Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees Aired May 06, 2024 - 20:00 ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. [20:00:00] … ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Good evening. We are following two big stories tonight. One, the enormous tension right now over what happens next in Gaza. After a day, they saw celebrations over Hamas saying they accepted a ceasefire deal, an apprehension over Israel's war cabinet rejecting it and the IDF beginning limited strikes on territory east of Rafah, where Israeli forces have ordered civilians to leave. The White House, as you know, has long opposed any major incursion into Rafah. And today, President Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. An administration spokesman saying the President asked about Israeli intentions for the city and plans to keep civilians there safe. We're going to have live updates on the situation throughout the next two hours of our special primetime coverage tonight. We begin, though, with another day, unlike any other, in the former president's New York hush money trial. Day 12 started with the judge finding Donald Trump in contempt again and telling him directly the next time could mean jail. And though he said it's the last thing he wants to do to a former and future president - or potentially a future president, I should say. Judge Juan Merchan added, "At the end of the day, I have a job to do, and part of that job is to protect the dignity of judicial system and compel respect." He went on to say, "Your continued violations of this court's lawful order threatened to interfere with the administration of justice in constant attacks which constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow that to continue." The day continued with one former and one current Trump Organization employee detailing how Michael Cohen's hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, were reimbursed by then President Trump. It ended with prosecutors saying they have about two weeks left in their case, and with the defendant complaining about that and the gag order, he's now been fined for violating 10 times. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So it's a disgrace. But we just heard two to three more weeks. I thought that we're finished today. I have to watch every word I tell you people, you asked me a question, a simple question I'd like to give it but I can't talk about it. Because this judge has given me a gag order and say you'll go to jail if you violate it. And frankly, you know what, our Constitution is much more important than jail. It's not even close. I'll do that sacrifice any day. (END VIDEO CLIP) COOPER: Well, tonight we have new reporting on what might happen if the judge grants his wish. CNN's John Miller starts us off with that. So what are you learning about contingency plans among law enforcement? JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, Anderson, the day started with the judge mentioning this in his written order, mentioning it in his words on court, the possibility of jail with the authorities kind of scratching their heads and asking each other, is this getting more real? It's not like the Secret Service can pull out the protection of former president's manual and go to the page that says president in jail. That page doesn't exist. So they've got to sketch this out. And what they're talking about is what are the options? So one option is they can ask the judge to remand Trump in the event that he is sentenced to custodial sentence to the custody of the United States marshal. They can move that custody down the street to the federal courthouse and those facilities there. The U.S. marshal in Manhattan is a former Secret Service agent. So he understands about prisoners, about custody, but also about the needs of the Secret Service and protection and former presidents. So that would give them some veneer of the kind of control that they would like to have in a situation like this. But then there's the other possibility, which is Judge Merchan says he's like any other prisoner. He's going to Rikers Island. COOPER: And, I mean, who ultimately - I mean, if that was actually - if he was ordered by the judge to be jailed, who has the ultimate say on where he goes? Is it the judge? Is it, like, the mayor or the governor? MILLER: No, that's the judge. I mean, this is Judge Merchan's courtroom. And this is the very message that Judge Merchan is trying to reinforce, which is I'm in charge in this courtroom. There's a universe out there where the president of the United States, a former president may have influenced, the Secret Service is very important. But I rule this courtroom. And he views Trump as someone who is challenging that. So if he sentenced him to city jail and I spoke to Frank Dwyer, the spokesman for the New York City Department of Corrections and said Trump on Rikers Island? How does that work? And he said, and I quote, "The department will find appropriate housing." That's a difficult scenario because corrections officers in a place that is often overcrowded, often understaffed, they're unarmed, which is how it works inside a jail. The Secret Service would probably require a separate empty building facility, a wing of its own where they could be armed, have a rescue plan, an escape plan, be able to screen food. [20:05:07] But it would also mean in Donald Trump world, the rules of the jail, no telephone, no tweets, no Truth Social. So this really is uncharted territory. COOPER: Yes. Well, we'll see if it ever gets there. John Miller. Thank you. Joining us now is New York defense attorney Arthur Aidala, bestselling author and former federal prosecutor, Jeffrey Toobin, CNN's Abby Phillip and Kaitlan Collins, Anchor of NewsNight and The Source, respectively. CNN Senior Legal Analyst, Elie Honig and CNN's Kara Scannell who was in court today, so let's start with you. What was it like in court? KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So as Judge Merchan does. He got on the bench. He began immediately with this saying that he found Trump in contempt for the 10th time. And then he looked directly at Trump and had told him this $1,000 fine is not acting as a deterrent for you. So I will have to consider jailing you as the next option. And he said to him, "Mr. Trump, it's important to understand that the last thing I want to do is put you in jail." And he was emphasizing to him that it was the last resort, but saying that he may be left with no choice then to do that. And he even said to Trump that to do this would be disruptive. And he knew that Trump wanted this - wanted to get this over with as soon as possible. I mean, I could see Trump. He was looking at the judge as he was addressing him, but he did not speak back. And in fact, the judge said to him, if you have anything, you can talk to your lawyer. COOPER: Elie, I mean, this is unprecedented, obviously, yet likely? ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. It - I think it remains unlikely, but I think the judge is putting down a marker here. He's saying, this is where my patience runs out. And it's important to note, the judge has given Donald Trump every benefit of the doubt when it comes to this gag order. I mean, the gag order itself is already very broad. It allows rants like the one we just saw. But also, even today, there were four alleged violations. The D.A. went to the judge and said, we think he violated four times. And the judge said three of them, I think, are okay, not proven. The two were Trump reacted to strongly to Michael Cohen and the one where Donald Trump made a comment about David Pecker. Judge said, no, doesn't violate the order. The one the judge did find is the comment about the jury. And you can't touch the jury. That is just no go third rail. So the judge is really airing in Trump's favor here on the gag order. And I think that Trump is reasserting domination and control of his courtroom. COOPER: Arthur, where would you go? ARTHUR AIDALA, ATTORNEY: Yes. So I mean, if you want a little breaking news, one of the reasons why I was a little bit late is apparently Harvey Weinstein's being transferred as we speak from Bellevue hospital to Rikers Island. So I'll be there tomorrow. Donald - look, Donald Trump's not going to be anywhere near any other inmate in Rikers Island in the United States marshal's custody. He will be in a room probably by himself. I will tell you, my experience is and I always defer to John Miller, but the judge doesn't have control of the where he's housed. He just says, officer, take hold and take charge - I'm sorry. Officers take charge. They then would put the handcuffs. Typically, I don't know about Donald Trump, but around a regular person's back and they lead them outside. And then it's the Department of Corrections that determines where you go. Now, they've all - they do have contingency plans. It also depends on how long the judge sentences him for. He can say officers take charge for six hours and then there's ... COOPER: A there's a cell in that building. AIDALA: Yes, there's a lot of them. That's where arraignment is, it's downstairs in the building. There's a lot of them. There's some on that floor itself. And they don't necessarily have to put him in a cell. He just can't leave. So my educated guess is that they're just going to put him in a room and say, Mr. President, you're not allowed to leave this room because Judge Merchan said you got to be here for the next six hours or eight hours or maybe even overnight. But there are so many entities here that want to make sure not a hair on Donald Trump's head is even the risk of being harmed. JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: One point worth making about this whole chapter is that since Merchan made the first finding of contempt, he has not committed contempt again. So Trump is not continuing to do this. There have been two separate findings of contempt. But for all the former president's complaints about how unfair this is, how terrible it is, he has not committed a violation of the gag order since then. And my sense is he probably won't again. COOPER: I also just want to read more of what the judge actually said to Trump today. He said, "Mr. Trump, it's important to understand the last thing I want to do is put you in jail. You're the former president of the United States, and possibly the next one as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for me. To take that step would be disruptive to these proceedings, which I imagine you want to end as quickly as possible." Just politically, Kaitlan, what would what would this mean? KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: I mean, the argument is that Trump would relish it in the sense that he would be able to argue what he's been arguing every day outside that courtroom, that he is being politically persecuted here, that he can't use his First Amendment right. He can't speak freely, that this is protected political speech. [20:10:01] The idea that Donald Trump actually would want to go to jail is ridiculous. Anyone who knows him knows that. He doesn't even like to stay in a hotel when he goes on foreign trips, when he went as president. It was a whole thing to actually get him to stay overnight in places. So this idea that he actually does want to do this for the optics perspective, I mean, when you speak to his closest advisers and allies, they'll say that's completely farfetched. Now, do they think it would work to their advantage? Maybe politically. But I do think Donald Trump heeding this is something that you never see Donald Trump do, which is actually watching his words. And he keeps acknowledging that every time he goes into that courtroom, even if he is lying about what the gag order actually says he can and cannot do, he is being careful. And he did the same thing after the E. Jean Carroll verdicts came out, where he was found to have defamed her and it was going to cost him a lot of money. He changed the way that he would speak publicly about her. ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: Until he defamed her again with you in your town hall. And then she ended up bringing him back to court over that incident. So he does have his moments when he, I don't know, maybe can't help himself. I was surprised to see the judge even just acknowledge the jail part of this, because I guess this has been in the conversation, whether - I don't know if he's paying attention or not, that he wouldn't do it. So the idea that he would at least warn Trump that that was on the table, it wasn't being taken off the table, it's just an important reminder to Trump that the judge is in charge here. And Trump is used to being the boss. He's used to being the president. He's not in this particular context. And it did feel like Judge Merchan wanted to make sure that he was aware that nothing is off the table, really, and that he will do what he has to do to maintain order in his courtroom. COOPER: How important was the actual testimony today, particularly in the morning? But it's maybe not headline making in terms of the documents, it's never - it's kind of boring to listen to, but it is important for the prosecution's case. TOOBIN: Huge, hugely important, because this is a case about providing - about creating false business records. The jury saw the business records today for the first time. I think this case is coming down to one thing. It is quite clear that the government has proved this was money reimbursed to Cohen for hush money. I don't think there is any way the jury can believe these were actually legal fees. I also think that means the records were false. I mean, these were not legal fees. But the thing the government has improved, and they didn't prove it today, was that Trump created these records or was involved in the creation of those records. And I think that's going to be the prosecution's challenge as the rest of the case unfolds, because that's just not there yet I don't think. COOPER: Why can't you make the argument that any payment to a lawyer is a legal fee? I mean, what does a legal fee mean? Is there some official definition? AIDALA: If I may. COOPER: Yes. AIDALA: That's a great point. And people have asked me about that. My dad asked me about it walking into the building. I think the difference here, Anderson, is he took out like a home equity line of credit or a home equity loan. If he just said, look, I'm going to write - I know you're caught up, I'm going to write it out of my own escrow - we can't do it as escrow - my own operating account and you'll cover me - on it later. It would smell a lot better or look a lot better than I'm putting my own - I think it was his family residence -- COOPER: Right. AIDALA: -- up on the table. And I just need to say this, I thought Judge Merchan today handled himself perfectly the way he handled Trump with the gag order. I really do. I think -- COOPER: You think it was smart to mention the jail? AIDALA: I think - I just think he handled it - look, I work in that courthouse. I want the sanctity of that courthouse to be preserved, whether it's Donald Trump sitting there, Joe Biden sitting there, George W. Bush sitting there or anyone else, I want the sanctity of that courthouse and I want everyone to have to follow the rules and abide by the rules. And basically, Donald Trump's fate regarding jail or not jail with the gag order is in his own hands. He could handle himself like the way he did today. There was clearly no violation for what he said today or he could thumb his nose and force the judge's hand and that would be unfortunate. TOOBIN: Wow. The George W. Bush case will be very traumatic. COOPER: Kaitlan, you got some interesting details, I understand, just a short time ago about what ... PHILLIP: Retribution. COOPER: ... witnesses on the stand can actually see and can't see. COLLINS: Okay. So this is really fascinating to me. I talked to one of the witnesses who testified. Obviously, we're not going to say which one, but they told me because we watch the witness and we watch the defendant. We watch the jury when you're in the room. Kara, obviously, has been there every single day observing this. And we talk about whether or not the witness is looking in Donald Trump's direction as they're answering questions or when they're in the room. I talked to a witness. You can't actually see Donald Trump from the witness stand. COOPER: You cannot. COLLINS: Because where they're seated, they're - the juries to their left and the judge's bench extends out so far. It's more exaggerated than in this graphic that we're showing there where the judge is right there in the middle. But it extends out so far that as the witness, unless you greatly exaggerated your posture and leaned forward, you cannot see Donald Trump. The only person you can see is the first member of his defense team who is sitting in that first chair. [20:15:02] Typically, it's been Emil Bove who's been conducting the cross- examination. But this person was surprised to learn that when they walked in the room, you walk behind Donald Trump and his attorneys, you go to the witness stand. And once you're sitting there, you can't actually see him as you're delivering your testimony. AIDALA: That's deliberate, by the way, because witnesses - forget about this case. But if it's someone who robbed you or someone who murdered someone in your family, it really intimidates someone to have to point and say so - a lot of times when an identification, an in- court identification has to take place, the individual who's on the witness stand has to stand up and say, oh, yes, there's the person over there. And a lot of times, if I'm not at the first position that Kaitlan just described and I'm in that third position and like the defendant's in the middle, I get up and go behind the bar with the court's permission and I sit in the front row because I want to be able to see the body language and everything, so - but it's not just a coincidence that you can't see. COLLINS: But can the person - if you're sitting where Donald Trump is, can you - can he see the defendant or does he kind of ... AIDALA: No, he's got - he would ... COLLINS: ... the witness, does he have to lean over? AIDALA: Yes, he would kind of have to look over. I prefer it on every defendant that they can't see the witness because the juries that's what the jurors look like. How is the defendant reacting to that's the guy who robbed me, that's the guy on the subway who stole my stuff and, you know, you don't want them being, you know, making any movement. So I'm happy that they can't see each other. COLLINS: Michael Cohen probably too. SCANNELL: Yes. (INAUDIBLE) Trump today, though, dramatically change his position to be able to watch one of the witnesses. And he was craning his neck and a chain - like turned his chair so he could see. But it does also explain why he's looking at the monitor a lot of the time ... COLLINS: Yes. SCANNELL: ... because that's probably his best view of seeing what the witnesses are expressions are. COOPER: Kara Scannell, thanks so much. Everyone else stay with us. Coming up next, what the former president said back in 2018 when he was first asked about the payment Michael Cohen made to Stormy Daniels and where he got the money for it. That and how the witnesses today described some of the process. The full transcript is just out. John Berman is going through it. He'll bring us that. Plus, the latest in the war against Hamas, the ceasefire proposal that fell through and whether Israel is about to go into Rafah. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [20:21:34] COOPER: As stunning as it is to see a former president United States on trial facing felony charges, it was also pretty stunning when the president was asked about the hush money payments to - aboard Air Force One back in 2018. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels? TRUMP: No. No. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Then why Michael - why did Michael Cohen make this, if there was no truth to her allegation? TRUMP: Well, you have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael's my attorney and you'll have to ask Michael Cohen. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you know where he got the money to make that payment? TRUMP: No, I don't know. No. (END VIDEO CLIP) COOPER: Well, he did not know about the payment to the porn star, he said, and he did not know where Michael Cohen got the money to pay her. Both were lies. Now, the question is, were the records of his reimbursements to Cohen for said payoffs falsified and was it on his orders? Today, the prosecution began trying to answer those questions. CNN's John Berman just got the trial transcript for more detail in - about what was actually said in court. So what more did the bookkeeper, longtime Trump Organization employee say in her testimony about how Trump signed the checks? JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, he did sign them, which is important, I think. And this is from Deb Tarasoff, as you said, the accountant there. This first exchange you don't have because we just got it in. But the attorney, Chris Conroy, asked, "Who could sign the checks for the DJT account in 2016 or 2017?" Answer, "You're talking about Mr. Trump's personal account?" "Yes." "Only Mr. Trump," she said. "Was that true back in 2016 and 2017?" She answers, "Yes." "If you know," the attorney asked, "Is that still true today?" Deb Tarasoff says, "Yes, it is." Question, "That was any check. It didn't matter the amount." She answers, "It didn't matter." Now, that was for signing the checks. Then in about a minute later, they started asking, did he have to sign a check if he was sent a check to sign, because Allen Weisselberg signed off on an invoice, did he have to sign it? The question, "did Mr. Trump have to sign a check because Mr. Weisselberg approved it?" Deb Tarasoff says, "No. If he didn't want to sign it, he didn't sign it." Question, "Did you ever see situations where he didn't sign checks?" Her answer, "Yes." "What would happen in those situations," they asked. Answer, "He would write void on it and send it back." Question, "How do you know he would write void on it?" She answers, "It was signed in a Sharpie in black. That is what he usually does." HONIG: This is great testimony for the prosecution. A couple of reasons, first of all, it's visceral. You can see even just the detail about the Sharpie, right? We all know he uses the Sharpie, but ... COLLINS: He loves the Sharpie. HONIG: ... yes, exactly. He loves the Sharpie circles, hurricanes and stuff. But you can remember that, it's a lasting image. The other thing is he has the ability and the resources to say no. He is involved enough that some checks, he says, not signing this, not legitimate, void. Yet he's signing these checks to Michael Cohen. Now, the defense will come back on that. But this puts the defense on its heels. This is a really important point in favor of the prosecution. COLLINS: Because essentially they're saying that he didn't just do whatever Allen Weisselberg handed over or whatever checks he sent to the White House, which is when he signed these checks to Michael Cohen. And that was the testimony also from the Trump controller - the organization controller who told the story about how Trump tried to fire him when he first started his job. He went in and Trump was on the phone and said, you're fired. And then Trump hung up and said, okay, you're not actually fired, but you need to start paying closer attention to the bottom line here and making me financially whole. And that just because a bill is due doesn't mean you pay that bill in full of what they're asking, that you negotiate it down. So Trump was even saying - he was paying that close attention to what these numbers were, which I think the prosecution was doing to say Donald Trump paid attention to where his money was going. [20:25:08] PHILLIP: And, of course, I mean, when you're talking about what the Michael Cohen payment really ended up being, which was not just the $30,000, but over and above that by $420,000, by three times, basically. The idea that Donald Trump would then say the same man who says you got to negotiate down my bills before I pay it would then say, oh, I don't care that I'm paying him $420,000, which is way more than he was owed. That is the part that I think is going to be hard for any reasonable person to believe. That's a common sense thing that I think the prosecution put on the table today with that testimony. HONIG: You can see the defense, though, coming into focus here. What there are going