judge merchan. quote, this is the kind of testimony that makes it impossible to come back from. todd blanche said. that's donald trump's attorney regarding daniels' account on the stand earlier.

there's no way to unring the bell in our view. blanche also accused the prosecution of purposely trying to embarrass trump. and trying to enflame the jury following a conversation between the prosecution and stormy daniels. her testimony has now been different after the lunch break. shorter answers. less narrative. let's get right to it. >> back with us, nbc news correspondent, vaughn hillyard and joining us for the hour, former fbi general counsel and nyu law professor, andrew weissman, adam pollack and amy parnes. okay, vaughn, catch us up on what's going inside right this very second. >> reporter: they've been going back and forth over that period of time between august of, october of 2016 when daniels entered into that $130,000

agreement to keep her story silent with cohen. she believed he was a party up until march of 2018 when she appeared on 60 minutes and publicly detailed the encounter in 2006. it was not until "the wall street journal" story by "the wall street journal" in january of 2018 in which the actual arrangements, the $130,000 payment, the agreement to silence her story two weeks before the election, really truly came out in the public eye. at that point in time, michael cohen, donald trump's attorney, was making public statements but because of this agreement, the nondisclosure agreement, daniels is testifying to this jury she was bound from making public statements about it or making denials that were in fact accurate. and so this for her is sort of her chronicling how she got to

the point of actually being released from the nda and being able to detail her place in october of 2016 from not wanting to publicly share her story and getting that $130,000 for the agreement to the point in 2018 of actually detailing her story for the public at large in a very explicit, graphic interview and then ultimately just mere days later, you're hearing from donald trump on his social media account referring to her as horse face. so this is a big period of time this jury is hearing testimony from stormy daniels over. but it's important for the prosecution in presenting their case as to why she was a sympathetic figure and what donald trump knew were hush money payments then ultimately reimbursement to continue to keep her story silent while he was in the white house. >> to your exact point, peoples 408a is into evidence. it is a social media post. in march of 2023. here's what it said.

i did nothing wrong in the horse face case. i see she showed up in new york today trying to drum up some publicity for herself. i haven't seen or spoken to her since i took a picture with her on a golf course in full golfer -- i can't read what this is. typo. including a hat 18 years ago. she knows nothing about me other than her con man lawyer and jailbird lawyer they have schemed up. never had an affair. just another false acquisition by sleaze bag witch hunt to which hoffinger asks her has he called you horse face since. she says yes. i was going back to some of the testimony this morning when they were reading in his books. one of the things it says is for many years, i've said if someone screws you, screw them back.

when somebody hurts you, just go after them as viciously and violently as you can. this is not a change for donald trump. and it's something people knew when they voted for him to be president in 2016. >> that's the thing. everyone knew about everything pretty much that we're hearing about today. but you look at what was going on in the race in 2016 at the time. and you look at what they needed to do. they were in a neck and neck race with hillary clinton. i know we're dating back like ten years on this here, but and this is happening. and they have the access hollywood tape come out and there was chaos inside the campaign. we heard hope hicks talk about it earlier and now you're seeing they needed to do what they needed to do to kind of put the cabosh on this. that's what we're seeing play out. when you take a step back and look at what's happening today where everything is exposed. he didn't want any of this to come out. and you look at it and here she

is big as life testifying before the nation. and this is why we're here. >> and i think to your point, even though people knew about it, there's a reminder factor here for jurors. even for me as some of this case has unfolded, there's just so much that there are details that even having covered it, i'm like, oh, yeah, i forgot about that. so for jurors, you can imagine what this is like. >> yet you look at what happened in 2016 again and for jurors now but for voters. at the time and when access hollywood came out, when people knew who donald trump was and yet they voted for him any way. none of this is very, is new. so i wonder when you take a step back and look at what's happening today, not only with the jurors are thinking but what potential voters are thinking. >> here we are again with this particular issue becoming relevant fast forward eight years later. we have moved into cross-examination. now of stormy daniels and sure

enough, trump's attorney is the one doing the cross-examination this time and her cross-examination starts like this. good afternoon, miss daniels. my name is susan necklace. you and i have never spoken, correct? correct. necklace, you rehearsed your testimony here, correct? daniels, no. necklace, the prosecutors put you through grueling prep sessions with mock cross-examinations. and daniels says yes. necklace, you pretended to be cross examined. daniels, um, no. necklace, mock cross-examination means, there's an objection, the judge overrules. necklace, is it correct you had mock cross-examinations done? daniels, i was in correct. i did not know what true court would be like. i was asked questions as they perhaps be asked in court and we'll wait for the document to finish getting filled in here.

