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longtime Trump a hope picks taking the stand Friday and bringing jurors and the rest of us into these secret meetings and discussions as the access Hollywood tape broke as Trump and AIDS assessed its damage hope hick you see there with Donald Trump that is a coveted Post in any campaign and especially in his someone who is up on the stage and in his ear and on the plane and that is the role she had so this was important testimony including the deals to silence these women it matters because this is reliable testimony from a longtime Trump loyalist so that's hard for the jury to just ignore it is also from a person as a witness who has clearly decided to cooperate with these kind of probes to testify under oath that that's the better Co better course for Miss Hicks I want to mention that she did that today but we have some context leading up to Friday's testimony because she did that in testifying about January 6th in that high stakes probe there she was you may remember she cooperated she discussed what she knew under oath she talked to investigators she even discussed her own private text on that day January 6 where she told others she was so upset quote everything we worked for wiped away what you see on the screen is the way we experienced different probes January 6th they had the cameras on and we saw her actually talking under New York law it's transparent we have the sketches but we don't have video cameras in court but both times to be clear Hicks was a key witness she is cooperating and that itself has led to this reported falling out with Trump now the defendant and she said she was nervous today from the stand she answered the questions confirming she's under subpoena she's paying for her own lawyer and in a moment that does matter for a jury this is still a human exercise hope hick broke down crying on the stand at one point she was seen there crying this was reported and discussed it was apparently best we can tell and from the reporters in the room and the wider context we have uh genuine display of emotion for her as she felt the weight of this moment the raw pressure of testifying about her longtime boss who stood or I should say sat stood by or physically literally sat through her entire testimony watching her and maybe the details were tough for her to share in this manner remember Hicks went from a close a in the Trump business business to that position to campaign press secretary a key post for a candidate obsessed with press and while Trump has had his famous falling outs with many different AIDS a lot of people didn't last through the first year of the administration for example she kept his trust she eventually became White House communications director she witnessed every Trump Scandal as the Washington Post put it and her testimony here this week hurt Trump when she said that he had his hand in everything that he was very involved we were all just following his lead as she discussed the priorities of the campaign and Communications now why does that matter the point isn't whether he's some Apprentice style boss or not it's a much narrower point for the jury it undercuts one of the Trump defenses that I've told you about and he's entitled to his defenses but one of them is hey I was out of the loop I'm busy I'm running for president other people are getting the stuff done well this is Hope pick this is not just nobody and she's saying pretty much the opposite he was handson he set the lead they followed she also confirmed about what we heard from another witness this week that Rona graph the Trump assistant was basically crucial so that is corroboration if the Trump attorneys get up and say oh who's this who's that well the jury's got ho pcks they got the evidence they see how senior a position she held and she's the one corroborating these others and another blow to Trump's efforts to find some sort of distance from The Inquirer Hicks also confirmed with her own eyewitness account that she'd seen and heard Trump talking to The Inquirer Chief David pecker who was the witness earlier Trump congratulating on a phone call after the Tabloid went after then Trump rival Ben Carson here's what's interesting about that at the time in the in the room she knows more than most people but she might have still thought that Trump was just working the Press like usual you call the inquire one day you call Fox the next now however the jury is hearing this wider testimony and understanding this as a potential confirmation of how the Tabloid was carrying out Donald Trump's campaign edicts this wasn't like calling some someone and discussing them doing their independent reporting where you might share ideas and facts or a quote and then see what they report this was is according to the DA more like him calling someone who was operating publicly commercially for financially as an arm of the campaign but doing it off the books that's part of the crime that da is trying to prove and why the Hicks testimony combined with what we heard this week was so significant I'll tell you there's more hope Hicks also took the jury inside Trump World in a very unusual way in the very private Panic moments when the campaign was rocked by the video you see on your screen the bombshell Access Hollywood tape remember nobody knew this thing existed at the upper echelon of the campaign except for maybe Donald Trump might or might not remember what he said and this isn't just any witness as I emphasize prosecutors determined Hicks was actually the first person to bring the news of this impending video bombshell inside the campaign to the Campa aign manager to Trump and again you and I might remember hope Hicks part of the jury might not not everyone memorizes every Aid on every White House or campaign stat but boy are you going to think she's important if you determine that when the Washington Post had this bombshell the person they went to who they knew was a top Aid who would get right to Trump and the other leaders wasn't the campaign manager wasn't some other friend or family member they went to Hope Hicks The Washington Post reporter contacted Hicks with this impending bombshell scoop and a deadline for any campaign response they wanted to give she rushed it to the campaign leadership there was a pable panic and she testifies how the initial response was well you need to hear the tape to be sure but quote deny deny deny and she recounted how candidate