to argue when they started doing it today on the cross exam is Michael Cohen was essentially embezzling, was essentially ripping off his own company because he sees - okay, he lays out $130,000. He ends up getting paid back $420,000. Now, is Donald Trump the kind of person who's going to say, this is what the defense will argue, okay, Michael Cohen, you laid out $130,000 for me. Great. Here's $130,000 and zero cents back. Or is Donald Trump the kind of person who's going to knowingly say this is great, Michael. Thank you for doing this. I'm going to pay you back triple. The defense is going to go. They want to say he's a penny pincher. You're darn right, he's a penny pincher. He wouldn't have paid $420,000 unless he was defrauded essentially by Michael Cohen. One more point. This is the same moment in time when Michael Cohen has now pled guilty to ripping off his own bank and to ripping off the IRS for his personal finances. So they're going to argue he was ripping off everyone in sight at this point. Donald Trump was essentially duped by him. PHILLIP: That is so - I mean, that's actually not how I would have interpreted that - those same set of facts and I think it's reasonable. But I also think it's reasonable for the prosecution to basically argue the idea that Donald Trump is going to be ripped off by Michael Cohen as if he is just a passive player in all of this. That, too, I think is difficult to believe. COOPER: Was there something in the transcript about that stood out to you, John, about the way The Trump Organization actually operated? BERMAN: Yes, chaotically, very chaotically and this came out in the defense. Emil Bove asking the controller, Jeffrey McConney. Question, "Now, I think you said before January 2017 was a period of flux and chaos at The Trump Organization." McConney says, "That's putting it mildly." Bove says, "And that's because President Trump had become president United States, right?" McConney says, "Yes, sir." Bove, "And the way of doing business in the company had to change, right?" McConney, "Drastically." Bove says, "And there was a period where things were in flux because you were trying to figure out how to do that, right?" McConney says, "Yes, sir." "And for the first time in decades, President Trump's main office was in Washington, D.C., hundreds of miles away." McConney says, "Yes, sir." "So he was not in New York as much as he had been previously to sign personal checks?" McConney says, "I don't remember seeing him in New York at all." And Anderson, there's one other thing I want to point out that was all over the testimony today. It's a person, it's Allen Weisselberg played a huge role in this testimony today. And this is just one exchange. And we have a corresponding document to show you. Matthew Colangelo, the prosecutor who was asking the questions (INAUDIBLE) says, "Mr. McConney, I'm now showing you a document that's been marked People's 35. Do you recognize this document?" McConney says, "Yes." Colangelo says, "What is it?" McConney says, "This is the bank statement that Allen gave me to put in the files." Colangelo says, "Is there handwriting on this document?" McConney says, "There are two sets of handwriting at the bottom of the document." "Do you recognize the handwriting?" "I recognize the handwriting on the left side of the page, but not the right side of the page." "Whose handwriting is on the left side of the page?" McConney says, "That belongs to Allen Weisselberg." Colangelo asks, "H0ow do you recognize his handwriting?" McConney says, "I've read his handwriting for about 35 years." COOPER: But now ... TOOBIN: But that document is so important. That document is the most important document in the whole case. AIDALA: But so as this - okay, but so is this question and answer on cross-examination. TOOBIN: Maybe we should look at the document. AIDALA: No. But, okay, it's so important, okay. It's so important. It's very - I'm not - I'm not denying it's important. And he talks about - McConney talks about all the things he did to create that business record. And here's the question, "President Trump did not ask you to do any of these things you described." Answer, "He did not." COOPER: Jeff, why is that document important? TOOBIN: Well, can we call it up? I - sorry to put people on, yes, there it is. Allen Weisselberg on the left is doing the calculations of how Cohen got paid, $130,000 plus the $130,000 to cover his taxes and then a $60,000 bonus. This corroborates Cohen's version of how the whole transaction went down. So it's not like Michael Cohen made up this whole thing. AIDALA: No, but Jeff, as you said earlier in this show ... TOOBIN: Right. AIDALA: You said that that's not going to be the issue. The issue is knowledge. The issue is President Trump did not ask you to do anything you described. He did not. [20:30:01] TOOBIN: That document doesn't prove that. I agree with you. But, you know, you don't have to prove the whole case with a single document. That case proves a very significant part of the case -- AIDALA: Yes. TOOBIN: -- which is that this was not a legal -- COOPER: (INAUDIBLE) testify. TOOBIN: See, Allen -- AIDALA: No, he's in jail. COOPER: Yes. AIDALA: He's a writer's eye (ph). TOOBIN: And, you know, if Donald Trump gets acquitted, the fact that Allen Weisselberg has pleaded guilty, gone to prison, and stayed off the witness stand here is an incredible gift to Donald Trump. I mean, this is the definition of a standup guy. I don't think it's admirable since he's a criminal, but I mean, it is an amazing gift that Allen Weisselberg has given Donald Trump. COLLINS: Just to reemphasize what Jeffrey Toobin just said, the Trump team didn't want this document to be able to be used as evidence at this trial and speaks to, I think, their level of concern about how the jury will read it. PHILLIP: I think my question always with this -- with Trump and with his intent is, it's -- it comes down to, does Trump have to say, please falsify these documents in order to pay, you know, Michael Cohen, or is there another way to substantiate the knowledge -- AIDALA: Well, he's got to have knowledge of it. PHILLIP: Because, I mean, he may not have -- AIDALA: If you don't have evidence to substantiate it? Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen's going to take the stand and say, he told me to do it. And as they said, if I'm the prosecutor, I'm not saying you can't get a conviction with Michael Cohen, but I'm going to say a novena before he takes the stand. COOPER: Much more ahead, including what Stormy Daniels said just last year about negotiations for getting paid. Journalist Ronan Farrow joins us next. He wrote the bestselling book, "Catch and Kill," about the concept that's central to this case. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [20:35:43] COOPER: Breaking news tonight from former President Trump's hush money trial. Prosecutors grilling two Trump Organization employees about the alleged scheme to disguise the payments as legal fees, showing jurors checks, invoices, and ledgers. Here's Stormy Daniels on "Piers Morgan Uncensored" last year, talking about the discussion she said she had with her attorney, Keith Davidson, about getting paid. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) STORMY DANIELS, AMERICAN ACTRESS: And then they approached me with the NDA, and I was like, what do you think I should do? And he goes, well, I think you should come forward and stop him. And I go, but as your friend, at least if you sign this and there's payment, there's a paper trial and they can't hurt you. And I was like -- PIERS MORGAN, "PIERS MORGAN UNCENSORED" HOST: That made sense. DANIELS: -- it made absolute sense. (END VIDEO CLIP) COOPER: Joining us now is journalist Ronan Farrow. He wrote about the hush money scheme center of this trial in the 2019 bestselling book, "Catch and Kill." He explored other alleged hush money payments made on the former president's behalf, including the $150,000 payment from the National Choir's publisher to buy the rights to former Playboy model Karen McDougal's story about an alleged affair with Trump years earlier. I mean, your reporting showed the kind of a roundabout payments used in this system to prevent a paper trail. I mean, was the Trump team successful in this? I mean, did it work? RONAN FARROW, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: I think today's testimony indicates that up to a point, they were successful. And I think this speaks to the way in which prosecutors have sequenced their case, right? They started out with the wider narrative that gets at intent. This collusion with AMI, the Karen McDougal case, the doorman case, the idea that there was a serial pattern with a specific intent, a conspiracy to subvert the election. Then they get to the heart of the matter. And that's what we saw today. And we see this paper trail, and we see the fact that there was indeed, as Jeffrey was speaking to, a set of records that seem manifestly falsified. What is much harder for them to establish at this point in the case is the idea that Donald Trump personally ordered things. COOPER: The direct order. FARROW: His direct order, his direct intent. Because by intent, they were keeping his prints off of things. So -- COOPER: If an order was given by Donald Trump, it would have been given to Allen Weisselberg. FARROW: That's right. So everything was going through middlemen. And I think this underscores why Cohen's testimony is going to be so important, because we heard a lot of from our two witnesses today, well, no, it didn't come from Trump. And Trump's lawyers, I think, did score Bove asked that directly. And they said, no, it didn't come from him. That does reflect that the scheme to keep Trump distanced from this to an extent work. COOPER: Yes, I mean, depending what side of the aisle you're sitting on in the courtroom, the idea that it so much relies on Cohen's testimony is, can be kind of terrifying. FARROW: I think it is terrifying for prosecutors. And, you know, we have a number of people at this desk who have had conversations with people around this case. And what you hear very quickly is they have a thorny matter to navigate with Michael Cohen and his credibility issues, his history of lying. That said, he is going to be a potent witness in this case. They have made strides in getting him to shut up on social media and in other forums. And I think they're going to try their best with him. COLLINS: And the Trump team is like single handedly focused on Michael Cohen. I mean, notice Todd Blanche, his lead attorney, has not done any of the other cross examination here. It's just been Emil Bove doing it. And, obviously, the prosecution will get Michael Cohen to say what they want him to say when he testifies. Right after that is going to be the cross examination, and they're essentially preparing for it to be blistering. COOPER: Do you think, I mean, Ronan, given all your reporting, do you think there's any chance that Donald Trump did not know what was behind the checks he was signing? FARROW: It really beggars belief, given what we heard about the organizational structure today. I think despite the superficial win of Trump's team getting these witnesses to say, no, we didn't get direct orders, what we learned more deeply -- and these jurors are carefully taking notes, they're paying attention -- is that this Byzantine structure in this organization and the particular way they approached these transactions was designed to prevent that direct order from happening. COOPER: This was not an accident that they had this structure? FARROW: It was not an accident, and then what we learned about their general practice is that for payments over $10,000, Donald Trump really was in on the decision making. That he was not a passive observer, that this was not such a giant organization that these kinds of things could have happened without him knowing. And the witnesses, despite that weakness I just alluded to, spoke to that over and over again. TOOBIN: I think Ronan makes a great argument that the prosecution is going to make is, it beggars belief that Donald Trump didn't know. He must have known. [20:40:03] The question is, is that proof beyond a reasonable doubt? Is it -- AIDALA: No, it's more than that, Jeffrey. TOOBIN: You -- AIDALA: It's more -- TOOBIN: Well, OK -- AIDALA: It's more than whether he knew the payment was being made. That's not the crime here. The crime here is, did he know it was going to be recorded in the book -- TOOBIN: Yes, well, it's all part of the same thing. Yes. AIDALA: Right, but it's -- but if they prove beyond a reasonable doubt, Donald Trump knew that the payment was made, they will -- he should be found not guilty. TOOBIN: It has -- AIDALA: They have to go to the next step that he knew that they were going to falsify the business. COOPER: But also, Ronan, the fact that he's signing checks in the White House, I mean, it does sort of speak to a level of his in -- of involvement. FARROW: Absolutely -- COOPER: I mean, he's got a lot of important things you would think that the White House would be doing other than signing these checks. FARROW: You would think, and it speaks to -- despite the sort of small ball stakes of the actual business accounting matters and this relatively small penalties attached, the actual vast stakes of subverting an election in a way that voters should care about and I think many of these jurors will. That this was a man sitting in the Oval Office involved in these schemes, involved in what looks on its face like dirty accounting. And that as Hope Hicks spoke to last week, he expressed that he was glad that these stories started to emerge after he got in. That it would have been worse for them if the scheme hadn't transpired in this way. COOPER: I saw a picture this weekend that Karen McDougal seemed to have been reading your book while taking a bath. Do you think she will be called? FARROW: You know, they fought hard, they -- the prosecutors -- to get permission to let her testimony in, and they got that permission. I think there was, based on my conversations, an intention to do that at some point. Now, what we're seeing so far is that they have tackled the AMI part of this story, which would be where Karen was involved early on. So I think it's now somewhat more in doubt. COOPER: Ronan Farrow, thank you so much. FARROW: Thank you. COOPER: Appreciate it. More coming up with the panel ahead. More breaking news as well, Israel now conducting what it calls targeted strikes in the eastern Rafah hours after Hamas said they accepted a ceasefire proposal, but not the one Israel say that they helped craft. A live report from the region as well as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman joins us ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [20:46:29] COOPER: More uncertainty tonight in the Middle East, where there has been talk of a ceasefire deal accepted by Hamas, sending some Palestinians to the streets of Gaza to celebrate earlier. Those celebrations turned out to be premature. Israel says the proposed -- the proposal brokered by Egypt and Qatar is far from its, quote, "necessary requirements," end quote, and is promising to press on with its military offensive in Rafah, though, it does still seem willing to negotiate. Tonight, gunfire was heard in Rafah on the Egyptian side of the border. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) (GUNSHOTS) (END VIDEO CLIP) COOPER: It's the gunfire on the other side of the border, but heard from the Egyptian side of the border. CNN's Jeremy Diamond is live in Jerusalem with the very latest. So what are the parameters of the proposal that Hamas apparently agreed to, and whose proposal was that? JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, the first question we had when we saw this news that Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire proposal was which proposal are they talking about? Because for the last week or so, we've been talking about an Egyptian framework, which the Israeli government helped craft and had effectively tacitly agreed to. But this latest proposal, which Hamas is apparently agreed to, according to a senior Israeli and a senior American official is not that same Egyptian framework proposal. Instead, it is a new proposal updated from that Egyptian framework, which Hamas worked on with the key mediators involved, but it defers from that original proposal in several key respects. The most important of which is the fact that it calls for an end to the war in Gaza altogether. And that has really been a red line for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And so, what we're hearing is that the Israeli prime minister's office is saying this proposal does not meet their core demands. And clearly, those celebrations in Gaza that we were seeing sadly have been premature. The Israeli government says it is sending a working level delegation to meet with the mediators to see if a path forward can be achieved to reach a deal. But as of now, that remains very, very unclear. Anderson? COOPER: And what are you learning about what's happening in Rafah tonight? DIAMOND: Well, you saw that video of the gunfire that you can hear from the other side of the Egyptian, the rough up border crossing. And our analyst, Barak Ravid, is reporting tonight that Israeli tanks and troops have begun to move in towards that rough up border crossing. This incursion comes less than 24 hours after the Israeli government began dropping leaflets, thousands of leaflets, on Eastern Rafah, ordering about 100,000 people to begin to evacuate northwards in Gaza. And less than 24 hours after that, we're hearing that gunfire. We're seeing explosions lighting up the night sky above Rafah. This says the Israeli war cabinet spoke tonight and decided to move forward with the military pressure, move forward with this operation in Rafah in order, they say, to ramp up the military pressure on Hamas. So not only is this aiming to try and capture key Hamas infrastructure in Rafah, they say, but it's also clearly a negotiating tactic as well. Anderson? COOPER: Yes. Jeremy Diamond, thank you. It's already Tuesday, the 7th in Israel. It's actually seven months, the day that Hamas attacked. Perspective now from someone who knows the region well, New York Times Foreign Affairs Columnist Thomas Friedman joins us. He's the author of multiple bestsellers, including from "Beirut to Jerusalem." There's a new forward to the audio book out just now. So Tom, I mean, if Hamas doesn't back away from its insistence on a permanent ceasefire, do you believe any agreement is possible? THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, FOREIGN AFFAIRS COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, it's very clear what Prime Minister Netanyahu wants. He wants a ceasefire and a hostage return, but not a permanent ceasefire, so he can complete the war, in his view, and achieve total victory. [20:50:11] Hamas wants a prisoner exchange, hostage return, any permanency swap fire. So a mosque can -- a leader, Yahya Sinwar, can walk out of his tunnels and say he stood up against the Israelis for seven months plus, and that he won. And I don't know how they're going to basically split the difference on that one because, you know, Netanyahu needs to be able to finish the war from his point of view. And a scene where it needs the war to be finished. COOPER: Is finishing the war as the Israel sees it, and is that -- do you think that's even feasible? I mean, Sinwar has obviously seems to have done a fine job of hiding thus far. FRIEDMAN: Yes. You know, I don't see how Netanyahu wins since he's never defined winning other than this elusive concept of total victory. That is, you know, Anderson, wars are fought for political ends. And the political end here from Israel's point of view would be obvious. It goes in, it dismantles, defeats Hamas, then it leaves and turns over the Gaza Strip to some governing authority other than Israel. So Israel isn't occupying the West Bank and Gaza at the same time. But because Netanyahu has refused to partner with the most logical governing authority, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, or any other governing authority, it's never been clear what victory actually means. Wars are fought for political ends and Netanyahu has never defined the political end of any military victory that he wants out of this war. So he can't win. COOPER: He also obviously wants to stay in power. There's a lot of belief that as soon as the war is done that there will be a reckoning for him, or at least some sort of judgment on the failures of -- that occurred on October 7th. He's also got this, you know, this coalition of right-wing groups who he needs in order to stay in power. FRIEDMAN: Yes, I mean, there's no question that his ultimate goal is to stay in power so he has the basis to plea bargain in the corruption trials that he's now in the middle of. So that for him means keeping the war going, but at the same time, he faces enormous pressure at home from the Israeli public at large, and particularly hostage families that want a resolution of the war. So he's in a very difficult situation. But given the fact that, again, it all goes back to the fact, you know, Anderson, that when he started this war, he needed three things, Netanyahu. He needed time He needed resources and needed legitimacy to gather time and resources to feed Hamas. There was only one way to get the time, the resources, and legitimacy, and that was to have a Palestinian partner. Logical one would be the Palestinian Authority which definitely needs to be reformed, transformed, overhauled with new leadership. But if he had that partner, he would have bought time with the world, with the Arab world, and have a basically someone to turn Gaza over with because he refused to have that partner because having that partner, he would have lost his crazy right-wing fringe of the coalition that keeps him in power. He's basically stuck and he's left Israel stuck because he's basically put his own political survival ahead of what would take -- what we required for Israel to thrive here. COOPER: The U.S. has, you know, in the past encouraged at the very least a limited -- more limited operation in Rafah, more targeted strikes against Hamas and obviously trying to take far more -- pay more attention to civilian casualties. What will be the fallout if Israel does proceed with a full ground incursion into Rafah? FRIEDMAN: I'll be very surprised, Anderson, if they do that. I think they've heard President Biden loud and clear. Administration officials have made clear to me that they would engage in some kind of arms embargo if Israel did engage in a full-fledged attempt to take over Rafah without, you know, evacuating people. I think what Netanyahu is trying to do here is basically close off or enter into that area between Rafah and the Egyptian border, which is one of the main smuggling routes that Hamas is used. Just tons and tons of material have come in from Egypt smuggled under that Rafah border into Rafah. And there's been -- it's really been a huge problem for Israel and a huge asset for Hamas. So as a way to put pressure on them, I'm guessing what's going on here is is Israel's trying to put herself in a position to really cut off that border or put enormous pressure on it. I think that's what's going on. COOPER: Tom Friedman, thanks so much. FRIEDMAN: Thank you, Anderson. COOPER: We're keeping a close eye on the Middle East. There's much more to come on week four of Donald Trump's hush money trial. The former president held in criminal contempt of court again. The judge warns it could mean jail time next. The latest ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [20:59:45] … The Source with Kaitlan Collins Aired May 06, 2024 - 21:00 ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. [21:00:00] ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Coming up, on 9 PM, here in New York, we're continuing to monitor developments, out of the Middle East, where we're learning more about the ceasefire proposal that Hamas accepted, and Israel rejected today. And Israeli strikes on southern Gaza, arising new questions about whether these limited operations will grow into a full-fledged invasion of Rafah, which the Biden administration has been warning against, for weeks. We begin the hour, right now, day 12 in the Trump hush money trial. The judge's second contempt finding, against the former President, today, and his warning that a third could mean jail time. That and prosecutors calling two longtime Trump employees, as they try to show exactly