let me bring the question to you, andrew, as you're hearing how this cross is starting. what are your thoughts? >> i'm a big susan necklace fan. i think she's a very good defense lawyer. this is a kind of straight out of defense tricks. where you say were you rehearsed and usually witnesses will say i was prepared. and the reason witnesses tend to resist the word rehearsed is it sounds like a play. it sounds like there's a script. it sounds like it's fiction. so defense lawyers tend to use the term rehearse because they want to convey that thought. whereas the judge has already instructed this jury, it is not only proper for witnesses to be prepared by lawyers, it's actually the lawyer's obligation to prepare witnesses. so you prepare obviously the direct examination and it's totally routine to prepare

cross-examination. so i'm a little surprised she went the that. i mean honestly for the jurors, they are not aware of what happens in every case, but that is a standard thing. i just expected her to, there's so much to cross her on. i just didn't expect that to be the lead. >> i'm not sure that this really lands with the jury like is the point as you say, it's like a little trick she's trying to hide something from you. do we think the jurors think they don't prepare their witnesses? >> i think juries don't necessarily know. here, they've already been instructed. they know this is happening. i'll second what andrew said. i'm a big fan. she's an excellent lawyer. she's very good. >> and very experienced. >> you've got to think she's going to move quickly on from this to the substance, which is go on for a long time. there will be a lot of material

to cross examine daniels on. >> so we're watching in realtime as she's asking these questions and one key question she just asked is am i correct that you hate president trump. daniels says yes. necklace, and you want him to go to jail? daniels, i want him to be held accountable. she repeated, you want him to go to jail, right? and daniels, if he's found guilty, absolutely. so necklace does not appear to be handling stormy daniels with kid gloves. she's asking pretty direct questions right off the bat. is this how you would approach cross-examination? >> i think so. this is not a delicate witness. this is not a bookkeeper witness or other neutral witness. this is a core figure in this story and a core figure who they're going to try to upset. they're going to try to get under her skin and they're going to try to cross her on 63

different topics. so, yes, i would expect an aggressive cross. >> and andrew, they already know, they knew, the defense knew who stormy daniels is. they know how she is in interviews. so do you try to match, i don't know, energy for energy if it's a more demure witness, you don't want to do to go hard? if it's somebody who looks like they can defend herself, it's okay to go in tough? >> with most sympathetic witnesses, you have to be careful. that's not going to be this witness. she is her own person. but remember, donald trump's position is that she is lying. and frankly the state just brought out the tweet where donald trump said, denied everything. said they're not hiding, the state isn't hiding the position of the defense. so the defense has to take the position this is a witness who is lying about my client. and so they do have to go hard. there's ways to do it but as adam said, there's a lot of

terrible here. >> we mentioned also earlier that the prosecution briefly brought up with daniels the fact she lost the defamation case that had been against trump and she owes trump money for that reason. legal fees and necklace just brought that up as well saying you owe him today over half a million dollars. daniels says he didn't win the case. he won attorney's case. necklace, he won the case. daniels says correct. i want to bring in msnbc's chief local correspondent, host of the beat. your top thoughts now as cross-examination gets underway. >> well, it's a big day as you and your guests and legal experts have been discussing. i think if we pull back and say what has the prosecution achieved thus far, they are really rebutting this defense and what some jurors may come to see as a trump conspiracy theory

that none of this happened. that these people didn't interact. that the money was paid just to silence a random person or a person he only had a glancing interaction with. the burden is on the prosecution but the theory that the defense has, which i think it's fair to say is more expansive than if they had a different type of client, is that everyone's lying but donald trump and everyone's making stuff up and this is all out to get him and wrong and everything else. the photo on the screen, the testimony today and other corroboration cuts against that. so i think as someone who's looking at this like a story as i observe this, whether or not they went, the prosecutor, a little too far, more than they needed to in some of the lurid or sordid details is a question we can't really answer today, but they seemed to move the ball in showing the jury here's a person who is credible. a person who donald trump has been responding to and dealing with for many years and in the details of this story, they're arguing that it checks out rather than it being some wholly

