Former President Donald Trump's key defense in the Manhattan criminal hush money case is unlikely to hold up, said former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance on MSNBC Friday — because there's an easy way for prosecutors to defuse it.
Specifically, it's a defense laid out by former Trump attorney Joe Tacopina in conversations with MSNBC's Ari Melber — that Trump really wasn't making a hush payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels at all, and it was a legitimate legal expense to his former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, who says that in reality he was the middleman to conceal the whole arrangement.
"That's slicing pretty thinly there," said Vance of the idea that it was just a legal payment. "But ultimately, it doesn't work."
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"In addition to the Trump books, where these payments to Cohen are coded as legal fees, and multiple witnesses have now said they were reimbursement payments to Daniels, we know that in this California litigation where Stormy Daniels — she says she didn't approve it, but her lawyer sued trump for defamation — she loses that case. She's ordered to pay Trump's legal fees," said Vance. "And as part of the filings in that case, Trump actually concedes that the $130,000 is reimbursement for the payment to Stormy Daniels."
"The prosecution can put that into evidence," explained Vance. "They may well be what happens with their last witness. We don't know who that will be yet. But that is compelling evidence, along with the Trump tweet that there was discussion about this afternoon where he talks about well, my lawyer was handling a private agreement."
"It adds up to knowledge," she added. "And it's contrary to this defense that Trump didn't know and these were just legal payments to Cohen who somehow went off as a free agent and decided to spend Trump's money for him in maybe the slim hope he would be reimbursed down the road."
Watch the video below or at the link right here.
Joyce Vance explains how prosecutors can undermine Trump defense www.youtube.com
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