Trump's Lawyers Panic As Witnesses Blow Up Their Legal Strategy

The legal team for Donald Trump has planned on making their entire defense about how Michael Cohen can't be trusted because he went to jail for lying to Congress. But that strategy is falling apart as the hush money trial drags on, because every witness so far has managed to corroborate Cohen's claims. This has put Trump's lawyers in a huge bind, as they now have to grapple with the fact that their only strategy fell apart before they could use it, and they've got nothing else right now. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

According to former federal prosecutor and legal expert Andrew Weissman, Donald Trump's lawyers have a big, big problem on their hands. And here's what that problem is, you see, going into the Hush Money trial, their whole defense was that Michael Cohen, who was gonna be, you know, supposed to be the star witness for the prosecution, their defense is that Michael Cohen is just a big fat liar. He even went to prison for it. Such a bad dude. He has no credibility. What a worthless piece of crap. Right? That is the case they wanted to make to the jury. Even before Michael Cohen came to testify, their entire legal strategy hinges on tainting the testimony of Michael Cohen, because they wanna paint him as unreliable and not trustworthy. But as Andrew Weissman points out, the big problem with that is that so far, literally every single witness that the prosecution has called has completely corroborated Michael Cohen's story.

So you can attack Michael Cohen all you want. You can say all these horrible things about him and his credibility. The fact of the matter is, everybody else that's been paraded up there on that witness stand has said, yeah, that is what happened. Michael Cohen is right. Donald Trump is wrong. Let me read you this from Weisman. This case is made very much without Michael Cohen. I mean, this is so corroborated, and it is not just that you have David Pecker and now Keith Davidson, stormy Daniels former lawyer. Um, it is completely corroborated, particularly with respect to Mr. Davidson by so many texts and email exchanges and the written documents. It is so completely consistent with this story, the whole idea that Michael Cohen had to essentially take over the role of the National Enquirer because they no longer were willing to be, as we heard from Mr. Pecker, the bank. And so there was this scramble at the last minute about how Michael Cohen would come up with the money to replace the money that National Enquirer had been focusing on.

To put it another way, Michael Cohen is telling the truth. Weissman says, so, any attempt by Donald Trump's lawyers to taint the credibility of Mr. Cohen is not gonna work. Because every other witness so far has testified to the credibility of Michael Cohen's claims. So what do the lawyers have left? Like, what is Donald Trump's defense going to do now? They don't know. They're scrambling. They're trying to come up with a new idea to completely redo their trial strategy in the middle of the trial. And that is something that is exceptionally hard to do, especially when none of the evidence works in your favor. But I think this was

Kind of always the, the gambit here for Trump's team, they thought they could taint Michael Cohen. And even if they couldn't taint Michael Cohen, they have one ace up their sleeve. Or at least they think they do. And that Ace happens to be the Supreme Court's decision on whether or not Donald Trump is immune from prosecution. They think, well, even if we can't get Cohen to look bad in front of the jury, don't worry. Supreme Court's gonna step in and save you. But as I've repeatedly pointed out, the Supreme Court, even if they say Trump has immunity from everything, even unofficial duties as president doesn't save him from this trial. Because most of what took place happened before Donald Trump was sworn in as president.