made up, weird, random thing that that person is pushing. which is the defense theory. i think that's what comes through today. this is a flesh and blood witness and it had jury is going to have to decide whether she's basically telling the truth about something that happened or whether she committed perjury today. >> just big picture, ask you to put on your legal historian or historian hat. this is stormy daniels. in a courtroom before a jury among the allegations that she has made today, a sexual encounter with a married man. he had only be married for about a year. that she went into great detail about. she talks about being introduced as a porn star to a playboy play mate of the year at another event. where the future president was. she talks about and makes an allegation about a parking garage encounter that involved

threats. this is the former president of the united states. the presumed nominee for the republican nomination sitting 15 feet away from a woman who's making all of these allegations in the midst of a presidential campaign. can we just stop for a moment and say how extraordinary today is? >> well, when you put it like that, chris, i think you're right. i think that we have all been numbed in various ways. when you put it like that and we take in those facts as presented, some of them as mentioned, corroborated, we are in the very unusual and historic period. i do think it's fair to observe that people will see this in different ways outside courtroom. the jury's job is to listen to the evidence, decide who's telling the truth and whether it amounts to the crime as presented. but yes, he's also a candidate.

the judge himself had to refer to that just yesterday with regard to holding him in contempt again. so there's a reality outside the courtroom and there are people that are more inclined to the republican or trump perspective who will say how is this any different than what happened with ken starr and monica lewinsky when there were many complaints about prosecutorial powers to basically go into personal matters. there will be others who view this as one of four different cases. the only one trump hasn't managed to tangle up in delays and knots with help from people in the government and judiciary branch. that this is a serious case that only got this far because it was so bad and not because of the incident, which daniels testified to today, but because of what are alleged business fraud and campaign crimes after the incident. you don't have to be a lawyer to know the cover up can be worse than the crime. so i think in that way, maybe a test for some outside the courtroom, but inside the courtroom, it's significant because a lot of this is

corroborated and the jury is now seeing why this is the kind of thing that the nexus, the kind of thing that outside the courtroom in a campaign, via is 16 issue and one today is not going to do that well. even among independents or conservatives who might give a different republican a shot. so that i think also is the connective tissue that they have tried to show. the prosecutor saying here's what she says. this is why it looks bad. and this is why then candidate trump worked with other people they say then and afterward to make sure it never got out or he wouldn't have been president in the first place. >> we're looking at the document now. necklace continues to go after daniels for these legal fees that she owes trump for the litigation that michael avenatti had moved forward on behalf of daniels a few years ago. necklace is calling it frivolous litigation and seems to be continuing to go back and forth. in california, it has 10% annual

interest. is this the only direction necklace can go with daniels? >> i think it's one of several but i think that it can try to score points with the jury by saying you just heard a lot of stuff. sounds bad. but here's other stuff that sounds bad. this is kind of a deterioration cross-examination rather than some great single insight. mr. avenatti ended up in prison in connection to this and other cases. we just had him on msnbc within the last few weeks. his first prison interview about this case and he both said he expects trump to be convicted while also putting out several theories or attacks and he is not been deemed the most credible witness. he's also a convict to be clear. but the reason that that comes up here is obviously the cross here is trying to point out that maybe stormy daniels has other motivations. they got her to talk about a dislike for the defendant. the question is not of course whether she dislikes him.

she's allowed to. the question is whether she has such dislike or testimony and the prosecutors have tried to show clearly that everything they asked was factual and yes, i think question of avenatti about the legal skirmishes thereafter and about whether or not she's always been truthful. she, like michael cohen, more potential explaining to do which can be drawn out on cross on the trump side than some of these other witnesses where i don't think the trump lawyers got far at all. >> ari, great to talk to you. we can catch more of msnbc's special coverage and analysis of the trial at 6:00 p.m. on the beat. he was talking about the dislike and the animus that they want to bring out. you started acting in porn to make more money. correct, don't we all want to make more money. then she goes into the part about you hate president trump

and you want him to go to jail and daniels essentially says yes. and the fact she has not paid donald trump. she owes him $660,000. and you haven't paid a penny of this. you've chosen to disobey and she said correct. you will never pay president trump. correct. while all of this is happening, keeping a close eye on the jury. she reports the jury is very atented watching this heating cross carefully. also, court officers are now telling reporters they can't use binoculars. i don't know if you've ever had that situation before. what we didn't know we can only assume was what necklace's demeanor was. now we know it's a very heated cross. >> also respect to the two