how Michael Cohen was repaid, by Trump's trust and personal accounts in 2017, after he paid hush money to Stormy Daniels. Back with the panel. Joining us as well is Harry Litman, who was in court today. He's an L.A. Times Legal Affairs Columnist, host of the "Talking Feds" podcast, and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General. I'm wondering what you observed, as Judge Merchan warned Trump about potential jail time. HARRY LITMAN, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL: It was really sort of jaw-dropping. We've been having different judges in different courts kind of wag their fingers. But he looked directly at Trump, soft-spoken, but very firm, Mr. Trump, you are out of rope. And it was really the sort of statement we've been waiting for, for a year. Next time, you're done. And it's sensible in a way because with only $1,000 to work with for other violations, why should he diddle around. But he said, next time, that's it. And he really means it. His credibility would be on the line as well as the integrity of the judicial system. It was a dramatic moment. COOPER: Jeff made the point in the last hour, which I think is very correct, that Trump actually has been abiding by the gag order, since the violations, which he's now been punished for. LITMAN: I think that's right. JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: More or less. LITMAN: And he seemed sort of sullen at it, angry. And he has been at least trying to skate around it. And now, we're talking about jail. There's a lot of discussion, would he like it quixotically, for political reasons. But jail, not fun for, you know, just imagine the sort of no hairdressers, and the whole. TOOBIN: Harry, did he say-- LITMAN: Yes. TOOBIN: --did he say, next time, is it? Or did he imply that? LITMAN: Somewhere in between. So, what he said is necessary and appropriate, which of course you say. But what was really striking about it was the direct address to Trump. I haven't heard that before. And we've been waiting. He really said, next time. ARTHUR AIDALA, ATTORNEY: But it's like a borderline of a directive and begging, like he's-- LITMAN: Sure. Because-- (CROSSTALK) AIDALA: As I said earlier-- LITMAN: So, yes. AIDALA: --I think he did a great job, the judge. He's like, don't do this, like, I don't want to do this. LITMAN: Right, yes. AIDALA: Like, don't make me do this. Don't put me in this position. COOPER: Yes, let's-- LITMAN: It's up to Trump. COOPER: --let's put up the transcript, if we have. KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN HOST: Yes, I have it right here, actually. COOPER: OK. LITMAN: Yes. COLLINS: Because he said this is a last-resort measure for him. LITMAN: Yes. COLLINS: That he does not want to have to do this, which I think is important to emphasize. Because I'm sure Trump's allies have been taking the judge, and saying he's being treated unfairly. He said, you're the former President of the United States, possibly the next as well. He said, there are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for me. And he said, to take that step would, one, disrupt these proceedings, which I imagine you want to end as quickly as possible, speaking directly to Trump. He said, I also worry about the people, who would have to execute that sanction, the court officers, the correction officers, the Secret Service detail, among others. LITMAN: Right. COLLINS: He basically is talking about how involved it would be to actually take this action. But I think the other thing to remember, when it comes to last resort, Trump has violated this 10 times. I mean, would any other defendant be able to violate a gag order, 10 times? LITMAN: Certainly not. They were not going-- AIDALA: On an -- on an E-- LITMAN: This one doesn't go to 11. AIDALA: Yes, but on an E felony-- LITMAN: Yes. AIDALA: --which is the lowest felony. LITMAN: Right. AIDALA: For a man who's 77-years-old, who's never been in trouble in his life. Take out the whole prejudice. COLLINS: He's not just an average 77-year-old. He has a huge platform, though, to go after these witnesses, and to talk about these jurors. That's exactly why he is being found-- AIDALA: Right. COLLINS: --in contempt of this. AIDALA: So, Kaitlan, you brought up a point, though. LITMAN: Yes. AIDALA: And I think a lot of the -- even the future, the present and the future, it depends on the degree of violation. So, if tomorrow he comes out there and says, someone should take out Michael Cohen? I think Donald Trump will be put in jail immediately. If he says, I still don't feel like I'm getting a fair trial from these jurors? I don't know if the judge would say yes, it's a violation, but I'm not putting you in jail for that. LITMAN: I said that's-- AIDALA: So, I think it's a matter of degree. LITMAN: --that's what I disagree about. I think there's no more room to say violation, but you're OK. He might -- he might really try to keep from finding a violation. But if he does-- ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: I do think-- LITMAN: --I think no more room, yes. PHILLIP: But I do think that the -- what he did today, in addition to the comments, there were four things on his desk that could potentially be violations. He didn't say that all of them were. LITMAN: Right. PHILLIP: And some of them involved comments about witnesses, like Michael Cohen. LITMAN: Right. PHILLIP: And others. And so, I think the judge, actually by doing both things, at the same time, was basically saying, look, there are lines here. I think the jury is aligned, for him and rightfully so. LITMAN: Yes. PHILLIP: I mean, the jury is, they're regular people. Trump maligning them, to Kaitlan's point, on his massive platform, is a huge problem. We know that there are consequences of that. But the judge seemed to, at least in this latest tranche, say, OK, well, him calling a witness, nice. That doesn't quite count. He's drawing some lines there. LITMAN: Right. PHILLIP: And saying that there are degrees to this, and he's not willing to just say everything, in this category is a violation when it may not be. ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: There are-- COOPER: Harry -- sorry. HONIG: There are other costs to Donald Trump here, real costs, to irritating the judge, to pushing the judge's patience. [21:05:00] Number one, if Donald Trump gets convicted, this is the guy who's sentencing him. Let's keep that in mind. And the sentence here will be, of course, up to the judge. And this will be a close call. I mean if you look at Class E felonies, the lowest level of felony, most of them result in probation and fines, not prison time. But some do. And the judge would be well within his rights, to say, I'm going to take into account the fact that you violated my order, 10 times. The second cost, his team is, his lawyers are flying blind here. They don't know who's coming tomorrow. Because, they asked for that. They said, Judge, we'd like to know. At one point, Todd Blanche said, I promise you, I will prevent him from tweeting. And the judge says, I don't think you can make that promise. And so normally, a defense lawyer would certainly know the night before, who's coming tomorrow. Instead, they don't know if they're going to be cross-examining Stormy Daniels. COOPER: It's interesting that his tweeting has actually hurt his case, in that sense. HONIG: Yes. Yes, in tangible ways. PHILLIP: Yes. HONIG: So maybe he's taking that. And look, if he's self-interested, which he is? I don't know if he's rational. But he's self-interested, he should be taking that into account. COLLINS: I don't think they're finding out the day of. But they're finding out very close. HONIG: Right. COLLINS: They were complaining that they found out very late yesterday, who the first witness would be today. They said the same thing about David Pecker, when he first testified. HONIG: Yes. COLLINS: That they are getting a pretty -- they say it's too short of a notice. TOOBIN: Yes, well just so we're clear. They know the universe of potential witnesses. HONIG: Right. COLLINS: Absolutely. COOPER: Right. TOOBIN: The government is required by law to produce the universe. So, they're not picking names out of hats. But the order in which they're called is as a courtesy-- COLLINS: Yes. COOPER: Yes. TOOBIN: --is usually provided. LITMAN: But that's a big difference. TOOBIN: And that's -- and that-- LITMAN: For having to prepare for anyone or knowing who comes (ph). COOPER: But let's talk about some of the evidence today. LITMAN: Yes. COOPER: Because you were, Harry, you were very struck-- LITMAN: Yes. COOPER: --I heard you say, by the Allen Weisselberg notes. LITMAN: Yes. COOPER: --on a document. Let's put the document up. We showed this in the last hour. Why was this such an important piece of evidence? LITMAN: Two reasons, I think. So the first is it exactly corroborates what Cohen has been saying, for years, including in front of Congress, all the way down to the actual kind of calculation. How do you get from 130 to 420. The other thing is-- COOPER: So, the idea that this was a scam, Michael Cohen was executing, on Donald Trump, jacking up this price, and Trump didn't know of it-- LITMAN: Right. COOPER: --this shows at least that Allen Weisselberg was working out exactly what the figure would be. LITMAN: That's the second point. It obliterates any argument, which you could have had, after say, Hope Hicks, that this was somehow Cohen acting on his own. This is Weisselberg above him. And they are doing it together. All you can now say, it's I think always useful to think about what they-- AIDALA: But they-- COOPER: But if Weisselberg-- LITMAN: --what they'll be able to say in summation. COOPER: I mean-- LITMAN: Yes. COOPER: --for anybody knows who Allen Weisselberg is, if Weisselberg is doing it, it means it's being done with Trump's approval. LITMAN: The only sliver is somehow he's a free agent like-- COOPER: The jury doesn't necessarily-- LITMAN: Yes. COOPER: But will the jury believe that? I mean without Allen Weisselberg testifying, who convinces the jury? LITMAN: That's a really important point. I think it's the one thing, the one hole in what's otherwise 360-degree coverage, of what Cohen has to say, is this conversation. But you need a reason. There's no count -- you know, how could Weisselberg and Cohen somehow be freelancing in this sense, when everything we've heard about Trump is what a micromanager he is, and the likes. But at least it says no more argument that is Cohen on his own, as Hope Hicks sort of suggested. AIDALA: A simple-- LITMAN: I'm sorry. AIDALA: No, it's a question I have. LITMAN: Yes. AIDALA: Did they explain what that $50,000 tech service is? LITMAN: Yes. AIDALA: I mean, it's a big number. LITMAN: It is. And well, what Cohen has said is it's a separate payment, for some kind of technology kind of service that he had done before. Some people are whispering maybe it's another kind of campaign thing. But I think it's just another payment he made a few months previously. AIDALA: But-- HONIG: There's also a $60,000, quote-unquote, bonus. AIDALA: Well that's a legal-- (CROSSTALK) TOOBIN: Michael Cohen-- AIDALA: That's a legal fee. HONIG: It's a bonus. LITMAN: Yes. HONIG: No, right, that's what they call it. TOOBIN: Yes. AIDALA: I'm just curious-- LITMAN: Yes. PHILLIP: Yes. AIDALA: --what that 50 grand is, because that's a big number for technology services-- LITMAN: It is. AIDALA: --when the pay-off, the hush money pay-off is $130,000. And then you have this other 50 on top of it. LITMAN: Doubled, right. AIDALA: You got to like-- LITMAN: The 50 is doubled also. AIDALA: You got to make that all confusing for those jurors. TOOBIN: But remember, you also had a witness, today, who said that Donald Trump is perfectly capable, and sometimes did not sign checks. HONIG: Yes. TOOBIN: So, he obviously could have said, to all the -- and it wasn't just one check. It was -- it was, I think, a 11 different checks, reimbursing Cohen. LITMAN: Yes. TOOBIN: He could have said, what is this? Why am I paying this? LITMAN: Right. TOOBIN: That document answers the question of why he was paying. LITMAN: It is. Although remember also, earlier on, Cohen complaints to Pecker, he's not paying me. Something kind of happened that made Trump so compliant here, and the version will come with Cohen. COLLINS: And also the question of why was it not a one-for-one payoff? Why was it not just the entire amount that they just paid all of that? Why did they instead do it in those monthly installments? I haven't seen any explanation of that from the Trump team. PHILLIP: Right, yes. LITMAN: Just to look like legal services. COLLINS: To disguise it. LITMAN: He's on retainer. We give you $35,000 to do legal services that you're not providing. COOPER: One thing I was really struck by, last week, in the courtroom, was just watching the jury, was how closely they are following everything. I mean, pretty much everybody in that jury box, when I was there, was watching and listening very intently. Some were taking notes. But everybody did -- was that the way it was really-- LITMAN: I really agree. And today was kind of, you could say a slog of a day. COOPER: Right, yes. [21:10:00] LITMAN: You could say a nuts and bolts day. But it would have been a day that a lot of jurors would have phased out. They were -- they were attentive. They weren't like wrapped and taking up. But they were attentive, even through the afternoon. COOPER: Yes. PHILLIP: Yes, I think the idea that as the Controller said Donald Trump basically almost fired him for paying-- LITMAN: Yes. PHILLIP: --what he owed -- what he owed. I mean, the implication is that Donald Trump actually owed this money. LITMAN: Yes. PHILLIP: But he was like, I need you to make it a smaller number. LITMAN: Right. PHILLIP: That is incredible. LITMAN: You're fired. COOPER: Well, I mean, he was famous for-- PHILLIP: That is incredibly memorable. COOPER: --for not paying. PHILLIP: Yes. COOPER: I mean, contractors, and people-- TOOBIN: Contractors, lawyers. COOPER: --and stiffing them. PHILLIP: Infamous. COOPER: And being like-- TOOBIN: Yes. COOPER: --oh, yes, what are you going to do? COLLINS: His attorneys now demand retainer fees, in larger sums, upfront, because they're worried. LITMAN: Right. COLLINS: Chris Kise, who works for him, right now-- LITMAN: Yes. COLLINS: --got $5 million upfront, before he did any legal work, one hour. PHILLIP: It is amazing in a way. COLLINS: Because he was worried about it. LITMAN: It is. PHILLIP: It is amazing in a way that Michael Cohen actually was paid, because Donald Trump just typically, whether it is legitimately owed or not, typically does not want to pay what he's owed, let alone three times for it. LITMAN: Right. Remember that he wanted to go into past the election, because then he wouldn't have to pay her. But somehow, 12 checks, nine of them signed by him. COLLINS: He didn't pay-- COOPER: There's a little more to this story. COLLINS: He didn't pay Rudy Giuliani. LITMAN: Yes. COLLINS: Rudy Giuliani went to him to seek help for his own legal expenses. He would not pay him. LITMAN: Yes. COLLINS: Because he claimed that -- or he said that his lawsuits and his efforts to try to help Trump overturn the election results didn't work. And so, when Rudy Giuliani went to him and said, well, I did all this on your behalf, Trump would not pay him. COOPER: Yes. COLLINS: And now, Rudy Giuliani is footing his own legal bills. LITMAN: Pecker said here, when Cohen went to him that Trump said, ah he's got plenty of money, we don't need to pay him. And then he did. PHILLIP: Yes. COOPER: Yes. LITMAN: Something, yes. PHILLIP: I mean, this is why so much every day is riding even more on Michael Cohen. Because I'm brought back to the fact that Michael Cohen decided to tape Trump, in that critical moment to say, I'm about to make this payment for you. Michael Cohen knew that he needed the proof. He created the evidence of it, and was ultimately paid back. This is incredibly incriminating and sensitive information for Donald Trump. He did not want it out there. And Michael Cohen was the one person, who knew all about every element of this. COOPER: Yes. PHILLIP: So when he gets on the witness stand, there's quite a lot there. TOOBIN: And-- HONIG: It's always been inevitable that they were going to need Michael Cohen, to draw that link. And let's remember, if we say, well, why should Donald Trump have to know about the small bore nuances of accounting? Because the prosecutor charged him with a small bored nuanced accounting crime. They chose to charge that. They have to link him to it. And what the prosecutors have been doing, and I think quite successfully thus far, is reducing the amount of gap that Michael Cohen needs to bridge all these documents, all this testimony-- TOOBIN: Right. HONIG: --from David Pecker and others, makes what Michael Cohen's about to say -- and we all know about what he's -- what he's going to be saying, in a couple days, or whenever he takes the stand. Makes it easier to swallow, easier to believe, more plausible. So they're trying to -- they know, the jury has to take a leap of faith with Michael Cohen, and they want to minimize that leap of faith. AIDALA: Elie, you always talk about that tape. HONIG: Yes. AIDALA: That where he says to Michael Cohen, like you just take care of it, right? HONIG: Right. AIDALA: Refresh my recollection of it. HONIG: Yes. So, this is a tape relating to Karen McDougal, a couple months before the Stormy Daniels pay-off. But this got introduced to the jury on Friday. And essentially, Michael Cohen says we're going to be paying Karen McDougal. And Trump's fine, sure, 150, how are we going to do it? And Michael Cohen says, no, no, no, no, no, I got it. I got it. Don't worry. Me and -- me and Allen are going to work it out. COOPER: Trump suggests-- TOOBIN: Actually Trump suggests cash. HONIG: Once the-- (CROSSTALK) LITMAN: And Trump's the one that says 150. HONIG: Right. But -- right. Trump says 150, and Trump says cash. I don't see that necessarily as damning for him. He's saying, we're just going to -- we're going to pay it in one shot. That does -- by the way, cash doesn't necessarily mean an envelope filled with $100 bills. When someone buys a house with cash, it means a one-time project. And Michael Cohen understands him to mean that, because Michael says no, no, no, financing, meaning we're going to do this more complex than just the one-time transaction. So, I don't -- if I'm a prosecutor, I wish Michael Cohen never hit, secretly hit record, on his own client. I don't like that tape. It goes both ways. It gives some points to the prosecution, some points to the defense. But, man, if you're the prosecution, you have that burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. You don't want a piece of evidence that has useful stuff both ways. COLLINS: Can I say one thing though? We always talk about Michael Cohen's credibility, understandably. And I remember, I mean, everyone remembers his congressional testimony. Trump is also on tape, lying about what he knew about this. LITMAN: Yes. COLLINS: I mean, that iconic moment on Air Force One, when Catherine Lucey, who I believe was-- LITMAN: Yes. COLLINS: --with the Associated Press, at the time, asked him what he knew. He straight up lies, and says he didn't know about it, even though by that time, he had already paid Michael Cohen back for it. So, Donald Trump also has credibility issues here. LITMAN: And he lied to Hope Hicks. It's clear that she -- it pained her to say it. But she was saying no, Cohen, this is not what Cohen would do. When Trump told me that he did it on his own accord, I don't believe it. HONIG: Cohen told Hope Hicks, he did it on his own. LITMAN: Yes. HONIG: She testified to that. LITMAN: No, no, no, no. HONIG: That's not good for Cohen. That's not good for the -- for the prosecution. LITMAN: No, no, no, no, no. Hicks testified that Trump told her that Cohen did it on his own. And then, she followed up by saying but that -- but she doesn't believe it. That's not what Cohen would do. HONIG: Cohen lied to her as well, that several aspects of this. COOPER: Harry Litman, thank you very much. Appreciate it. LITMAN: Thank you. Thanks very much. COOPER: Everyone else, stay with us. [21:15:00] Next, more details from the full trial transcript, just out tonight, including a portion of the prosecution's step-by-step attempt to do what we've just been talking about, namely establish that link that Elie just mentioned, connecting the defendant to the alleged crimes, through the testimony of one of his former top money-man. And later, Barak Ravid, who's got new reporting on what Israel may be about to do, about a key crossing into southern Gaza. We'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) COOPER: We talked before the break about how prosecutors might tie the former President directly into the alleged scheme, at the heart of this case. [21:20:00] Because earlier tonight, Jeff Toobin said it was clear to him that the prosecution has already made its case, that the checks Donald Trump wrote to Michael Cohen were not for legal fees, and that business records of them were falsified. Again though, prosecutors have not yet made clear what was the defendant's role in it all. That said, prosecutors today certainly seemed to be trying to make that connection, indirectly, through testimony from two longtime employees, about how the Trump Organization was run. The full trial transcript, released tonight, speaks to that. John Berman is back with more. So, what stands out? JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, from the very beginning-- COOPER: So, I don't know, just a brain freeze. BERMAN: From the very beginning, that Matt Colangelo, who was the prosecutor, from the very beginning, when he had Jeff McConney, who was the Controller of the Trump Organization, on the stand, he wanted to establish this was Donald Trump's organization, that Donald Trump was the man in charge of everything there. So, this was right at the beginning. Question. During the time you worked for the Trump Organization, who ran the company? McConney answered, President Trump. Colangelo asks, and before 2017, what was Mr. Trump's role in the Trump Organization? McConney says, I'm not sure. He was -- he ran the organization. He was the brains behind it. He -- I don't know how to answer that question. Colangelo. When you worked there, do you consider Mr. Trump your boss? McConney says, yes. It's almost like he couldn't even conceive of anything other than Donald Trump being paramount in this organization. COLLINS: And this is someone, who I should note, he's been on the witness stand before. He testified in the Trump civil fraud trial. He actually got emotional and broke down on the stand during that, because he was talking about why he left the Trump Organization, why he chose to retire. And he was basically saying it was because there were so many subpoenas, and investigations, and how overwhelming this whole process was. So, this is someone who got on the witness stand who doesn't have an ill-view of Donald Trump, and was really just able to speak to, to Trump's level of involvement here. HONIG: The defense, in the cross-examination today, was trying to paint a picture of just this sort of chaotic operation that nobody quite understood and outdated too, right? There was a little bit of testimony, I think was interesting where, I think it was McConney -- or actually, it was the -- it was the woman, who testified in the afternoon, who was in the accounting department, under McConney. She said, all we had was pull-down menus. So, when we're classifying expenses, basically, we just had our choice of however many, and I just, I was the one who put it in as legal fees. So, they're trying to paint a picture of just sort of things happening at a lower level, in a disorganized way that you can't tie back up to the top. Now, I don't know if that's going to fly with the jury. That's clearly the defense strategy here, based on the transcripts that we got. COOPER: Yes. TOOBIN: But sets a good argument for the defense. HONIG: Right. TOOBIN: That this woman who is no, you know, not a peer of Donald Trump, in any way, and not in all that much day-to-day communication with him. If she is the one who characterizes the expense? That is the crime here. The crime here is the expense. It's not the check. It's not the-- COOPER: And so, Trump had to -- in order to be convicted, Trump had to know that it was being characterized as a legal fee? AIDALA: Absolutely. TOOBIN: Orchestrate. I think the term that the prosecution has used, he orchestrated