Trump privately knew this was going to be a massive story she said this was a crisis now take that it and say okay what are we talking about we doing uh campaign memories we doing one of these documentaries where you go back and look at an old campaign no the point is not that hope Hicks has fascinating and sometimes never before heard details about that pivotal campaign moment although she does have those the point is that she was eyewitness to Donald Trump's apparent motivation which the prosecutors say is now part of the Criminal Intent in what they have indicted as this coverup and campaign felony Hicks testifying that Trump saw all of this as chiefly a problem for the campaign I'm going to read to you this key passage sometimes the key passages are just someone saying yes or no prosecutor says Trump was concerned these reports could hurt his standing with voters hope pick says quote yes so that's some of the strong testimony the jury heard here to end this week and a lot of folks probably remember where you were when you first heard about about this tape and it's raw admission of grabbing women by the and you might remember the Fallout Hicks recounting that very intense period describing to the jury how it dominated coverage leading up to the next big moment which is the presidential debate this was back with Clinton and Trump when a lot of people thought Trump was already down this was a body blow like no other this is legally relevant to whether Donald Trump was as his lawyers have suggested either not involved didn't know what was going on or to the extent he was involved it was like a personal thing or was it a campaign thing and so we've put together in the context of our reporting Beyond just what Miss hick said today some of that explosive period in the campaign home stretch Donald Trump's presidential campaign in turmoil tonight facing withering political Fallout house Speaker Paul Ryan released this statement cancelling Trump's event I am sickened by what I heard today for Republican Presidential nominee Senator John McCain pulled his endorsement say when the tape comes out he drops from 41 to 38 then on the weekend after everybody's seen the tape he falls through the floor that's why they are driving the Republican party and Donald Trump off a cliff and into the political Abyss Mitch McConnell called Trump's comments repugnant and unacceptable you do not recover from this this election ended all it can say is I am sorry now it didn't end but that was the mood Republicans did turn on Trump in that 2016 home stretch that kind of reaction might be a little bit politically unrecognizable today in the last few years we've seen entire crimes and convicted sedition and Insurrection dismissed by Republican Party leaders reminder how how much has changed once Trump did get out from under that October Scandal to go on to win the electoral college this all matters in the trial because it speaks to the campaign motivations that I keep mentioning to you and Hicks was damning on that point telling the jury that Republicans who ran Congress or had the nomination in past Cycles had particularly sharply worded statements against Trump over this issue over what he said on the tape and whether that's how he dealt with women she mentioned for example Romney Paul Ryan Mitch McConnell prosecutors view Hicks accounting as key to what they're still trying to prove to the jury why Donald Trump would in October take such extreme they alleg criminal acts in the campaigns waning weeks he was losing Party leaders his whole campaign was panicked his own top loyal AIDS saw the problem he was losing the narrative he was losing the press a lot of the mainstream press and while Trump still thought and by the way let's be clear politically this was true he thought at the time that he did have a narrow path left to the Electoral College and to winning he also perceived that one One More Story or allegation that linked up with this tape Scandal would certainly do him in the guy who has all this Bluster in public a guy who never admits to losing in private well according to his own AIDS under oath he's a bit of a different guy might be why he's effective got to remember when you're dealing with someone like this that they do play different roles and in private he thought yeah I'm losing for sure and I'm toast if one of these stories comes out that prosecutor say is how he and his campaign leadership viewed the Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougall stories hick confirming the DA's argument with evidence with her eyewitness testimony that Michael Cohen and The Inquirer had to bury both those stories and do it as a campaign plot for Trump to keep that narrow path even possibly open Hicks asking Michael Cohen for example to get the Tabloid Publishers number on November 5th remember I told you about the receipts doesn't matter what the jury thinks of either the two people in this communication or even what doing what matters is whether they think people have told the truth and what they've said about what happened matches the other documentation and this is bad news for Trump because these texts are in the evidence for the jury and this is as good a confirmation as you can get a writing between key people who were both Trump loyalists at the time going back to the Tabloid Chief David pecker Hick's testifying she asked because Trump wanted to speak with him and so she connected the two of them but she did more than that she also connected the dots becoming increasingly concerned that we were damaging um we were damaging his legacy uh what did the president say in response to what you just described he said something along the lines of um you know nobody will care about my legacy if I lose Trump hope Hicks that's what she looks like testifying on her oath that was in a different proceeding where we had cameras the Jan 6 probe in Congress we're now joined by our lawyers for this special Melissa Murray and Andrew Weissman uh Andrew I know both of you watched this uh closely today what did you think of Miss Hick's testimony I think your description of her testimony being a body blow is totally accurate um this I think took a sledgehammer to a major defense prior to her testimony a big gap in the DA's um Arsenal was did Donald Trump know about the payments to Stormy Daniels as hush many payments uh the da had conceded he did not sign the actual agreement between that Michael Cohen signed and that