susans who are colleagues who know each other and respect each other. they're both doing their job in court. just remember at the end of the day, the jury is going to be asked not do you like the person. this isn't a question of who do you want to have a drink with and do you think they're admirable. david pecker is not an admirable person. he, by his own account, said i engaged in intentional defamation in cahoots with the former president. i engaged in a catch and kill with the former president. davidson didn't look particularly good. but that's not the issue. >> people in the overflow room say this is a grilling. could that be a step too far? >> i think first of all, i think both sides have to be careful. you know, with the prosecution, if you go too far, it's going to

be used against you. it's going to be were you trying to just prejudice the defendant in the eyes of the jury when it's not relevant. if you cross examine too hard and too much when you could have, you could have done the same cross with mr. pecker, who you know, let's, these people are who they are. david pecker's testimony was beyond shocking. right? you are in the media and imagine this is somebody who is maybe it's a sort of down market, but it is somebody in the media saying oh, yeah, i engaged in intentional defamation and i was doing this for a political candidate. >> like out of a movie almost. >> for you and your world, you would say this is beyond the pale. i think at the end of the day, it's really worth remembering. this is not, for people who

dislike trump, it is not this. it could be the way he handled covid. the way he dismantled the justice department. whether he is having affairs or not and is really that's not sort of the big picture for people who are really don't want to vote for donald trump. it's not this. this really is relevant to a specific criminal case where the question of where was there a conspiracy with respect to the election and was there a cover up. this goes to the information, what they're seeing in front of them, the jurors are, is this is the information that the state allegations was being kept from the electorate in october. >> let's go back into the courtroom now and we'll see as necklace continues to cross-examination, jurors are seeing a tweet from daniels from november of 2022 where she

writes i don't owe him bleep and i'll never give that orange turd a crime. that's you making fun. you despise him. he made fun of me first. at the time you made that tweet, there were two federal court orders ordering you to may money, correct? objection, sustained. required to fill out a form disclosing assets. t you've refused to fill out the form, correct? daniels, false. you gave interview the jeff toobin saying you weren't going to fill it out. daniels, it has been. objection, overruled. necklace, did you give an interview to toobin? yes. i'm fully prepared to go to jail before doing this. did you say that? daniels, yes. you filled out the form? daniels, filled out parts of it. my attorney did it for me. adam, what's she trying to do here?

>> she's trying to show this is somebody who's subject to a court order without getting into the details about how this came about but there's a court order ordering her to pay money to donald trump stemming from this failed lawsuit about the nda, the one filed with michael avenatti in california. the judge ruled that the case was frivolous. and that's a ruling that applies to the party. not to the lawyers. sometimes could apply to the lawyer, but the lawyer ends up going to jail separately. here, the court order says your lawsuit suing to get out from this nda was frivolous and you owe money and attorney's fees then they appealed and that lost and she owed even more money. >> does this hurt daniels' credibility? that's the goal i assume. >> there's a court order. do you not follow the law? this seems like a red herring or a tangent but they'll come back to it later at closing when they start listing all of the problems with this witness. >> i want to bring in former

u.s. attorney, former state court judge and msnbc legal analyst, carol lam. you're the one who knows what it is to sit in that chair during a trial. things get pretty heated. again, described as a grilling and heated by people who are not just reading it as we are, but also seeing it. we've seen objections in this most recent one. sustained. what's it like in the heat of the moment and you're the one in the chair? >> you do have, you do have me focused, chris. i have a great deal of sympathy for judge merchan. he is dealing with a lot of emotion and he's got to have one eye on appeal and what's going to happen if there's a conviction in this case and if it goes up on appeal and he has to maintain a presence in the office that shows he is doing his level best to be fair to both parties. what you're seeing during the course of this day so far is that both sides have been pushing the envelope a bit and

it's up to him as the judge to call the balls and strikes and to say no, this is relevant enough that it comes in. no, this is too prejudicial even though it's relevant programs. too prejudicial. so you can't go into that area or when we have the sort of stumbling that went on with the volunteering by daniels about that approach in the garage where she felt she was threatened, he's now saying i'll look at a limiting instruction and tell the jury they can use it for one purpose, but not another purpose. so that's what he's doing right now. i think the record will actually reflect pretty well on judge merchan in the sense that he's not going too easy on any one party here. he's being fair to both. >> right now, necklace has asked for a side bar and now they're in a side bar. unclear what this is over but it appears she's trying to turn to some evidence that she wants to