it. AIDALA: And he-- TOOBIN: And we'll see if that -- we'll see if they can prove it. I mean, the case isn't over. They've proven a lot. They haven't proven that. AIDALA: So, so far, here's my summation to the jury. And you know you have a lot of latitude in summation. Ladies and gentlemen, we all know about the Trump presidency, and we all know what his reputation was. He was a macro guy. He was not a micro guy. He wasn't Jimmy Carter, who wanted to know who was using the tennis courts in the White House. He didn't even want to read a memo. He didn't want to hear anything from anybody. But now, these prosecutors, after they've trained their witnesses, day in and day out, preparing them for cross-examination, now, all of a sudden, he's Mr. Detail-Oriented? When he's running the country, he doesn't -- he can't be bothered with the details. But here, for this $130,000 check, for a billionaire? Now he's all concerned with the detail? PHILLIP: Well the prosecution-- COOPER: Look-- AIDALA: You can't believe it. PHILLIP: What the prosecution's going to say is he's detail-oriented about his money. HONIG: Yes. COOPER: Yes. PHILLIP: That's what the evidence has shown. AIDALA: Well-- COOPER: But also this pull-down menu idea. AIDALA: --but I get to go first. COOPER: I mean, it doesn't -- it couldn't also be argued the other way, which is that if there's a limited options, on the pull-down menu, Trump would probably know what all the pull-down options are in the menu, and be like, oh, yes, do it as the legal fees. (CROSSTALK) HONIG: Well apparently hush money was not one of them. BERMAN: And yes, I will say-- AIDALA: Well actually-- BERMAN: --I will say, Jeff McConney, the Controller was asked if Trump knew about the pull-down menu. I have a whole exchange here. Let me read this to you, because he gets into this. COOPER: OK. BERMAN: Emil Bove, this is the defense, this is the cross. Bove asked, you just testified about a series of payments that were made to Michael Cohen in 2017, right? McConney says yes, sir. In that timeframe, 2017, Michael Cohen was a lawyer, right? McConney says OK. Emil Bove says, right? And then McConney says sure, yes. And then Bove says, and payments to lawyers by the Trump Organization are legal expenses, right? McConney says yes, sir. Bove says, and you book those payments on the General Ledger as legal expenses, correct? McConney says yes. Now, here's the part that gets into the nitty-gritty of the MDS system. And during your 30-something plus years at the Trump Organization, you sort of rarely had conversations with President Trump, right? McConney says very few. And during the instances when you did speak to him, you didn't talk about accounting software, did you? McConney says no. You never gave him a tour of the MDS system, right? McConney says no. [21:25:00] Bove asks, you didn't have any reason to believe that President Trump understood the details of MDS? McConney says correct. MDS is the pull-down-- COOPER: Yes. BERMAN: --menu system, I believe. COOPER: Right. HONIG: But let me make-- BERMAN: Trying to understand. HONIG: Let me make one point though. The prosecution doesn't necessarily have to show Donald Trump opened up that pull-down menu, and clicked on Legal Expenses. It's enough if Donald Trump knew. And I think Michael Cohen will say this. Look, the plan was, we put this whole elaborate reimbursement plan together, because he knew, and we knew, it was Stormy Daniels payment, and we were trying to hide it, so it wouldn't come out for the election. That's enough. They don't have to show that he was clicking around-- PHILLIP: Thank you. HONIG: --the MDS system. PHILLIP: I thought I was just going, because I mean-- HONIG: No, you're not. PHILLIP: To me, the idea that Michael Cohen is being reimbursed in the form of a bonus, which is some form of salary payment, plus money that is not paid for actual services that he provided. Shouldn't that structure in and of itself, show the jury that Trump knew that there was a scheme to pay Michael Cohen for things that he had not actually done? AIDALA: But he's allowed to pay him for things that are not actually done. He's not allowed to put in the books-- PHILLIP: No-- AIDALA: --that he did something that was not actually done. It is a confidentiality agreement. We can call it hush money. It's a confidentiality agreement. You don't put in your books, a $130,000 payment for confidentiality between Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels. TOOBIN: But-- AIDALA: If he put it down as reimbursements, reimbursements to Michael Cohen, in the book? That's all. It's not a crime. TOOBIN: OK. AIDALA: Because that's what he did. TOOBIN: That's right. AIDALA: He reimbursed him. TOOBIN: If you told the-- PHILLIP: But that's not what he did. TOOBIN: Yes, right. If he told-- AIDALA: But he didn't -- but we don't think he did anything. (CROSSTALK) TOOBIN: OK. AIDALA: She just said it-- PHILLIP: That's actually not what he did. Haven't done that to hide the payment. AIDALA: So you had --you had someone who sees a check. (CROSSTALK) PHILLIP: --wouldn't have to do anything. AIDALA: You got someone who sees a check, to Michael Cohen for $35,000. They go to the pull-down screen. Which one is it? It's not for rent. It's not for a new roof. It's for legal expenses. Click. COOPER: You know what, let me -- let me-- AIDALA: And that's what the defense is going to say. COOPER: Let me go to something else, someone else who has tremendous credibility. Rudy Giuliani said, back in May of 2018, this, about the payment to Stormy Daniels. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER TRUMP LAWYER, FORMER MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY: Having something to do with paying some Stormy Daniels woman, $130,000, I mean, which is going to turn out to be perfectly legal. That money was not campaign money. Sorry, I'm giving you a fact now that you don't know. It's not campaign money. No campaign finance violation. So-- SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: So they funneled it through the law firm? GIULIANI: Funneled through the law firm. And then the President repaid it. HANNITY: Oh, I didn't know that he did. GIULIANI: Yes. HANNITY: There's no campaign finance law? GIULIANI: Zero. HANNITY: So the President-- GIULIANI: Just like every -- Sean? Sean? HANNITY: So this decision was made by-- GIULIANI: Everybody -- everybody was nervous about this, from the very beginning. I wasn't. I knew how much money Donald Trump put into that campaign. I said, $130,000? He's going to do a couple of checks for $130,000. When I heard Cohen's retainer of $35,000, when he was doing no work for the President, I said, but that's how he's repaying. That's how he was repaying it, with a little profit and a little margin for paying taxes, for Michael. HANNITY: But do you know the President didn't know about this? I believe that's what Michael had said. GIULIANI: He didn't know about the specifics of it, as far as I know. But he did know about the general arrangement that Michael would take care of things like this. (END VIDEO CLIP) COOPER: Sweetie. TOOBIN: OK. I remember that night, actually. PHILLIP: He just said that? COLLINS: OK but that is the clip that-- COOPER: Oh that is-- TOOBIN: Yes, that was. COOPER: It's been a while since I saw that. TOOBIN: Yes, it's so great. COLLINS: I'll-- COOPER: It really holds up. TOOBIN: It's just so great. COOPER: I know. TOOBIN: It's just so great. COLLINS: I'll never forget, when that interview happened, and how caught off-guard Sean Hannity was, by Rudy Giuliani just admitting it, saying that no, Michael Cohen wasn't doing any legal work, and he was just reimbursing him for paying off the porn star. I mean, when we talk about everything we know now? That was a pivotal moment. No one knew that until Rudy Giuliani went on TV and said it. And so, even now-- COOPER: Yes. COLLINS: --Trump's attorneys who weren't part of his team, then, when you ask them about that moment, there's not really a defense. AIDALA: Because it doesn't need to be. COLLINS: Of what Rudy Giuliani said. AIDALA: What Rudy Giuliani said -- I don't want to be offensive to anyone. What Rudy Giuliani said is that's how it works. The individual, who is trying to enter into a confidentiality agreement-- COLLINS: He said he paid him for a legal work that he didn't do. AIDALA: --doesn't write the check to the other person. They write it to the law firm. So, the right way to be done here, if there was no crime-- COLLINS: That's not what Rudy Giuliani said. He just said -- the point that he was making there, and the takeaway that is that he said, Michael Cohen did not do legal work. Yet Michael Cohen was paid in the ledger for legal work. That's what's at the heart of this. AIDALA: OK. But that -- and that's the bookkeeping. That is the bookkeeping issue. But what having-- COLLINS: That's why we're here. AIDALA: Having done these confidentiality agreements, the client writes the check to me. I put into my escrow account. I write it to the other attorney. And the other attorney gives it to that client with documentation. That's the way it's normally done. TOOBIN: Arthur? PHILLIP: But that's not what happened. TOOBIN: Arthur, you just used the word, bookkeeping issue. Another word for that is crime. AIDALA: It's not a crime. TOOBIN: It is a crime. AIDALA: It's -- it is not a crime. TOOBIN: If you lie in the bookkeeping. AIDALA: It's not. HONIG: But Arthur? Arthur? [21:30:00] AIDALA: What is the crime? If the client says to me, Arthur, I want to enter into a confidentiality agreement with this person for a quarter of a million dollars. Here's the check made out to Arthur Aidala, Attorney at Law escrow account. I put it in my escrow account. They -- it's their money. It's in my escrow account. Now from there, I write it to their lawyer. HONIG: But let me -- let me ask you this. Have you ever had a-- AIDALA: It's not a crime. HONIG: Have you ever had a client pay you back, over 12 months, with one large retainer check, each month, for a total of triple the amount you laid out? AIDALA: No, because I -- no. No. The short answer is no. But I don't have the type of relationship with any client the way Michael Cohen has with Donald Trump. He's an in-house counsel. He -- and what Rudy said is they had a general arrangement that Michael Cohen would fix things, would take care of these things for him. HONIG: Yes. AIDALA: He said, a general arrangement. COOPER: Yes. AIDALA: That is not as devastating as it may seem, when you look at it from a lawyer -- a law professor's point of view. COOPER: All right, next crime -- John Berman, thank you very much. BERMAN: Thank you. COOPER: Appreciate it. Crime or not, more on the whole notion of a president writing checks to his fixer, in the Oval Office. Joining us, one of his former top adviser, former White House Communications Director, Alyssa Farah Griffin, on what she makes of it all and what voters might as well. We'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [21:35:33] COOPER: Earlier tonight, we played that famous moment, from aboard Air Force One, in 2018, when Donald Trump became the first American President, to be asked about where his attorney got the money to buy a porn star's silence. The answer, of course, was from Donald Trump. Six years later, a jury will decide whether the business records of that transaction were falsified and done so at Trump's behest. Joining the panel, former Trump White House insider, and his former Communications Director, Alyssa Farah Griffin. So, I mean, do you buy, Alyssa, the idea that then-President Trump was signing checks, in the White House, to Michael Cohen, without knowing exactly where they were -- what they were for? ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, so I've got kind of a mixed perspective. I want to respond to something Arthur said, because I think you largely made a good point that Donald Trump doesn't get into the minutiae of things. But if there are two things, he gets into the minutiae of, it's anything public-facing, how he's going to be perceived in the press, and money. In my experience, press, if there was going to be something that went out under his name, or that became a story that he did? He was incredibly hands-on, incredibly engaged, wanted to direct narratives. I did not deal with him as much on the money side, but we would hear it from dealing with the campaign, and on the outside that he's notoriously a tightwad. He's not somebody who -- he does pay attention to how he's spending his money. So, I think that's where that kind of an argument falls a little bit flat. It's two areas that's just well-documented, that he pays attention to. But it's certainly what his side's going to argue. And it's not about argument. PHILLIP: Be careful. You might get called to testify. I think the precedent states. COOPER: Character witness? PHILLIP: I mean, those are exactly the elements of the case. And I think that they would want to hone in on, one, the idea that like, he cared about how he was perceived, he cared about whether or not people knew about the Stormy Daniels thing, at that particular moment, and that he cared about his money. He didn't want to pay it. He didn't part with it lightly. To me, I can't think of two more important parts of Donald Trump's personality that are at issue in this case, minus the whether or not he knew-- TOOBIN: But this is what-- PHILLIP: --whether the checks were for what they were for. TOOBIN: This is what makes it hard for the prosecution that you can't really make an argument beyond a reasonable doubt. Which is, well, of course, he knew, of course, this is how he behaves. AIDALA: Let's assume. TOOBIN: Let's assume. AIDALA: Let's assume. TOOBIN: I mean, you're right. And that you just can't -- I mean, if you are having a conversation here, about someone in the news, you can make that conclusion. But to the jury, you really need to say Witness X said X that shows Donald Trump knew what was in these papers. FARAH GRIFFIN: Well, and I have to say. I'm no fan of Donald Trump. I would not vote to convict at this point, if I were on the jury. I don't think that the case has been made there. I think the intent on the campaign side, yes. But on the money side, it's very complicated. Today was not a sexy day in court. I do think that document was powerful. But-- COOPER: The Weisselberg notes? FARAH GRIFFIN: Yes, the notes. But even so it does not necessarily make that direct link to him knowing it. And you know, now-- COOPER: Although do you believe -- I mean, knowing what you know, and the importance of Allen Weisselberg, and their relationship, Weisselberg knew where all the bodies were buried, essentially. He's gone to prison in order, and he's not speaking. FARAH GRIFFIN: You can make an educated assumption. COOPER: Right. FARAH GRIFFIN: But that's the hard part. But the prosecution potentially, or the defense, them wanting to call Stormy Daniels? I don't think that's particularly relevant to the case. It's not illegal to have an affair with an adult film star. It's salacious. It's sexy. It'll get people to tune in. But they have this one link they need to make without a shadow of a doubt. And it may be that Michael Cohen is the only person who can make that link. And he's so flawed in this moment. PHILLIP: Or Allen Weisselberg. COLLINS: Well I-- FARAH GRIFFIN: Yes. COLLINS: I do wonder though, if Stormy Daniels would be able to offer insight into Michael Cohen not being able to operate without Donald Trump's authorization. And the fact that he was stringing her and Keith Davidson along, they felt like, until after the election in saying, well, I can't get in touch with him. He's out on the campaign trail, or I can't go to the bank, I can't do this. She could potentially shed light on their receiving end of those conversations, and what they heard. Also, for the detail-oriented stuff, I mean, the idea that Trump is not detail-oriented? He is when it's something he cares about. When it's something he doesn't care about? Sure, his intelligence briefers will tell you, he stopped paying attention five minutes into their briefing. FARAH GRIFFIN: Yes. COLLINS: But remember, when Donald Trump was leaving office, they stopped putting out the daily schedule, which every President has always done their daily schedule what they're doing. It would just say that President Trump was very busy, making many phone calls, and having many meetings. HONIG: Oh, yes. COLLINS: Because he was upset about the coverage. COOPER: Did they actually? HONIG: I forgot about that. COOPER: I don't even remember that. TOOBIN: Yes. COLLINS: He instructed the lower press office-- COOPER: Alyssa, did you write those, I mean? COLLINS: That was someone beneath-- FARAH GRIFFIN: Not me (ph). COLLINS: It was someone beneath -- Alyssa was in a much higher ranking position than the person who actually put this schedule out. COOPER: It's something like a fourth grader would write like, the President was very busy, making important phone calls. COLLINS: And they put it out every single day, for like the last three weeks of his White House, because that's what he wanted it to say. He didn't want it to say that he had nothing on his public schedule. He pays very close attention. [21:40:00] HONIG: You know the fact that-- AIDALA: No, but-- HONIG: --the fact that Donald Trump made most of these reimbursements, in 2017, when he was in the White House is interesting. It cuts both ways, right? On the one hand, it suggests well he was so interested in this, he was so invested in this that he was taking time out from what he was doing as the president, to make sure that these checks got signed and got to Michael Cohen. The counterpoint is well, he was barely paying attention. On cross-examination, today, Emil Bove asked the witness. Well, in 2017, he was focused on being president, not these payments? So, I'm sorry to say that like each side of every fact, but this is how trials go. The defense is going to have a spin on it. The prosecution is going to have a spin. I wonder, I know, Alyssa, you didn't know Trump really until the later parts of his time in office. But was he at all focused on his personal affairs, his business, Trump Org, when you knew him? Or was it all sort of-- FARAH GRIFFIN: Yes. He certainly-- HONIG: --in the background? FARAH GRIFFIN: He certainly was, if it was something that, again, was going to spill over into the public eye. HONIG: Yes. FARAH GRIFFIN: Like he had largely kind of handed that off to the sons, were dealing with it. But if there was a bad story, or if there was something, we'd always get these about his taxes or about his business dealings, he would care about how it's going to play in the press. HONIG: You're getting a subpoena. I mean, sorry. FARAH GRIFFIN: OK. COOPER: Maybe she's already been called. We don't know. Many thanks to our panel. More breaking news. Israel says it is conducting targeted strikes in Rafah, and urging civilians to evacuate the eastern part of the city. Hamas earlier said, they accepted a ceasefire proposal. But Israel says it's not the one that they had crafted with Egypt. The very latest, next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [21:45:51] COOPER: Seven months into the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, another ceasefire proposal is on shaky ground. Israel now says its military will move forward with its operation in Rafah, where it's ordered evacuations immediately. The sound of gunfire could be heard a short time ago, from the Egyptian side of the Rafah border. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) (VIDEO - APPARENT GUNFIRE HEARD ON EGYPTIAN SIDE OF RAFAH CROSSING) (END VIDEO CLIP) COOPER: Our next guest reports that Israeli forces are moving to take over the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing, in the next few hours. CNN Political and Foreign Policy Analyst, Barak Ravid, joins us now. So, what are you hearing about what's happening on the ground, right now? BARAK RAVID, CNN POLITICAL & FOREIGN POLICY ANALYST: Good evening, Anderson. So, as far as I know, the Israeli forces are in the surroundings of the Rafah crossing. This was the aim of the operation that we saw tonight, to take over the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, which is a strategic site that is really important for Hamas, not only because it's the border between Egypt and Gaza, but also because this, as we think, is a symbol for the fact that Hamas is still the ruling power in Gaza. And without the Rafah crossing, a lot of this image for the Palestinian population as a whole is being tarnished. And that's one of the goals of this operation, including also, to put more pressure on Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, to maybe move and be more flexible, in the hostage talks. COOPER: Tom Friedman, in the last hour, suggested that one motivation of going to this area, and holding this area, was smuggling by Hamas from Egypt that this is a smuggling route. RAVID: Yes, that's part of it, although the Rafah crossing itself is not where most of the weapons were smuggled into Gaza. They were smuggled mostly through tunnels. But the fact that Israel is now at the crossing, will give it another opportunity to do something it haven't -- it hasn't done since the beginning of the war. And this is, from what I hear from sources, who are -- who have direct knowledge of this, is that the Israelis plan, in a few days or in a few weeks, to bring Palestinians, who are not connected to Hamas, to take part in the operation of the crossing, and in the distribution of the aid that is coming from Egypt. And this will be the first instance, where there might be some sort of a governmental alternative, an initial governmental alternative to the Hamas rule in Gaza. COOPER: Who would they be? RAVID: That's a good question. If you ask Benjamin Netanyahu, he will tell you Palestinians who are not part of Hamas. If you ask Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, he will tell you, well, in Hamas, there are two kinds of people, either Hamas or Fatah, which are the political rivals of Hamas that are affiliated with the Palestinian Authority. So, most chances are that those exactly are going to be the people, even if Prime Minister Netanyahu is still saying that he will not accept any presence of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, I think this is where this thing is going. COOPER: In terms of the, you know, Hamas said that they had accepted a ceasefire proposal. Israel says it's not the one that they had been agreed to with Egypt, or been working on with Egypt. What do you know about that? RAVID: Well I think the Israelis were pretty surprised, hearing Hamas today announcing that it accepts a ceasefire proposal, when especially because they did not know that there's any new proposal that they were not aware of. And when they saw the text, they saw, this is not we were discussing. This is a whole new thing. And one of the things I hear is that Israeli officials are also pretty frustrated with the Biden administration, that even though CIA Director, Bill Burns, was not talking to Hamas. He was there in Cairo, over the weekend, when this new proposal was being drafted. [21:50:00] And the Israelis are telling me that they did not know that Burns or any -- other people, from the Biden administration, were not transparent enough with them, about the fact that there is a new proposal that is being formed. COOPER: So, what's the reason that Hamas would make that announcement? Is it, I mean, to sort of get on the side of looking like they're being rational, they are willing to have this ceasefire, and then Israel says no? RAVID: And especially to do it, when they know that Israel is making steps, initial steps, to go into Rafah. The Hamas wants to stop this operation, or wanted to stop the separation. Did not succeed. And they try to push the ball to the Israeli side of the court. Now the Israelis are saying, OK, we will go to Cairo, maybe tomorrow, maybe a day later, to discuss this new proposal. But they also say, this is not what we put on the table, 10 days ago. This is something completely different. And therefore, it is almost as if we will have to start the negotiations from scratch. COOPER: Barak Ravid, it's great to talk to you. Thank you. More now with CNN Chief National Security Correspondent, Alex Marquardt; and CNN Military Analyst, and retired Army Lieutenant General, Mark Hertling. Alex, I know you've been tracking U.S. involvement in ceasefire talks or negotiations. As Barak Ravid just mentioned, Bill Burns, CIA Director, was in Egypt. What do you know about the Director's role in all this? ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: He was in Egypt. And then, he went to Doha, where we believe he still is. He's had a very central role in all this. And Anderson, Barak is absolutely right. There's been a real evolution in the past week. Egypt was working on something that Israel had some input in. And then, we understand that the talks between Egypt and Hamas were progressing, but in a way that the U.S. and Qatar, both of those are two other mediators, felt that Israel would not actually end up agreeing to those terms. So, they kind of took hold of that framework, I'm told. And when Burns went to Doha, he worked with the Qatari Prime Minister, to rework the language that was then handed over to Hamas. And that's what Hamas eventually responded to. Now, Anderson, as you've noted, Hamas is saying that they agreed to the framework. What we're told by U.S. officials, it's more that they responded, and they had a take of their own. And we've seen a document from Hamas, that is still going to have, or it still has significant gaps with Israel. The good news is that the talks are progressing, as Barak mentioned, they're going to be going on in Cairo. Israel is expected to send a team. Qatar is expected to send a team. The less good news is it is not happening at a senior level. It's happening below that Bill Burns level, at what we call the working level, or the experts, who go over the finer points. So, these talks are inching along, but significant gaps still remain, Anderson. COOPER: I mean, General Hertling, in any negotiations, it's odd, one side said they have -- like publicly make a statement, saying they've accepted a ceasefire deal. What do you make of Hamas saying that? LT. GENERAL MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, it was fascinating today, Anderson, that Hamas announced or someone announced that they had accepted the deal that hadn't been coordinated on both sides, as Alex just said. But here's the important part. I think one of the things that we're overlooking is the element that affects combat and warfare at both the tactical and the strategic level is time. And since the start of this war, time has been on the side of Hamas. It's a critical part of their strategy, along with their tunnels. And they've wrapped themselves around the Palestinians, so that anything that can help create more of a humanitarian crisis, or gives Israel a bad image, is something that they want to do. It isn't just their approach. It's their strategic objective. And we're seeing that today is as soon as, you know, first of all, when the talks were going on over the weekend, as you know, Hamas launched 15 missiles, at one of the crossing sites, and killed several Israeli soldiers. Israel walked away at that point and said, we can't continue to do this. Then today, they announced that all the Palestinians are shown dancing in the streets of Gaza. And Israel now is the bad person, because they're conducting a Rafah operation, which they said they were going to do, if they hadn't heard from Hamas about release of hostages. So, it's continuing to work against Israel, anytime there's a delay, when time is on Hamas' side, it is not on Israel's side, from a strategic perspective, because we're seeing the world increasingly turn against anything that Israel does. COOPER: Alex, what are some of the details of the proposal that Hamas allegedly accepted? MARQUARDT: Well, Anderson, from the way it's laid out, it looks like the first phase is expected to be the easiest probably. And we've been talking for weeks, if not months, about a multi-phase deal, three phases, each expected to last around six weeks. The first one, Hamas is expected to release around 33 Israeli hostages. But Anderson, we're also learning they may not all be alive. These would be women, men who are elderly men, who are sick and wounded. [21:55:00] But if Hamas doesn't hit that 33 number, they would be expected to compensate with bodies, and there are around 30-plus Israelis, who are believed to no longer be alive. Hundreds of Palestinians would also get released from Israeli prisons. Gazans in the southern part of the strip would be expected to go back up -- back up to the northern part of strip. But Anderson, those sticking points that I was talking about. Hamas wants to see Israel pull its military back, if not entirely out of the Gaza Strip, but away from central Gaza. That's something that Israel hasn't shown any inclination to wanting to do. The other is the question about a permanent ceasefire. Hamas has made clear they want a permanent ceasefire. But again, Israel has said that they still have a lot of work to do, to eradicate Hamas. And that's why we're seeing the beginning of this operation in Rafah. COOPER: Yes. Alex Marquardt, General Mark Hertling, thank you. The news continues, including CNN's special primetime coverage of the former President's hush money trial. More after a short break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip Aired May 06, 2024 - 22:00 ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [22:00:33] ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: Welcome to a special edition of NewsNight. I'm Abby Phillip in New York alongside Kaitlan Collins. Tonight, R-E-S-P-E-C-T and the cost of compliance with the court, the judge has issued a damned if he does and damned if he doesn't threat to former President Trump over his repeated breaking of a gag order. And the paper trail takes a stark turn. No headline witnesses today in court, but instead the jury got a crash course in the nitty-gritty details of the Trump Organization. It was a day of show and tell that included multiple checks and financial disclosures bearing the signature of Donald J. Trump. That is a critical piece of evidence that the prosecutors need to show that their case doesn't just rest on the word of perjurers, like Michael Cohen. KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN HOST: There's also that question of a direct attack on the rule of law. The words of Judge Juan Merchan, starting today, addressing violation number ten of a gag order that limits what the defendant here can say. The judge seems poised to move past the fines and lamenting that those $1,000 amounts really are just a slap on the hand for the former president. But the question of jailing him also risks making Donald Trump look like a martyr potentially, a risk that the judge seems acutely aware of, Judge Merchan telling Donald Trump this morning directly, Mr. Trump, it's important to understand that the last thing I want to do is put you in jail. PHILLIP: And if you're wondering if Donald Trump left the court today chastened by the judge's warning, take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You know what? Our Constitution is much more important than jail. It's not even close. I'll do that sacrifice any day. (END VIDEO CLIP) PHILLIP: Our panel is here with us to break down the most important moments from inside that courtroom. Joey Jackson, Robert Ray, Stacy Schneider, and Donte Mills all here in New York. You got to feel for the judge here a little bit, maybe not Robert. I don't know. But you got to feel for him a little bit here because -- ROBERT RAY, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: No, it's a tough position to be in. PHILLIP: It's tough, right? RAY: It's a tough position to be in. PHILLIP: And he almost has no choice at this point because there are so many violations and Trump needs a warning. RAY: He has choices and he has to put Donald Trump on notice that the last straw has arrived before he then decides to make a decision to incarcerate. That doesn't mean the judge has made that decision, but what he did today is a necessary prerequisite to taking that action if he were to take it. I must say that I think that's, I hope, an avoidable result for all sides, avoidable for the judge, avoidable for Donald Trump. And most importantly, if the case travels down that road, what that means is probably an immediate standstill to the case. It means the jury is going to be stopped in its tracks, the trial will stop, and we're going to be in a collective time out when Donald Trump, in all likelihood, takes an appeal to a higher court, which would include the appellate division of the state of New York and possibly the state court of appeals. And that's not really in the public interest that that happened. COLLINS: And the judge noted that today, saying, I am worried. And I know that you care, Mr. Trump, about how quickly this is proceeding along and that this would disrupt this and have a real pause. But, Joey Jackson, I think the other side of it, when people look at it, say, well, would anyone else be able to violate a gag order ten times and still be able to only continue to get a slap on the wrist in the way that Donald Trump is? JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Simple answer, Kaitlan, absolutely not, right? And so if you look at it, just going back, the bottom line is that the judge is put in a very difficult position, but there's one person who could decide whether it's avoidable or not avoidable. And that's the individual he's speaking to. Mr. Trump knows after the tenth time, after the first time, the second, the third time that there are things you can do and things you cannot do. And the issue is, I don't see this as stopping the trial and going to appeals. The judge has a number of options. You don't have to put someone in jail for 30 days. You can put them on time out for a few hours. You can put them on time out over a lunch period. You could put them on time out overnight. I mean, you have to -- and I think the judge is acting very humanely, very non-politically, but very sternly and saying that, look, we have options here. I don't want to do this. But if you leave me no choice, at the end of the day, I have to provide for the decorum of this court, the dignity, the respect of the court, and ultimately I have to protect people. And I will do what I am empowered to do if you force my hand in doing it. Let's hope he does not, but if he does, I think he's going to have to have (INAUDIBLE). DONTE MILLS, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: But is he forcing his own hand? That's what I'm looking at. Because when you put somebody on notice, especially former President Donald Trump, if you put him on notice, you have to follow through. [22:05:05] Because he's going to come out and say he won if he doesn't. My concern is Donald Trump may want this to happen and he may say he won if he is put in jail. STACY SCHNEIDER, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: But I want to say something. I don't think Donald Trump really wants this to happen, because I practice in those courtrooms and the process of him even going in, even if Judge Merchan said, I'll put him in for three hours just to teach him a lesson, which has been done before. And most defendants in Manhattan Criminal Court have not gone as far as Donald Trump goes in the number of violations, you know, one or two, and you're in. You know, it might not be for 30 days, it might be for a few hours. But what's behind the courtroom, behind the wooden wall, behind the judge, is a seal, is a secret door. And that door goes to a holding area. And it's disgusting back there. There's a jail cell for defendants who are violent. There sometimes are benches with metal clips to handcuff defendants to a bench. And those processes happen, the handcuffing the court officers surrounding the defendant, although in this case, there would be Secret Service detail in a very small, enclosed, very dirty area that has high traffic of jailed defendants coming in and out of court. It would be a surreal experience for Donald Trump if he pushed the limits. And he is pushing, he's getting -- he's on the edge. PHILLIP: He is pushing them, although he hasn't since the first set of penalties came down made new violations. So, there's that. But he keeps almost -- it's more of a P.R. thing, saying that he wants to violate it, but not actually going that far because he knows where the line. RAY: Well, you can say PR, but it's really communicating to the electorate. I mean, Donald Trump -- in fairness to him, Donald Trump mentioned the Constitution and I wouldn't go that far, but I would say that he's weighing a calculus between compliance with a gag order and the judge's order versus his communication directly with the electorate. That's the calculation for him. And if it comes to push to shove, he'll choose the electorate over incarceration. MILLS: Well, he said that today. RAY: I think that's what he said. MILLS: Yes. He said today, I don't care about -- RAY: But the Constitution to one side, he's in a campaign, he's a candidate, he's going to choose the electorate over compliance. PHILLIP: You could say that he is talking every day. He is not barred from doing that. COLLINS: Every single day going into the court, when he says that he's barred from being able to be out on the campaign trail, on Sunday, he went to the F1 race. You know, he wasn't out on the campaign trail. So, he was in -- it was at F1. I mean, they could argue that's a campaign event. But the other aspect of this and when you're looking at you know Donald Trump in this, the judge did give him a little bit of a win when you read through the actual order today because, he did not find Trump in contempt for certain comments he made about Michael Cohen. Their argument has been it's protected political speech because Michael Cohen is going out and attacking him before he quieted down. So, when the Trump when Trump says the judge is so corrupt and unfair, those are the words he uses, the judge has actually been pretty straightforward, wouldn't you say? MILLS: Well, you know, he will say it anyway. RAY: No. And we've said that, we've previously commented about that. I mean, I think a lot of people on both sides of this have said it's sort of decidedly unfair to allow a situation in which you have a gag order where the witness that you're trying to protect is the one out there talking and you're sort of theoretically not supposed to be able to talk about the same thing that he's talking about to the media. And there was a voluntary pause, I understand, from Michael Cohen and then he was right back at it again. Yes, I think the judge has sort of figured that out, and I think that explains -- COLLINS: But do you think the judge is being fair? RAY: Well, I think he looked at that and I think that position with regard to that witness was partially indefensible, which is why he had a course correction. Look, let's go back to where you started. The judge is in a difficult position too. This is not an easy thing to have to handle. JACKSON: You can speak to the electorate, but you can also follow the order. There are things to be clear that he can do. RAY: If life were only that simple. JACKSON: Well, I'm not suggesting it's that simple. (CROSSTALKS) JACKSON: So, let me finish my point, right, when you talk about not simple. The bottom line is there are certain things you can't do under the gag order, we can all agree. You can attack the prosecutor, right, Mr. Bragg day and night, right? That seems to me to be pretty clear and pretty simple. Say what you want. You could attack the judge day and night, say what you want. You could attack Biden day and night. You cannot intimidate witnesses. You can't attack the jury. You can't attack family members. What's not simple about that, I'm not getting. The bottom line is you can have your campaign, you can do what you need to do, but there are certain limitations that are necessary and appropriate to move forward and to protect witnesses, to protect families. And if you don't do that, there needs to be consequences. And what those consequences are remains to be seen. SCHNEIDER: And, Joey, it's so simple. It's words on a page. A court order is written. I mean, the judge will speak the order out and explain it, but you follow the order. You follow the words on the page. [22:10:00] It's not a flipping thing to just not follow a court order, and I don't know why Donald Trump expects that he's so special, that he should have to follow the same kind of order that's issued by every court. MILLS: But he is special. He's a former president of the United States. So, the part that makes it not simple is what happens if the judge says, Donald Trump, you have to go sit in jail for even a couple of hours, and he tells his Secret Service members, I don't touch me though, I don't want them to touch me, they're sworn to protect him. What happens then? That's why it's not simple we don't know what the outcome of this is going to be or what direction is going to go. But I think the judge is wisely trying to avoid this as much as possible. JACKSON: They have had discussions regarding that issue, right? This is not something they're built in contingencies. RAY: And Joe Biden's Justice Department has already weighed in with regard to what that's going to look like. I have news for you. MILLS: And also I didn't think January 6th would happen, right? Well, you never know. SCHNEIDER: Yes, but I don't think that's political if Joe Biden's Justice Department is or isn't weighing in. It's a practical matter. I mean, the rate he's going, ten violations, they have to may have contingency plans in place. I understand that they even have a plan that if he was sent to a prison facility because of this that they're going to have someone taste his food even. I mean, they think all these things out. It's a really crazy, surreal situation. RAY: But getting back to the gag order, the gag order is -- PHILLIP: That's not a reason it's not going to happen in the future. RAY: Back to the gag order, the gag order is not so simple. Because any time a gag order starts to travel down the road of content, it is trouble. Now, I understand an absolute bar with regard to some things about what you can say and who you can say it about, but the difficulty, that when you start carving up witnesses about which ones you can talk about and which ones you can't, you're automatically getting into sort of controlling -- JACKSON: Is that in the gag order? RAY: Controlling -- MILLS: It could be with the exception for Michael Cohen, because Michael Cohen was talking about him. But the judge doesn't have authority over Michael Cohen. Donald Trump is a defendant in his courtroom and under his authority, and he can say you can't talk about witnesses. COLLINS: Can we talk about something, an interesting dynamic in the courtroom? Because what's at the heart of this is the judge and what Trump was found in contempt of today was a comment he made about the jury, when he claimed in a radio interview that it was 95 percent Democrats. Clearly, that is not a compliment coming from Donald Trump. I think we all understand what his intent was there. But what we learned today about what it's like sitting in that courtroom, and as the 12 jurors are, of course, seated there, they can see Donald Trump. But something that I learned tonight from a witness is that the witness themselves can't see Donald Trump, that because of where they are seated and how the judge's bench extends out past where the witness is actually seated, that unless they lean forward pretty aggressively, they cannot actually make eye contact with Donald Trump. They only see the first attorney from his defense team. SCHNEIDER: Right. It's the way the tables are set up. I mean, it's a huge courtroom with high ceilings. The witness box is high up toward where the judge is. So, if you have to look at an angle, like you're saying, and Donald Trump is seated with all his attorneys at the defense table, if you're at the wrong angle, you're not going to see the defendant. And I've also seen reports similar to that, that Donald Trump is craning his neck to see the witnesses who went on today, because unlike other days, his eyes weren't shut today. He was all attuned when his Trump Organization employees were taking the stand. RAY: The Constitution requires that he see them, yes. It doesn't require that the witness has to see Donald Trump. SCHNEIDER: Right. MILLS: Not only it makes a difference. If the jury is testifying -- or, I'm sorry, if the witness is testifying about someone directly, they should be able to look at them, right? Because the jury wants to see that interaction, especially like, think about Hope Hicks, the jury wants to see if they make eye contact with her facial expressions or like. And if Donald Trump is blocked from her view, it takes away that component of it. So, the jury can't really understand, you know, they're missing a part of that relationship and if she really is feeling compassionate or sad, you know, that emotion is connected to looking at somebody in the eyes is blocked. PHILLIP: I mean, another attorney in previous hours where Arthur Dahlia (ph) was saying, that's partly by design in this particular courtroom, that that's how all the cases tried in this courtroom are. You cannot see the witness. You cannot see the defendant. And that actually might protect the witness in a way from any kind of intimidation that might occur. SCHNEIDER: Yes. But it's not -- JACKSON: Yes. At the end of the day, the way I see it is that the case is about the merits of the testimony as elicited by the witnesses. With respect to who you can see and can't see, while it might be an issue for some discussion, the bottom line is what exhibits are being put in. Does it prove up the case or does it not? What are the witnesses testifying to? Does it meet the elements of the crime charge or does it not, et cetera. We could talk about the logistical seating arrangements of the court day and night, but when the judge gives the instructions to the jury with regard to the 34 counts, they're going to delineate what the standard of proof is, et cetera, what the prosecutor should have proved should not, and that's what the jurors are going to deliberate on and make a determination. MILLS: Credibility, it may show like some credibility of the witness if they're truthful, if they're -- [22:15:02] JACKSON: I mean, cross-examination, in my mind, shows that, right? When you're cross-examining a witness, the nature of their answers to your questions, whether or not they have the reliable information, whether they don't, that's not predicated upon who they see. It's predicated upon how they respond to my questions. And so I just don't -- SCHNEIDER: But you're a defense attorney. I think trying a case and seeing the energy between the witness and the defendant and seeing those small impressions on a defendant's face, I've spoken to jurors after my client got convicted and I said, what happened? What was going on? And they said, your client was glaring at the witness in the box the entire time and we didn't trust him. Those little interactions really add to sort of the theater of it and give the jury some kind of human perspective on what's going on between those two people, the defendant and the witness. MILLS: And it's those small things. I shift where you asked an important question, they kind of shift their eyes to look at the defendants, to see like are we are we together on this? JACKSON: Look, eye-shifting is not part of the jury instructions at the end of the day, and I think the interactions are limited to the volley between the attorneys' questions and the answers that are given, not whether the defendant cranes his neck, whether he looks, whether he looks the other way, that's not evidence. PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, there's the atmospherics and then there is the burden of proof. And, I mean, they're human beings in the jury box. RAY: Well, your word is -- PHILLIP: They're going to take what they see. RAY: Your word is the right one. A trial is theater. I mean, above all else that is why we have trials because that's what a trial was like and that's the human interaction that a jury provides to this in terms of evaluating what's happening right in front of them. And a lot of things are not in the jury instructions that doesn't make any difference. MILLS: If that was the case, we could just read deposition transcripts. RAY: That's why we call upon juries to make this judgment. JACKSON: It always makes a difference what the jury instruction said, to be clear. PHILLIP: Everyone stand by, a lot more to talk about ahead. We'll talk about today's testimony, which gets to the heart of these charges against Donald Trump. Plus, there is breaking news tonight on two fronts. We are getting word of explosions and gunfire at the Rafah crossing in Gaza, as Israeli forces move in, this as Hamas says it has accepted a ceasefire deal brokered by outside nations. COLLINS: We're also getting word tonight that NASA and Boeing have scrubbed what was supposed to be a historic launch over a technical issue. More details on that ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [22:21:55] PHILLIP: Breaking news tonight, explosions in Rafah as Israel is said to be on the verge of taking over the Palestinian side of that city's crossing with Egypt. We're also getting word of gunfire heard on the Egyptian side of that border. These attacks come, as Hamas says, it has agreed to a ceasefire deal proposed by Egypt and Qatar. The news had Gazans celebrating in the streets. However, Israelis say that there is no deal on the table that Hamas has agreed to that they were a part of. Still, they are sending representatives back to the negotiating table. Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv, families of the hostages implored Israeli leaders to accept that deal. And a source shared a document with CNN that put some of the details of the proposal in public view. In the first phase, Hamas would release three hostages a week, specifically women, children, elderly, and the sick for six weeks. Then they would release an additional 15 hostages. In exchange, Israel would have to gradually withdraw its forces from parts of Gaza, stop all reconnaissance flights for ten hours a day, allow free movement of non-armed Palestinians throughout the Gaza Strip. And Israel would have to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, 30 Palestinian women and children for every Israeli hostage released by Hamas. The first phase would also allow for humanitarian aid to enter the region. The specifics of that second phase, though, are still unclear. But the document that CNN reviewed said that it would include sustainable periods of calm in Gaza and for the release of the remaining hostages. That third phase would be a years-long plan to rebuild Gaza. U.S. officials are describing this as more of a counterproposal by Hamas, given that it includes provisions that Israel never agreed to. Now, joining me now is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the former IDF spokesperson, retired Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, also with us, the editor-in-chief and CEO of Zeteo, Mehdi Hassan. Mehdi, I know you have an exclusive report about a letter that Republican senators sent to the International Criminal Court. We will get to that in just a few minutes. But I want to ask you about this reporting, about Hamas, saying publicly they've agreed to a ceasefire deal. But it's really kind of a counterproposal that includes elements that they know Israel never agreed to. So, was this some kind of propaganda effort by Hamas to say, we're at the table, we're agreeing to something? MEHDI HASAN, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF AND CEO, ZETEO: Well, look, the reporting we have says that, yes, it was an Egyptian-Qatari proposal that the Americans were involved in, too, Abby. The CIA director, Bill Burns, has been involved in this. The Israelis apparently were on board until, of course, Hamas agreed and then the Israelis bluff was called. And now they're saying, well, we don't agree to this proposal because we want to free the hostages, even though the proposal would help free the hostages. PHILLIP: Can I just pause you there for a second, because I think I just want to add one bit of information I think is critical here? The part that Israel didn't agree to is the part that calls for a permanent end to the war. And I think this is really what is at issue here, that Israel has never agreed to that and that maybe this is a counter-proposal, but that means essentially that everybody has to get back to the table and agree to what's on the table now. [22:25:11] HASAN: Yes. But let me just say, in what world is Hamas going to say, we're going to release all the hostages and you carry on killing us? Obviously, outside world America, western countries has been wanting a ceasefire for a while. We were told Hamas was the obstacle, and now they're calling Israel's bluff. The reality is, Abby, that the obstacle to a hostage deal has always been Benjamin Netanyahu. And those are not my words. Those are the words of Haim Rubinstein, the former spokesperson for the hostage's family, who told the Israeli press last week that Netanyahu has been the obstacle. He says that they found out there was a deal on the table back on October 9th, 10th to get hostage Israelis, but Netanyahu hid it from them. Those are the words of the spokesperson for the Israeli families of the hostages. And he hid it from them because he knows that if he agrees to a hostage deal, his fascist colleagues and his coalition government will collapse his government. This is Israeli domestic politics. PHILLIP: Lieutenant Colonel, what about that? I mean, if the hostages are all released, shouldn't Israel seriously consider ending hostilities in Gaza and allowing for a political settlement that leads to the future? LT. COL. JONATHAN CONRICUS, IDF INTERNATIONAL SPOKESPERSON: Yes, I'm listening to the second edition of Mehdi Hasan's monologue that I saw earlier. And it's not surprising that you're parroting Hamas' talking points. Really, let's put things here in perspective. We have a terrorist organization that abducted civilians and soldiers. They're the ones for the last four months have been refusing any deal that Israel, the U.S., Qatar, Egypt and others have put forward. And now, when push comes to shove and when they see Israeli tanks lined up on their way to Rafah, all of a sudden they are agreeing. They're agreeing to something that wasn't on the table. And it's quite absurd that this is even how it's covered. And it's classic deception 101 by an organization that is very savvy in deception and unfortunately has figureheads and mouthpieces all over western media doing their work, whether it's Al Jazeera or other places, and getting that message that out that Israel is the problem, when Israeli civilians and soldiers are the ones that have been abducted. PHILLIP: I'll let Mehdi respond to that. HASAN: So, I think all of your viewers saw me quote the spokesperson for the Israeli hostages' families, and the colonel then said, I'm parroting Hamas talking points. He's referring to the hostages' families as Hamas, as parroting Hamas talking points, because I quoted them. I didn't quote Hamas. In fact, tonight, the colonel knows that hundreds of people went to Netanyahu's house and screamed, you have blood on your hands, Israeli protesters. I guess they're all Hamas, right? The Israeli position now is anyone who disagrees with them is Hamas. I'm guessing tomorrow they'll say CIA Director Bill Burns, who was involved in this hostage negotiation deal, he's Hamas, too, everyone is Hamas. And as for deception, I mean, come on, the colonel was a spokesperson for the IDF, which has spent the last six months lying. Abby, your network has debunked multiple lies that the Israeli military has told CNN's Jeremy Diamond, I urge all your viewers to go and watch your colleague Jeremy Diamond's report on ten kids killed in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp last month. The Israelis said we had nothing to do with it. And yet Jeremy interviewed three munitions experts who looked at the evidence, said, yes, Israel killed those ten kids. So, when we talk about deception, we're learning from the masters here. PHILLIP: Look, Lieutenant Colonel, the hostage families are urging the government at this point to come forward and release the hostages as part of some kind of deal. One of the things that the families have said is that they feel like they are being abandoned. How do you respond to that, given that there are opportunities, it seems, to take a deal that would stop the fighting in exchange for getting their loved ones home? Lieutenant Colonel, I'm not sure you could hear me. Can you hear me now? I think we're going to try to get him back. But, Medhi, I do want to get back to one other aspect of this, which is, from Israel's perspective, they want to make sure that Hamas is not in a position to ever attack them again. And I think you would agree that that's a reasonable position for them to have. So, hostages all being returned, if they say that's not enough, I mean, Hamas, it seems like shouldn't be in a position to be dictating the terms of their own surrender in a war that they started. HASAN: So, it's a good question, Abby, and it's a reasonable goal. Of course it is. But if you don't want Hamas to be in a position to attack you again, maybe you shouldn't energize and embolden Hamas. This entire conflict has turned Palestinians in the entire region against Israel. It's made Israelis less safe, not more safe. It's obviously killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. [22:30:01] And Israel has a right to say, okay. We don't want to be attacked again. But at what cost? 34,000 Palestinians dead, tens of thousands more under the rubble, 14 and a half thousand children dead, 1.2 million people hiding out in Rafah and now being told to move to be relocated 600,000 children. Abby, UNICEF say you cannot move 600,000 children, many of whom are sick, wounded, malnourished. They say it'll be a catastrophe. There is no safe zone to go to; it's the most Orwellian phrase that Israeli spokespersons use. There is nowhere safe in Gaza. So, of course Israel wants to reasonably not be attacked again, but doing this doesn't work and it's morally unsustainable. PHILLIP: Looks like we have Jonathan Conricus back. Lieutenant- colonel, I do want to talk about this Rafah Invasion that seems to be on the horizon here. Our colleague. Barak Ravid. is reporting that sources tell him that Israeli forces are going to take over the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza. We're already seeing. What seems like bombs falling there tonight? Why is Israel doing this when they know that there is no safe place as many was saying for civilians to go and Rafah is the place that initially the Israeli government told them to go? CONRICUS: Yeah, I would take everything that my respected colleague to the panel here says with a lot of pinches of salt. Lots of untruths were said when I was on air and off air and I won't give them credibility by repeating that. What I say is this it Rafah is a place where Hamas and UNRWA has told people to go, the sad reality in Gaza is that Hamas uses these civilians as human shields and doesn't leave Israel with any other option books to ask people to leave. Now Israel is doing that out of concern for human life and their safety-- PHILLIP: Lieutenant-colonel, I have to stop you there because the IDF told Gazan civilians to move to the south. Rafah was the only safe place, supposedly safe place for them to go. So this is not about UNRWA. This is actually where they are going because the rest of the country is in rubble So, where are they supposed to go now? CONRICUS: Right, so there are various locations in Gaza a few miles northeast of Rafah and northwest of Rafah close to Khan Younis where they can go and hopefully they will go and I agree I take the point that it is a harsh environment and not an ideal environment for anybody to live in. I wouldn't want to be there to be frank, but the sad reality is that the responsibility for this situation lies on Hamas' shoulders. And I think that if we detach ourselves from agendas and ideas and Israel hatred And if we look at the situation from a let's say a more clean perspective, what choice that Israel had -- what choice does Israel have in order to defend its civilians in their homes? If Hamas is allowed to continue to exist to store weapons and to prepare for the next attack then it is only a matter of time before these attacks will come and those are not my words. Mehdi, those are the words of Hamas leaders who say that we will do October 7th again and again until we reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and I don't think that Israel should allow that to happen. And if it means sadly moving people around before combat starts and making sure that they are safer not safe. But safer away from harm's way by telegraphing Israeli intentions then I think that is a very humane thing to do. Hamas sadly must be defeated. PHILLIP: We do -- I do need to, I do need to move on but I just want to say one thing I mean, this is not a question of hating Israel, It's a question of the reality on the ground, which is that there is already a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza. And there's no question that trying to move over a million people in short period of times is not going to be something that is feasible. But Mehdi, I have to get to your reporting and I do want to talk -- I do want to talk. You -- you don't agree that there's a humanitarian catastrophe occurring right now in Gaza? CONRICUS: No, I don't agree that it cannot be done because -- PHILLIP: I didn't say that -- CONRICUS: -- these are the same lines that were told. This were the same things that were told to Israel before Israel started its invasion of Gaza City and believe me I answer that question hundreds if not thousands of times and we were it was alleged that this was tantamount to war crime that we were asking people to move when in fact, it was possible 900,000 out of a million point one people did eventually moved and it saved a lot HASAN: You then killed them. CONRICUS: And I think that should be acknowledged and the same talking points are being repeated now by the same Hamas mouthpieces. PHILLIP: Mehdi, you could respond. CONRICUS: Go ahead. HASAN: So, NBC News reported last month, Abby, that seven different air strikes from Israel took place in what were designated as safe zones by Israel. [22:35:03] Palestinians were told to go to safe zones by Israel and then killed in those safe zones by Israel. That's reporting from NBC News But I'm sure the colonel would say they're Hamas as well. Everyone who disagrees with the colonel is Hamas. And by the way, he's quoting a Hamas spokesman. None of us like Hamas, but let's quote someone on his side the Likud party international vice chairman Netanyahu's Party, he said he said a couple of days ago the Likud party vice chair, Colonel you can respond to this quote, the Likud party vice chair -- international vice chair said on Israeli TV a couple of days ago, there are no uninvolved civilians in Rafah. No, there are no innocent people in Rafah 1.2 million. No innocent people and we should go in, these are his words, and kill and kill and kill. Sounds pretty genocidal to me colonel. Do you agree with that? CONRICUS: I agree that those are comments that are horrible and shouldn't be thought and shouldn't be said and I'm happy that I don't have to explain the Likud party or whoever that is that you're sourcing and I don't haven't heard the quote. But I can tell you what the chief of staff the guy that is responsible for the use of force in Gaza, and he speaks relentlessly about not killing civilians and he gives orders not to kill civilians and he gives orders and instructions to troops on the ground to apply this distinction and to apply proportionality and speaking about safe zones, yesterday four soldiers were killed when mortars were fired from Rafah from a safe zone at Israeli soldiers. And I'm sure that it's not wouldn't bother you too much that four soldiers are killed. But they were killed fired from a safe zone in Rafah happened yesterday, I don't have an MSNBC report to quote it, but it happened. Nevertheless. PHILLIP: All right guys. I have to leave it there. Mehdi, you have some really important reporting about a letter from Republican lawmakers to the ICC About the possibility of arrest warrants for Israelis as it relates to war crimes. You can go on to Zeteo's website to find that reporting, but unfortunately, we are out of time here. Mehdi Hasan, Jonathan Conricus, thank you both for an important conversation. CONRICUS: Thank you. HASAN: Thank you. PHILLIP: And up next to see what the jurors saw today in court that goes to the heart of the charges against Donald Trump plus there is more evidence that Donald Trump was at the center of everything that went on in his business. We'll discuss that. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [22:41:50] PHILLIP: Tonight, follow the money. The prosecution tried to walk the jury through the standard operating procedures of Donald Trump's business organization. It's an empire that functioned less like a billion-dollar behemoth and more like your mom-and-pop corner store, but the former president at the center of everything. CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson has been pouring through the transcripts of today's testimony. Joey, the prosecution asked the bookkeeper to talk about how Trump signed the checks and dealt with money and now we have the entrance of the Sharpies. JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: We certainly do and let's talk about what those Sharpies are. This is the accountant, of course Deborah Tarasoff. And so this is what happened in response to brass tacks. We're right now on the actual documents, right so what happened? Prosecutor asked the following question. What if you cut a check from the DJT account? Did Mr. Trump have to sign the check because Mr. Weisselberg, of course, he's the chief financial officer or was approved it? Witness answers no, if he didn't want to sign it, he didn't sign it. Prosecutor then asked did you ever see situations where he didn't sign checks? Witness, yes. Prosecutor then asked, Abby, what would happen in those situations? Witness, Tarasoff the accountant, he would write void on it and send it back. Prosecutor then asked, how do you know he would write void on it? Answer by the accountant Miss Tarasoff, it was signed in a Sharpie in black. That is what he usually uses. Okay, so this is significant because now we're getting into hardcore evidence, right? Remember it's about the business records the ledgers, the invoices, the checks. You have an accountant here who ultimately who deals with these issues and this is significant because it goes to Donald Trump's knowledge or intent if you believe it. He took his Sharpie pen might have been in the White House and he ultimately signed the checks. Does that demonstrate his knowledge? Does that demonstrate he was part of the conspiracy? Does that demonstrate that he was engaged in falsifying business records to conceal another crime? That's a jury question, but we had hard evidence (inaudible). PHILLIP: And more than a jury question. It wasn't dealt with really that part was not dealt with however I mean, I thought it was very significant. Not that he signed the check but that there were checks that he didn't sign and that if he didn't want to make a payment he just wouldn't do it. SCHNEIDER: Right and there was a lot of talks from his two employees today that everything went through him very consistent with he's a micromanager. Even David Pecker from the "National Enquirer" said Donald Trump's a micromanager and the prosecution don't forget even though the prosecution goes first, Abby, this is their witness. It's Donald Trump's employee. But they're calling the witness because they have to establish this chain of getting in the business records into the case like Joey said it's 34 counts of falsifying business records. But the details that are coming out from these witnesses were very significant today for example the checks being paid back to Michael Cohen from January to December of 2017 when Trump was already in the White House when the Trump Organization processed the check for Donald Trump to sign from his own personal account the Donald J. Trump account. [22:45:05] They would FedEx the checks to the White House and then they would be sent back to the Trump Organization for processing. And what's unusual here? And I think maybe the jury might be thinking this and it's intentional on the part of the prosecutor is why is Donald Trump paying Michael Cohen? $35,000 a month for 12 months. While he's president of the United States, what are those services that Michael Cohen is providing and the whole crux of the case is that those were allegedly services provided for the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels before the election and now he's allegedly getting reimbursed after the election at different amounts and that's part of sort of the disguise? PHILLIP: All right, Defense Counsel. MILLS: Yes. It feels like in this case every time they get right up to the line we're about to close the door on Donald Trump have him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt it stops, it comes to a halt. So they have here checks that he signed. Clearly he signed checks for Michael Cohen, but Michael Cohen was his attorney. There's that's not a dispute. So it's not illegal to pay your attorney. It's also not illegal for those checks to go out. What has to be illegal is the ledgers what was indicated on those checks and we got right up to that door and it didn't close. JACKSON: It's not illegal to pay your attorney a retainer fee, right? Now the issue is was this a retainer fee or was it knowledge that you were reimbursing your attorney that you directed to pay hush money. That's the issue and that's what the jury is going to decide. This is not, Donte. MILLS: We don't have an answer to that though, right? JACKSON: Well, we have yet. Maybe we have reasonable inferences from the facts. What is the president of the United States doing taking his personal account paying his lawyer specific money from that account on a monthly basis noted as reimbursement, reimbursement for what? What specific legal services did you perform that would justify that payment or was it because you had knowledge that you were giving him a bonus because he was doing your bidding at your behest paying off a point? That's the issue. MILLS: But even that's not illegal. What's illegal is it has to be falsifying business documents? That is the legal part where we don't have that. RAY: The answer to your three questions were or no and no and I mean, you're right. I mean I good luck with a prosecution case arguing inferences from the volitional act of the CEO of the company signing the checks. I'm you know, I just -- SCHNEIDER: You know it's but there's more than that -- RAY: Okay. SCHNEIDER: -- there was a retainer agreement this came out today and I think this is a big deal. RAY: Okay. SCHNEIDER: Michael Cohen every month again from January to December of 2017 sent an invoice by email to the Trump organization that said pursuant to the retainer agreement. Here's my invoice for services rendered in the following month and that the bookkeeper described the whole process. We have to have an invoice. We don't pay unless there's an invoice. But the D.A.'s office has already signaled and put out there that there is no retainer agreement and that information was actually contained in the D.A.'s statement of facts that was issued on April 4th of 2023 when the case first got indicted. There is no retainer agreement. RAY: I do remember that. PHILLIP; And the argument it would be that this was a scheme to conceal the arrangement I mean if it hadn't been -- if it had been an arrangement for a confidentiality agreement made in a really transparent way this we wouldn't be here. RAY: I get the scheme argument and I get the fact that there are co- conspirators floating around the part that the prosecution has to prove that's nice. Except that none of those people are on trial the only person who's on trial is Donald Trump unless as you suggest they can prove that Donald Trump has that intent. They don't have it. PHILLIP: That's what they've got to prove. RAY: That's what they've got to prove. JACKSON: A long way to proving it. RAY: -- and that's and that part's not there. Yeah, we're 12 days into this thing. And I understand that we're 10 days probably, so we're not there yet. SCHNEIDER: I think it's coming. PHILLIP: We got a couple weeks. They said maybe-- MILLS: I think it came and I think the evidence is pretty. RAY: I guess I must have missed it my no and no might have been yes and yes. PHILLIP: It was there. Panel my good panel. You all have been excellent tonight. Thank you very much for joining us. And just in, NASA is scrubbing tonight's historic launch of two astronauts on board Boeing's Starliner spaceship. Hear the reason and what happens next, we're live at Cape Canaveral next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [22:54:09] PHILLIP: Boeing