was visibly annoyed
by that as well.
You know, that
that also has an effect on the jury.
Do you think that Trump might testify?
Do you think he should testify?
I think it’s a possibility.
I think he should not, though.
You know, there
is there’s no benefit to him
testifying here because this single thing
know,
everybody talks
about the hush money payments
and everything else.
But the reality is what he’s charged
with is these false business records,
whether those checks
the annotation on them for legal fees,
whether that was knowingly false by him.
And I think that that is,
you know,
one of the key pieces
of Michael Cohen testimony
that’s not corroborated.
So do you really need Donald Trump
to get on to say, I didn’t know that?
You know,
is that really going to help him,
especially on balance
of all the potential negative
and unpredictable effects
of him doing that?
So if I were there,
I would be telling him,
please do not testify.
Yeah,
I think we’ll all be very surprised
if it does happen.
But sometimes with Donald Trump,
anything can happen.
So we’ll wait to see how this all goes.
Tim, thank you so much.
Really appreciate your insights.
Thank you.