starmy Daniels and her lawyer signed but there was a blank with respect to uh this signature block for uh for the president um also Michael Cohen had said with respect to the payments he had said to Mr Davidson maybe I'm just gonna have to pay on my own and there was that Donald Trump was not going to pay in advance so there was a lot of concern certainly is like how are they going to link Donald Trump to the actual hush money payments with respect to Stormy Daniels David pecker had already given a link with this to Karen McDougall with spe to the doorman but the case is really about the Stormy Daniels payments and hope Hicks a reluctant witness who tearfully said and you know this is from within the Trump campaign said he Donald Trump told her that he was aware that Michael Cohen had made these hush money payments he tried to say I only learned after the fact which by the way doesn't matter if as long as he learned it and knew it before he was making all of these reimbursement payments that's good enough but hopix not only said did she say that you Reb someone if you reimburse someone for buying you crack you're still on the hook yeah and so she gave that she also suggested she didn't believe um Donald Trump's story that this was something that Michael Cohen did out of the goodness of his heart she said you know that's not who he is and he likes to take credit for things um so she she also said I don't really believe that story um and words or substance but it doesn't matter um you going to hear from the da it doesn't really matter whether you you know she believes him or not because as long as the you actually now have Donald Trump knowing about the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels that's the predicate for the false business record um the major Gap that the defense seem to want to exploit has been completely closed by a witness who I think is going to be just impossible for the defense to say was lying um and misremembered this because it was so palpable in court that she did not want to be there and did not want to give this testimony Melissa your view on the strongest testimony this past week well I think I'm a little less sanguin than Andrew is maybe a little more muted in my response to H H Hicks um she did close that Loop for the prosecution but she did also close Some Loops for the defense as well she emphasized that Donald Trump was very very cognizant of his wife's own view of the things that had happened certainly in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape that he was very concerned about her that he respected her a great deal and had instructed hop Hicks not to deliver certain newspapers that would cover the story to their resident so she wouldn't see them and that's going to be a big part of the defense here I mean they only have to establish Reasonable Doubt for a single jury to hang this jury and again they can make the point that this was never about the election this was always about his wife to be fair though as Andrew says she does link Donald Trump to all of this and his concern about the election there's a lot of testimony there when the Stormy Daniels situation does come out in the press in 2018 where he Muses that it's probably better for this to have come out now rather than before the election I think that goes right to the prosecution's case it's also the case that hope picks her self may have opened the door for some probable impeachment of her character by the defense um she notes that she didn't even see the Access Hollywood tape but her immediate response was to deny deny deny it's sort of a classic thing that a PR Flack would do but it does suggest that she was already making the case for Donald Trump without actually knowing what had transpired on that tape yeah I mean we're talking about alternative facts land so that sort of become you know Common I guess the question is Which hat do they have on and you know I do think she has some uh potential standing with the jury there and that she came through unless she's the most incredible actor Ever most people can't cry on command most people aren't able to just do that and part of what jurries do as you both know so well is use their eyes and ears to assess whether they think the current version of that they're hearing is is basically true or not or if somebody's actually lying on the stand I wanted also Melissa to draw your attention to just how different a world it is um we all know what things have been like in the last few years uh how cynical people feel about politics particularly some of the Republican party I mentioned that in in our reporting in the top of the program um to just go back and look briefly at how Donald Trump sounded in one of the only public uh statements he's ever made that could be called a partial apology um reminds you how how much of a problem this was in October take a look I've never said I'm a perfect person nor pretended to be someone that I'm not I've said and done things I regret and the words released today on this more than a decade old video or one of them anyone who knows me knows these words don't reflect who I am I said it I was wrong and I apologize I was wrong and I apologize quote unquote uh not a deep fake Melissa an actual statement under duress um how how does that work in the story that the uh prosecutors are trying to tell through these Witnesses so I think that goes to the point that the prosecutors have been trying to make and indeed I think Andrew is right hope Hicks helps to furnish that that he was concerned about this election that he was concerned about what it might mean with the electorate if news of Karen McDougall and Stormy Daniels came out especially hot on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape so again though it's a long time since this happened I mean know we've had a pandemic we've had a coup we've had all kinds of things are the jurors going to remember that in October of 2016 this was all anyone could talk about and it seemed like literally the worst thing that he could do um we've been somewhat inured to what he can and will do and I think it's very likely that this might seem really quaint to the jurors and in sort of piecing all of this together as a campaign to get elected and to silence some of these facts that could come out and be really damaging to him

Channel: MSNBC

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Length: 20min 17sec (1217 seconds)

Published: Sat May 04 2024