Starliner scrubbed again by NASA. It happened with the astronauts already on board and ready to fly. I want to go straight to CNN's Kristin Fisher who is at Cape Canaveral tonight. Kristin, I heard you saying earlier today picture perfect weather everything looked a go and now this, what happened? KRISTIN FISHER, CNN SPACE AND DEFENSE CORRESPONDENT: I know so believe it or not, Abby, this scrub had nothing to do with Boeing, it had to do with United Launch Alliance's rocket. So the way this works you have the Boeing Starliner Spacecraft on the very top. That's that gumdrop shaped capsule where astronauts Butch Willmore and Sunny Williams are or were tonight. And that is what's actually being tested in this test flight but tonight, the problem was with the ULA rocket the Atlas 5 that propels the Boeing Starliner into orbit and what's so bizarre here is that you know, this is a tried and true rocket. [22:55:05] It's flown a hundred missions or this would have been its 100th flight. So you wouldn't necessarily think that that's where the problem would arise tonight on a night with picture perfect weather. But hey that space. So there's a press conference ongoing. What we learned is that the issue was with a faulty oxygen relief valve the way it was described is a valve on your home water tank that vents gas. There's a problem with that. They're going to try again tomorrow Abby. But it might be a delay of several more days if they have to actually go up and replace that valve. Abby? PHILLIP: Yeah, well a testament to the checks and balances that are in place to make sure that everything is exactly what it should be going up into space. Kristin Fisher thank you very much for that. And thank you for watching "Newsnight". Laura Coates picks up our special coverage next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) Laura Coates Live Aired May 06, 2024 - 23:00 ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [23:00:44] LAURA COATES, CNN HOST: Donald Trump is just perhaps one social post away from potential jail time as his trial enters a very critical week. Welcome to a special edition of "Laura Coates Live." Hours from now, Donald Trump will enter day 13 of his criminal trial. And the big question everyone is asking tonight, are we going to hear from Stormy Daniels or Michael Cohen? And if so, when are they going to take the stand? Now, according to prosecutors, we are now halfway through their case in chief. I made that sound far more exciting perhaps to you, but we just have about two more weeks left. And yes, it'll be a very key moment. And by key moment, I mean messy to have Daniels, an adult film star, testify about an alleged sex scandal that prosecutors say she was paid to keep quiet so that it wouldn't hurt Trump's 2016 campaign. But forgive the broken record that I'm about to sound like, but that's not what the heart of the case is really about, okay? It's not a trial to prove whether he had an affair or a sexual encounter. The case is about the falsification of business records to cover up the crime of potentially trying to shield the transparency for campaign finance reasons. That's why, if anything, you could argue that today's testimony actually featured a real star witness. In fact, two of them, or maybe 34 potentially of them, the physical paper evidence. Now, whether the paper will be enough to convict, that's a matter for the jury. But it was introduced by way of two different witnesses. One was Jeffrey McConney, a former Trump Organization controller. The other person, Deborah Tarasoff, an accounts payable supervisor at the Trump Organization. By the way, she still works there. Now, if you're thinking, well, how are these people going to be as exciting as Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels? It's a paper and documents case. And I want to focus on two key pieces. The first is this bank statement showing that Michael Cohen paid Stormy $130,000 in the so- called hush money. There are handwritten notes at the bottom by Trump's former money man, Allen Weisselberg. Now, those notes, they actually calculate how much Cohen should be repaid to the tune of $420 bucks. Now, McConney, he testified that in 2017, Weisselberg told him to start repaying Cohen. And he wrote his own calculations that you see here. As my son knows in school, show me the math. So, let's break it down for a second. How do you get to $420,000? Well, there's the original $130,000 payment that Cohen made to Stormy. Then they added about $50,000 for a tech services company that helped with the polls, which is IT firm. That gets you to, do the math, $180,000. They then doubled that amount to account for taxes that would get taken out. He could take home the full amount that he actually wanted. That means $360,000. And then they gave Cohen a $60,000 bonus. Grand total, $420,000. They then divided that into 12 monthly payments of $35,000. And that's where the checks come in, the Sharpie pen-signed checks, checks that were signed by Trump for $35,000 to Michael Cohen. Now, Deborah Tarasoff testified that Trump signed nine of the reimbursement checks. From the transcript regarding one of those checks, here was a question that was asked. Who was going to be paid? Michael Cohen. And what amount? $35,000. What is the ledger description distribution? Legal expense. Now, that is the heart of the case that the prosecution is trying to make, that Trump disguised these payments as legitimate legal expenses to cover up the payments of $35,000 to repay him for what happened with Stormy, or at least the allegations to silence her. But to be clear, you didn't hear from either witness directly testifying to Trump's knowledge. Tarasoff said that she never actually saw Trump sign the checks when he was at the White House. Remember, all of these happened after the inauguration. And McConney testified he was never actually told that Trump instructed any of these payments. This is where the plot thickens for the burden of proof. [23:05:00] I want to go right to Katelyn Polantz, senior -- CNN senior crime and justice reporter, excuse me, Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor, Tim Parlatore, former Trump attorney, Elliot Williams, CNN legal analyst, and Molly Ball, senior political correspondent for "The Wall Street Journal." So, again, it's a documents case, and documents can be sexy. Elliot, let's turn to you for a second. So, you've got -- there was no question there. Deborah Tarasoff and Jeffrey McConney, they testified about the $420,000. But break down for us about what that was showing to the jury. Okay, they did some math. ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yeah. COATES: The arithmetic is there. How does that translate? WILLIAMS: A couple things. Number one, the structuring of the payments and the $35,000, and we see it here, might look suspicious on its face. And I think the biggest concern for all parties involved came on cross-examination where they asked Jeffrey McConney directly, did you hear Donald Trump direct these payments? And forgive me, I'm paraphrasing a little bit, and he said, no. And then they said, no further questions, your honor, because a big part of the defense's case is arguing, and they said it in their opening statement, they're going to say it in their closing, they're going to keep hammering this point, that there's no direct link between Donald Trump and the sort of provision of the payments. Now, you can establish that someone knew that payments were being made by having every employee in his organization say, yeah, he -- it's a small business and he knows what's happening in it. You can establish that everybody knew what he wanted, but you don't have direct evidence linking him to it. And I think that's going to be the prosecution's big challenge, and I think will drive the next several days of testimony. COATES: I think it's a huge Achilles' heel, right? I mean, you kind of want to have the -- did you order the code red moment? I was going to get a few good of reference in here somehow, someway, during this trial. (LAUGHTER) But if he takes the stand, maybe you can get that. But without that, you're left to have the innuendo, the inference that's happening of, you know, you've got a nice place here. That's all it seems to have established so far. GENE ROSSI, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Well, here's the thing. Circumstantial evidence is just as powerful as direct evidence. COATES: It is. ROSSI: And you're going to get a jury instruction on that. Elliot is right. Right now, we don't have that link. It's too attenuated. We need a link from the invoice to the scheme that started in August of 2015. But I got to say this. Elliot mentioned that the structuring looks a little bit suspicious. I think it looks a lot suspicious, okay? And the reason is this. If you look at footnote 11 of the Southern District of New York's sentencing memo in the Michael Cohen case, the FEC in 2013 slapped the wrist of Trump and Cohen because Cohen was making payments because Trump was thinking about running for president in 2011. The whole birther thing, he was thinking about running against Romney. So, they were on notice, and if it doesn't come out in Michael Cohen's testimony that they were slapped in 2013, then they are committing malpractice. The reason I bring that up is Trump knows what in-kind contribution is. Trump knows that if he is having a payment right before the election, he has to conceal that payment. Now, here's where the rubber meets the road. If Weisselberg and Cohen were in their own room coming up with this souffle, the $130,000 to $420,000, I call it the souffle, all right? If they did it on their own without telling Trump, he's going to get acquitted, because there's no connection, no willfulness in the invoice. So, Donald Trump today had a good day. I don't know if I would do the fist-pump, but he had a good day in the sense that they have an argument in closing. Right now, they can say something to the jury that is believable. COATES: So, first of all, how dare you mention souffles at this hour? We're all hungry, and now we have a midnight snack happening. But Tim, let me ask you about this question. There was a moment here where the checks to reimburse Cohen were signed by Trump. Tarasoff did testify of this. And here's what she said. Here's a question. If he didn't want to sign it, talking about the checks, if he didn't want to sign it, he didn't sign it. Did you ever see situations where he didn't sign checks? She said, yes. What would happen in those situations? He would write "void" on it and send it back. Question, how do you know he would write "void" on it? Answer, it was signed in a Sharpie in black. That is what he usually does. So, there was some connection that he would sign alleged reimbursement checks. How damaging was that connection? Obviously, it's a bit tenuous. There's the White House versus what's happening at Trump Organization. But the fact that his -- I mean, he's somebody who was meticulous about what was being spent. It's in a Sharpie. It's not like it's a rubber stamp that's used. Is that harmful to his case? TIM PARLATORE, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: I mean, I don't think it's that harmful because what are the circumstances under which he voids these checks? It's probably somebody that he has a specific disagreement with and he says, I don't want to pay this person. [23:10:03] And so, if he has, you know, invoices for Michael Cohen, let's say legal fees, he then gets checks from his staff saying, hey, sign this for Michael Cohen, and he doesn't have a specific beef where he says, yeah, I want to screw this guy out of his -- what he has owed, then he's going to sign the checks. I don't think it's not as much of a bombshell. The fact that he signed those checks, you know, the key here would be exactly what Jim was just saying, is to be able to tie him in to all those calculations. And so, if all you can connect him to is the checks and maybe the invoice where it says the total for legal fees, then, yeah, he probably is going to get acquitted on that. I think that, you know, Weisselberg is really the key to this whole thing, and it would be interesting to see if he comes in to testify, what he's going to say about this, because, you know, Cohen -- you know, going on Cohen's word alone, I don't think it's quite enough. COATES: Well, you know, Weisselberg is currently in jail, Katelyn, as you know, and there has been no indication he will be either a cooperator or cooperative with the prosecution. These cases not necessarily require that he has to come in, you know, with bells on his toes. But this is why I think they had Conway -- I mean -- what is his last name again? McConney. Thank you -- coming in to talk about this very issue. But walk us through the ledgers and the invoices. They each show this $35,000 payment to Cohen. What did we learn from the paper trail that we actually do see? KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Yeah. So, when -- we don't expect Weisselberg to testify. COATES: Right. POLANTZ: That was well established coming into this trial. But -- COATES: And you can come in if you're in jail, they can bring you in. POLANTZ: They could. COATES: But him, they think they won't. POLANTZ: There could always be a surprise. But if we look at what last week was in this trial, the circumstantial evidence that kept coming out and they kept hammering was everything related to the campaign, the motivations. This week, when you're seeing the week start with these two people from the Trump Organization who may not have been privy to the scheme, weren't directly in Donald -- in touch with Donald Trump about talking about these payments, they are the people that are showing over and over again, Donald Trump controls the money. And the way they showed that is they're presenting evidence, they're getting evidence in. So, it's not just people from the DA's office bringing in all the crucial evidence on record here. It's the people from Trump Org, the two pieces. First, there were a whole slew of emails from Michael Cohen being sent to Jeff McConney at the Trump Org saying, did you get my invoice? Pay my invoice, pay my invoice every month for that $35,000. And in one of them, Jeff McConney wrote back to him, I'll check the status tomorrow. D.J.T., Donald J. Trump, needs to sign the check. So that highlights Trump's involvement. And then you're seeing ledgers, even before we get to the checks themselves, that the subsequent witness brought into the record, Jeff McConney was able to show to the jury, and there will be lawyers looking at this, scrutinizing it, professionals on this jury looking at it when they go to deliberate. These invoices to Michael Cohen are in two parts. There are ones that are paid out of the D.J.T. Rev, which is the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, which is signed off on by the sons, Allen Weisselberg. And then there are nine payments, $315,000 coming out of a personal account of Donald Trump. COATES: This is so important because many people know and, obviously, the jury is familiar with Donald Trump, probably as this celebrity, as the apprentice, and as somebody whose reputation, his name is on the building. Right? Whether it's his -- being as his father or otherwise. Molly, he capitalized for so many years on people believing that he was the person in control, that it was -- the buck stops there, he controls everything. And we heard from testimony, Kim talking about, really, it run kind of as a mom and pop, as Jim Acosta said earlier today, more pop than mom. The fact that you've got this playing out, how does that play, you think, politically and for this jury that they assume that he was running the show? MOLLY BALL, SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Well, you know, I think politically and for the jury, it is -- it's -- it's a similar big picture question and it is about the intent. And so, yeah, the jury is having to hear all of this very, you know, dry minutia about documents. Not that documents aren't sexy. Certainly not saying that, you know. (LAUGHTER) And you're right. You know, this is a -- this is a case about falsification of business records. Today, we saw the business records. That was a big reveal. However, what this case is going to hinge on and the reason the subject of most of the debate about the case outside of the courtroom has been about more about the abstract legal issues involved is that we are not learning a huge amount of new information through the testimony of these witnesses. We have known for years the broad strokes of these scandals. We've known what these witnesses mostly had to say, especially the bigger name witnesses who've been out there, you know, saying their case against Trump for years, particularly Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels. [23:15:03] So, it's not that there are factual revelations. It's much more about building a narrative around two different ideas of why it was done. Right? And so that is why I think a lot of the political debate around this case has been about the framing of it. And should -- is this a crime? Should this be a crime? Does it rise to the level of a felony? Was -- did it have to do with the campaign? All of that stuff around the intentionality of it, I think, is politically crucial because to the extent that voters are following this, that's what matters to them. And also, I think that's ultimately what the jury is going to be called upon to decide, not so much what are the facts here, but how do they interpret those facts? COATES: The framing is going to be very important. We all know how this is going to be part of the summation. That's really important to consider, how this will all be summarized for the jury when closing arguments do begin, because every little bit we're talking about, they're going to have to have it come back together, and that jigsaw puzzle has got to be complete. Thank you so much, everyone. Stick around. Next, Judge Merchan threatening Trump with jail time after holding him in contempt for violating his gag order yet again but, of course, before the last time he ordered the penalty. So, what could that actually look like? We've got a retired judge to tell us next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [23:20:15] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) COATES: Tonight, contingency plans are being drawn up in case Donald J. Trump goes to jail for violating the gag order. Sources are telling CNN the Secret Service is working with New York State and local officials to maybe create some kind of a jail plan. One option assumes that Judge Merchan might sentence him to just a few hours in custody, time he could serve inside the Manhattan courthouse where the hush money trial is actually happening. But if he is sentenced to days in jail, he could be placed in the custody of the U.S. Marshals and even sent to a nearby federal courthouse. Merchan calls jail a last resort, but it's a real possibility after he put Trump on notice and ruled that the former president violated the gag order now for a 10th time. That means at $1,000 a pop, Trump has got to pay $10,000 total in fines. Now, after court, Trump sounded like he was willing to go to jail so he can say whatever he wants. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This judge is giving me a gag order and said, you'll go to jail if you violate it. And frankly, you know what? Our Constitution is much more important than jail. It's not even close. I'll do that sacrifice any day. (END VIDEO CLIP) COATES: As Mike Tyson says, everyone has a plan to get punched in the face. Not sure he wants to do that. But with me now, retired California Superior Court judge, LaDoris Cordell. Thank you so much for joining us this evening, Your Honor. Let me ask you. I mean, you've obviously have been following this very closely. I mean, the judge told Trump, your continued violations of this court's lawful order threaten to interfere with the administration of justice is constant attacks which constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. Now, mind you, the prosecution is not asking for jail time. Would you jail him despite the prosecution not even asking for it? JUDGE LADORIS CORDELL, RETIRED CALIFORNIA SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE: Well, thank you for having me on. Before I even answer that, let me just say that Judge Merchan is being very deliberate. He's also being cautious. And that's where I differ with him. I do not understand why he is being so cautious now. And he did something. He said something in court I wouldn't have said had I been presiding over this. He said to Donald Trump, you're a really important person and it's really something if I have to lock you up. And at the same time, as you just reported, he said, you, Mr. Important Person, are basically a threat to the rule of law. So, those two things conflict, in my view. If you are not following orders, if you're breaking them 10 times, and in this instance, because of New York law, the fine does not fit the crime, the law needs to be changed to enhance that. But that being said, there's nothing left to do. The fines have been done. It's not a deterrence. He keeps doing this stuff. So, it's enough already. And another thing, if I were presiding over this case and saw a defendant do what Donald Trump does in court when the judge speaks about this directly to him, Donald Trump frowns, he shakes his head as if, you know, I don't want to hear this, any other judge would look at this and say, you know, you know what? That's enough, time to go. So, he is disrespecting the judge when the judge is actually trying to explain why I'm not going down that road. And even Donald Trump is rejecting that. So, you've mentioned, well, yeah, there's a holding cell. It's not really a cell. It's a room where people sit in, defendants sit in. So, yeah, that's not jail. There's house arrest. That's not jail. So, other people who violate the law by ignoring a judge's order with regard to contempt proceedings, they sit in a jail. They put on jail clothing. COATES: I hear you. CORDELL: They're on handcuffs. COATES: Well, judge, on that point, I have to tell you, I have -- you're right. I've sat in many courtrooms where the judge has had the equivalent of the mom fix your face to the defendant who is smirking or reacting in some way. There are consequences for that. But just to be clear for the audience, the additional violations the judge found predated the order for the initial $9,000 in fines. And then it said, look, anything going past this moment in time essentially could result in incarceration. But is it all or nothing? I mean, talk to me about the potential for a graduated jail sentence. There could be an hour during lunch. There could be after that day. There could be for a night. I mean, it does necessarily mean that he would have to serve the duration of the trial in contempt. Right? CORDELL: Yeah, you're exactly right, if I were presiding over this trial and if I decided there were not -- say there's another contempt violation. And you're correct, these were all happened before the judge said, you're going to go to jail. [23:25:02] But the judge could do this if there's another violation. And trust me, Laura, there's going to be another violation. It's coming. In which case I could impose jail and say, I'm going to stay the punishment. The jail sentence stayed, meaning hold off on it until the end of the trial. And as you continue to misbehave, I'm going to consider adding more jail time till -- COATES: And the purpose of that, Your Honor, is what? CORDELL: -- it gets to the point where it is time for me to sentence you. COATES: The purpose that you don't -- CORDELL: Say that again, please. COATES: The purpose of that would be not to disrupt the flow of the trial. He would have to sort of attack on. CORDELL: Exactly. COATES: Well, let me ask you on that point. CORDELL: Exactly. And it would hang over Trump's head. COATES: Yeah. I -- absolutely. I understand that particular philosophy. Let me ask you, though, two quick points. I wonder if you're concerned when you're talking about punishment, given what Trump has said, is this truly going to be punishment or an opportunity for perhaps martyrdom? Would you consider that point about jailing him? And the second part, of course, is this judge has already said that he is not going to -- if Trump takes a stand, he is not going to allow the violations to go before the jury. They won't know that he has these contempt violations available because he thought, look, this is a jury that's in front of me every single day. They have, you know, respect for me. Me having that particular moment would be prejudicial. How would you rule? CORDELL: All right. So, first question was if he'll be a martyr. He's going to do whatever he does, no matter what the judge orders. But the issue becomes this: If you're a judge, it shouldn't matter. It must not matter what the mob is saying. When you make a ruling, it's based on what happens in your courtroom. So, the judge should not be concerned at all. You get judges who start making decisions, but first checking how it's going to be received out there. We don't have an independent judiciary. Your second question, what was your second point? COATES: Would you consider -- I mean, when you're thinking about, and I appreciate you taking the time to answer both, when you're looking at the decision to have a jury know about the violations, if he takes the stand. CORDELL: Right. Right. So, the contempt is separate from the trial. So, if Donald Trump were to testify, he would be instructed, we're not going there, no one will ask you any questions about the gag order. However, because he cannot control his mouth, it is likely, if you were to testify, he would probably say something. Well, this crooked judge has gagged me, in which case he's opened the door. And in that case, prosecution can go right in and show how he has made statements that have threatened the jury and threatened witnesses. So, it's all up to him. COATES: Another peril potentially for somebody willing to take the stand. Judge LaDoris Cordell, thank you so much for joining us this evening. CORDELL: Thank you. COATES: Thank you, Your Honor. Next, a lifelong Republican now ditching Trump, saying, enough is enough. Why former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan said that he is now voting, get this, for Joe Biden in November. Plus, evacuations and new explosions heard in southern Gaza after Israel says a ceasefire proposal tempted by Hamas is far from its demands. Tonight, the new pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu and President Biden. