Donald Trump's lawyers have spent the majority of his Manhattan hush money trial attempting to frame his former lawyer as acting without authorization.
Trump faces 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to conceal a payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels for an alleged one-night stand.
According to the arguments in court over the past few weeks, Trump's ex-lawyer, Michel Cohen, acted independently. However, on Thursday, testimony continued with Daniels' former attorney, Keith Davidson, who negotiated the deal with Cohen.
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Davidson was asked about various conversations he had with Cohen, and Trump's lawyers specifically wanted to know more about those messages after the election. The questions painted Cohen as a kind of disgruntled former employee angered about not being given a job in the White House.
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"It became apparent as they were going through the cross of Keith Davidson — and how vicious it was — that I think they are trying to make Keith Davidson and Michael Cohen out to be these two scoundrels that were conspiring and Donald Trump is the victim," New York Times reporter Susanne Craig explained.
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace was aghast, exclaiming a question of what exactly Trump was the victim of.
"Of an extortion plot, that he was being extorted," Craig explained.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann agreed, saying what struck him the most wasjust how contentious it got between Davidson and Trump's lawyer Emil Bove.
The prosecutors were deliberate and polite with, Davidson, he said. That wasn't the case with Trump's lawyers. Tensions increased and Bove was "hostile" with the witness.
All they should have done, Weissmann said, is have Davidson confirm that he never worked with Trump and went only through Cohen, so he didn't know anything about "falsified business records." That is what Trump is on trial for, and that is all that matters, he noted.
"So, instead, there was a lot of drama," Weissmann explained. "That's not a defense. It's a distraction defense. But just to focus on what the import of Davidson was, it is how you started. To sum up the actual import of today, it was the, 'What have we done?'"
The comment he cited came from a text exchange with Davidson and the editor at the National Enquirer on election night when Trump had been declared the winner.
Prosecutors confirmed the timeline using Davidson as the witness, he continued. All of this happened before Nov. 8, 2016.
"And even on cross — where they said, you knew, that you needed the leverage, and you had leverage before the election and not after? And he goes, 'Absolutely.' That's not a cross point," Weissmann explained.
"That is the conspiracy," said Craig.
So, Cohen couldn't have orchestrated the whole ordeal out of anger for not getting a White House job. The election hadn't even happened when the documents were signed and notarized.
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