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [23:32:31] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KRISTEN WELKER, NBC NEWS WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, senator, will you commit to accepting the election results of 2024? Bottom line. SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: At the end of the day, the 47th president of the United States will be President Donald Trump. I'm excited to get back to low inflation, low unemployment -- WELKER: Wait, wait, senator. Yes or no. Yes or no? Will you accept the election results of 2024 no matter who wins? SCOTT: That is my statement. (END VIDEO CLIP) COATES: Kind of like NeNe Leakes, I said what I said. We'll talk about verbal gymnastics. Senator Tim Scott repeatedly refusing to say that he'd accept the results of the 2024 election. Maybe because he might just happen to be on this particular screen, on the short list to be Donald Trump's next vice president. Not on that list, of course, is the former lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan. He's one of the Georgia Republicans who was pressured to change the election in 2020. And tonight, he is revealing in a brand- new op-ed that he is voting for President Joe Biden in November. He's also urging fellow Republicans to do the same. Quote -- I'll read a portion of it -- "The healing of the Republican Party cannot begin with Trump as president (and that's aside from the untold damage that potentially awaits our country)." Political commentator, former lieutenant governor of Georgia, Geoff Duncan, joins me now. So good to have you on, lieutenant governor. I mean, in recent weeks, we've seen a lot of longtime critics of the former president publicly saying that. So, what? I'm still going to vote for him. You actually voted and campaigned from back in 2020. Why the change of heart now? GEOFF DUNCAN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, we've been faking this long enough as Republicans. Donald Trump is not a Republican. He doesn't represent our brand. He doesn't represent our future. He's a horrible human being at this point. We're watching that play out hour by hour in the courtroom. And we've been jamming this square peg through a round hole long enough. And it's time to turn the page. It's time to move on. If we're going to heal as a party and truly get back to doing the things that we should do, and that's be conservative, but not angry or crazy or liars, we should we should turn the page immediately from Donald Trump. And so that's really what I'm calling for. And look, listening to clips like Tim Scott that you played coming into this is just painful. It's painful to listen to this. It's time to turn the page and move on. COATES: I mean, you've called out Mitch McConnell. You've called out New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu. You've called out Bill Barr for all supporting Trump. They all say, look, it's because of the policy. Now, you have proposed that perhaps you -- Republicans can vote down the rest of the ballot as Republicans to try to block Biden's legislative agenda, but then still vote for Biden as the top of that ticket. [23:35:07] But wouldn't that mean that nothing will really get done in Washington for four years if that's the fall? DUNCAN: Does anybody think anything is going to get done if Donald Trump is the president? I mean, all he's going to do is go on this vendetta tour around the world. There's nothing that's going to be done. In fact, I would argue there would be more damage done. Look, the play for a conservative like me that cares about the future of this country is to build the necessary majorities in the Congress so that we can have a meaningful checks and balance system if Joe Biden is the president. And look, I've said this in the op-ed, I'm voting for a decent person that I disagree with on policies over a criminal defendant who has no moral compass. And that's not tough to argue, right? Those are proven facts. COATES: Well, in the past, I've heard from -- many Republican will say, look, if I can't bring myself to vote for Trump, I'm going to write in someone else. I'm still not going to vote for a Democrat. You say you're going to vote for President Biden. There has been a lot of criticism, I'm sure, coming your way for doing just that or saying just that. How do you respond to people who say they have third party option, write someone else in, but why vote for a Democrat? DUNCAN: Look, sometimes, the best way to learn your lesson is to get beat, and Donald Trump needs to get beat. We need to move on as a party. We need to move on as a country. And certainly, I've got concerns with some of the policies that President Biden follows. And I hope to be able to, like many other Republicans, be able to sway their influence on immigration and other issues that we disagree with wholeheartedly. But look, to think Donald Trump is wholeheartedly a conservative is just fake news at its finest. Donald Trump is not a conservative. He rationed $8 trillion worth of debt during his presidency. He told us he was going to build a wall. He built a photo station down at the border. This guy is a fake Republican. We have to move on as Republicans. We have to. And this is our first step to do it. Look, there's a lot of folks sitting at home that have said out loud on TV that they're supporting Donald Trump, but they're watching this play out right here, they're reading this op-ed, wishing they probably had the courage to do the same thing. It's time to turn the page as Republicans and move on. COATES: Well, talk to me about Georgia particularly because, as you know, the polls show that there is a pretty close race for the presidency between Biden and Trump. And he's actually leading, according to the polling. It's, you know, not so far away, but leading in Georgia, which is a very important swing state. If you can see the screen, they have 51% towards Trump, 45% for Biden in among Georgia voters. Will voters in Georgia, which has always been a unique place since 2020 in particular, will it heed your warning? DUNCAN: I think Georgians are going to vote against Donald Trump, right? I mean, at the end of the day, you have to win the suburbs in Georgia if you're going to win an election. Brian can't prove that. He won the suburbs. He showed them that he was a job creator. He was an honest human being. He did the right thing when it counted the most. And Donald Trump has not done that. When these court cases play out on TV in the suburbs, specifically, women in the suburbs are paying attention to these cases. There's not a single one of them that's going, oh, you know what? I've changed my mind on this Donald Trump guy. He's just a fantastic human being. He's a perfect leader for our country. That's just not happening. And so, I think as we get closer and closer to November, this election is going to pull further and further away from Donald Trump, and therefore, Joe Biden will end up walking away with this election. COATES: Geoff Duncan, thank you so much. I want to continue our conversation with our panel here. We've got CNN political commentator Maria Cardona, former Republican congressman Joe Walsh, former State Department spokesperson Nayyera Haq, and Molly Ball is also back with us. So, Joe, I mean, is the former lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, a bit of a Republican unicorn? JOE WALSH, FORMER ILLINOIS REPRESENTATIVE: Yes, he is. Look, I give him, Laura, a lot of credit because it takes courage. And I know this myself as a Republican four years ago when I came out and stood up and said, I support Joe Biden. I knew at that moment as a Republican, I was ending my career as a Republican. What Geoff Duncan is doing right now is he's ending his career as a Republican. It takes courage because unlike Chris Christie and Bill Barr and all the rest who say Trump sucks, but I won't vote for Biden, I give him credit. But look, they're not moving on from Trump. I give Duncan credit, but he says this isn't -- you know, Trump is not a Republican. Bullcrap. This is what the Republican Party is now. It's his party. It's not my party and it's not Duncan's party. COATES: Do you agree it was a queer suicide? I mean, Georgia, in particular? NAYYERA HAQ, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, it depends on how much of the map and how much of the party is still going to survive after this election. Right? The majority of the American electorate right now is independent. And that's because of the droves of people who have unregistered as Republican and check the box saying I -- and you have several members of Congress who have resigned just this last year. They have not said it's because they're anti-Trump and pro-Biden. But the younger ones in particular, including Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin, a really important state, they are calculating that even if Trump wins, that there is going to be life after Trump. [23:40:01] But they're not doing what Duncan is saying right now, which is coming out directly against him. They are stepping back, hoping that there's going to be an alternative future. COATES: What do Democrats do with this? I mean, is Duncan somebody, if he is a unicorn, is it helpful to have this out there? Does this help them to buttress their own campaign? MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think it absolutely is helpful for brave souls like Geoff Duncan, like Joe Walsh, and others to come out and to publicly say what kind of an existential threat Donald Trump will be to our country. Because Geoff Duncan is very well respected, especially in Georgia, I think he could make a big difference in that incredibly important state as he talks about this. And my hope is that he will continue to talk about this and talk about the importance of making this moral choice, not just for the future of the Republican Party. And I agree with you, this is no longer the Republican Party that you all grew up with, but it can be again because a party, the survival of a -- of a political party can't just depend on one person. That will be gone when Trump is gone. We just need to make sure Trump is gone right now. COATES: Maria, so should Biden be actively reaching out to someone like Duncan and having him go around? CARDONA: I think he should. Absolutely. COATES: Has he? I mean, I don't know if he has or not at this point in time. CARDONA: Well, this just happened, so let's give him a minute. WALSH: But I don't think he has. COATES: Well, he might have an iPhone. He can call quickly. We can text him. What's going on? CARDONA: But I will say this: The campaign is absolutely focused on trying to rally anyone and everyone who understands what a threat Donald Trump is for the future of not just the party, again, for the future of our democracy, for the future of everyone who lives in this democracy, and for the future of every single voter who is looking at this contrast, right? What this election is about. COATES: Let me get you in here, Molly, because I'm really curious about your opinion on this. When you -- when you look at -- I mean, you heard from Senator Tim Scott as well. I mean, that -- that sickened Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan, to hear that, the inability to give a straight answer. But there's a real political calculation for Senator Tim Scott. BALL: Absolutely. And, you know, look, I think the Biden campaign needs a lot more Geoff Duncans. And to Maria's point, they need to be doing a lot more to reach out to the Geoff Duncans of the world. And what I have heard from a lot of, you know, anti-Trump Republicans or conservative-leaning independents is they feel like those overtures are not there now. Maybe they're just not there yet. And the Biden campaign has done some sort of, I would argue, nominal outreach to Haley voters to say, you know, you're still casting these protest votes against Donald Trump, come have a home in our party. But they have not really been trying to broaden out the tent. They seem to have so far mostly been focused on shoring up their base, keeping liberals in the tent, preventing these, you know, disaffected young people in particular from continuing to bleed out on that end of the campaign. So, I will be very curious to see as we head into the summer and the fall, as the time gets shorter before November, if there is more proactive outreach, particularly on policy, because what I hear from a lot of those conservative- leaning independents is that they are actually coming home to the Republican Party, that they tried boycotting. COATES: But which one, the one that Joe is talking about or the one -- BALL: The one that exists today. The one with Trump in it. Because they look at the Biden who promised to, you know, restore normalcy and order and be a uniter and be moderate. And a lot of them don't feel like that's the way that he has governed. So, I think Biden has some real work to do with that segment of the electorate. COATES: Everyone's bed. HAQ: Well, the challenge is going to be, of course, the fact that the policies don't align when you have abortion on the ballot. Democracy, very important existential crisis, is not polling as high as issues like women's health care and the economy. COATES: We'll see what happens. A lot to think about. Everyone, stand by, please, because ahead, Israel steps up airstrikes in southern Gaza as a ceasefire proposal accepted by Hamas fall short. So, where do they go from here and how could President Biden possibly influence it? That's ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [23:48:17] COATES: Fast-moving developments tonight in the Middle East as Israel pushes forward with the military operation in the Gazan city of Rafah. We're now learning from CNN that Israeli forces plan to take over the Palestinian side of Rafah crossing in southern Gaza, the key entry point for humanitarian aid. And just a short time ago, the sound of gunfire could be heard on the Egyptian side of that crossing. Escalation is coming just hours after Hamas announced it had agreed to a ceasefire proposal brokered by Egypt and Qatar. That sparked celebrations in Gaza. But it was short lived. Afterwards, Israel said the proposal accepted by Hamas was far from Israel's requirement. And we are learning that it's different from the one Israel, of course, helped to craft. The Hamas-backed proposal includes a call for a permanent end to the war, which is a red line for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But Israel says that it will send negotiators to talk with the mediators. Now, within Israel, protesters, including some hostage families, have taken to the streets to call for the Israeli government to accept this ceasefire deal. My panel is back here, along with CNN global affairs analyst Kimberly Dozier and CNN military analyst Cedric Leighton, a colonel from the U.S. Air Force. Colonel Leighton, Israel appeared to have this pressure stepped up. But so, what does the operation look like now? CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, Laura, I think the basic idea is that the operation looks like an encirclement. What they're going to try to do, what the Israelis are going to try to do, is take the area right by the border, which there are indications that they're doing that. Plus, they may move in forces from the east. Tanks have already moved from Israel into the eastern part of Rafah and possibly also from the north. [23:50:00] So, if they do that, they're going to encircle the area that they're targeting. How large that targeted area is -- remains to be seen. But the big idea, I think, is that they're going to try to eliminate Hamas as much as they possibly can within Rafah. And if they do that, then they are trying to basically create conditions on the ground that will be favorable to Netanyahu's being able to say that he has achieved some degree of victory. COATES: I want you to look for a second at these leaflets that were falling. I've been wondering all day what was on them and what specifically they were telling the people who were there. And they were dropped by the IDF, and they were ordering immediate evacuation of residents in eastern Rafah. And you can see -- it also is telling, here's the translation, it's telling residents in specific block that they are in danger. So, how do you have an evacuation of this size even work? LEIGHTON: Well, it really depends on everybody following the guidelines that the Israelis have. COATES: Block by block? LEIGHTON: Block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood. And they've had this grid system for a while now. And they're basically telling people to move according to those blocks. And if they do that, they say that they're going to be safe. But we know that the Israelis have had some issues maintaining the degree of targeting precision that they need to in order to keep that from happening. COATES: Kim, I thought that Biden warned against this. Netanyahu essentially is saying end? KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: From Netanyahu's point of view, he's got a limited window in which he can go after Yahya Sinwar and other top Hamas figures that he thinks, that the Israeli defense forces think, are sheltering in the tunnels beneath Rafah. If this conflict ends and Netanyahu can't point to taking out the top Hamas leadership inside Gaza, that is a political loss for him, and that spells almost certain loss at the next time he runs for office. But also, this onslaught, this threatened onslaught, seems to have goosed Hamas into blinking and saying yes to a ceasefire deal. Of course, now we know it's their terms as they see them that are acceptable. This is also a way to give Netanyahu a black eye because now it's on Israel. It's on Netanyahu to say, oh, well, this isn't the deal that we signed up for after you see all these celebrations in Gaza, etc. HAQ: This is also part of the challenge that we see when you have these negotiations that are effectively led by third parties and the parties aren't talking directly to each other. COATES: Egypt and Qatar. HAQ: Exactly. Right. I mean, Egypt kind of friend to everybody in this, Qatar directly tied to Hamas, and the United States being involved, representing Israel. So, Hamas decided, narratively, they were going to jump and they were going to say, hey, we're on board. We will do a six-week hostage release program, knowing specifically that hostage release is the fundamental challenge that Netanyahu is facing politically, is getting his people back. And now, Israel is going to have to come to the table directly in order to be able to move this forward. WALSH: I'll be quick. They're playing games. Hamas is playing games. And I know we call this Netanyahu's war. The entire war. If Netanyahu were gone tomorrow, Israel is going to go into Rafah to do what they can to eliminate Hamas. And politically at home, I think it's incumbent upon Biden as much as possible to stand with Israel. CARDONA: Well, and he has up until now. But, as you know, there's a huge challenge within his own coalition because of people who see the horrific images that are happening. And that's what I am actually going to see, what happens, I'm sure we all are, in terms of how will Israel act in this -- this next phase. Will there be horrific images? Will there be images that also then come back here and goose up the protests that are happening? But I think at the end of the day, what people are going to wait for is what is Biden going to do. And we're not going to see what Biden does on a day to day basis. Right? That is not his goal. Right? He is going to have these conversations with Netanyahu. They're not going to be made public nor should they, because that's not how you do diplomacy, as you all very well know. But he has been able to warn Netanyahu in a way that I don't think any other leader has in terms of what the repercussions will be if he is not careful about how he adjudicates this war. COATES: So, Molly, I mean, the fact that Netanyahu is the one to say no and Biden at home is being blamed, how does this play? BALL: Well, look, I think Biden has repeatedly sought to rein in Netanyahu with mixed success. There have -- there are at least a couple of instances where you could point to where the pressure from Biden actually did cause Netanyahu to pull back a little bit. At the same time, we have also seen Netanyahu repeatedly do things that Biden told him not to do, and I think that makes the president look weak. I just want to add, Biden is going to Capitol Hill tomorrow, giving a speech in honor of the Holocaust remembrance. [23:55:00] I think this is a really important opportunity for him to reset the narrative about antisemitism specifically, but also just to offer some moral clarity, because I think his detractors on the left and the right feel that there has not been a moral vision guiding his statements and often sort of equivocations as he has tried to sort of manage this war from afar. And so, I think it's an important speech. HAQ: This is also -- the challenge that we have inside Israel is that, what is that moral narrative other than eliminating Hamas? And there are many people within Israel who would argue that actually the elimination of Hamas by occupying Gaza has taken the distraction away, taken attention away from what's going on in West Bank, what's going up in the north of Hezbollah, and those are the security priorities. COATES: Quickly, Colonel Leighton, what is the impact of Biden's influence on Netanyahu? Is there any? LEIGHTON: There's a significant impact. And I think the key thing to keep in mind, as Molly was mentioning, the way in which the president is exercising his influence is very different from what you want people to do in a public domain. It is something where he's doing it privately. He is making it work in a way that is correct from a diplomatic standpoint. Whether it wins him votes or not, of course, is going to be a different issue. But it's going to be absolutely key to peace in the Middle East or at least the movement towards some type of peace. That's exactly what Biden's goal is. COATES: That was the issue that I know that you raise as well, Kim, on this very point, what's going on behind the scenes. And there's so much more to unpack as these events are quickly unfolding. I want to thank everyone today. And thank you for watching. Our coverage continues with "Anderson Cooper 360" next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)