admit into the trial here. so i'm curious as you've been listening and reading and hearing about this testimony today, carol, since it's the first time we've had a chance to talk to you, how strong a witness has daniels been for the prosecution? how damaging has she been to trump's case? >> i don't think it's a question of being damaging or strong. they had to put her on because as the prosecutor, one thing you don't want to have are a lot of holes in your case where the jurors just, they either have the choice of thinking that you haven't proven your entire case or they're forced to speculate about what a witness might say if they took the stand. and they're instructed not to speculate. she is such a large part of this story. and i think that the details you went into perhaps beyond what the prosecutor thought she was going to say with respect to that encounter in the hotel room, it is important for the jury to hear it and for them to decide even though it may not

legally be absolutely necessary, it's important for them to hear it because ultimately if they don't believe that even a consental or nonconsentual sexual encounter took place, that makes trump seem like the victim of a poor extortion where nothing happened but he was forced into this position of having to pay money. but if they believe her, it makes him a much less sympathetic figure. >> there's a pretty intense exchange going on in the courtroom between judge merchan and susan necklace. they had the side bar and what could and could not go into evidence and necklace says turn your attention and exhibit is put up on the screen and merchan says take that down, please. take it down. take it down. he is clearly upset according to our people who are in the courtroom. that it has been put on the screen. he stands up and asking for it

to be taken down and calls for another side bar. what do you imagine's going on there? >> you know, when you're in trial day after day after day, people perhaps are surprised by this, but there's a bit of a streak rolled sometimes that goes on because the unexpected always happens. people are exhausted. they go, they leave the courtroom and they're not going home and having dinner and going to bed. they're preparing for the next day. the sides get angry with each other for not turning over witness list or exhibits or taking things out of the order they expected them to be taken out of. there are misunderstanding that occur and obviously something has happened that the judge felt he did not have the opportunity to rule on whether a jury should see an exhibit yet. it may have been something that came up pretrial. so he's perturbed. this sort of thing happens. this is not a broadway play that

has been rehearsed with a dress rehearsal. >> we did just learn from one of our producers in there, we do not know what that exhibit was but we will wait to see if we find out, but as we're describing this as an intercourt street brawl, the words getting heated, all i can think of, amy, is if susan necklace is being aggressive, donald trump is enjoying it. >> oh, yeah. he's really enjoying it and saying okay, this is what i came here for. this is what i want. this is sort of rallying his base. like he loves to do. he loves to say you know, this is all bs, i'm not here. this is political. this is what they did to me and he is like letting them roll the tape. and show that he is in the right. and all of the circus is playing out and he's going to use it to his benefit and say look what happened today. she wasn't even supposed to talk about this stuff.

she talked about it. and here we are. and so i think all of this, he's going the use that to his benefit. >> and amy, i asked carol how damaging this testimony from daniels has been to his case. but i'll ask you, how damaging has this been to the man? we know how important image is to him. >> very important to him. i'm sure he is cringing in his head a bit knowing him and knowing his people. i know that they're all sitting there going this is not what we came here for. this is not what we signed up for. but i think once again, he's going to use this to his benefit. he loves the show, the theatre. he loves what's coming out now. so i think he's going to come out eventually and talk about what's happening and say that this is not that they're not doing the right things and you know, this is why everything should be thrown out and dismissed. >> but could any of these details hurt him as a candidate? >> you know, i always like to take a step back and think all

of this is playing out. you have a war in gaza. you have people talking about the economy and inflation. and cost of living. and immigration and all these issues and i wonder we're in may right now. and we have months to go until november. and you know that this is political season, this goes on forever. this can seem like ten years ago. so when people go into the voting booth or sending in their ballot, are they thinking about these moments or about what's going on at their kitchen table and what is troubling their families. so i often think about how this plays out months from now as opposed to we're all looking at the play-by-play right now, but is this really going to matter in november. >> we're going to go back to the play-by-play because they are talking about the form. that debtors are required to fill out a reform that discloses assets under penalty of perjury

and she said she didn't want to do it. i don't know if this was shown on the screen, but they put up this exhibit. j 101a and necklace says this is the document you testified you had filled out, right? sustained. so presumably there was an objection there. you said it was no longer true. you were refusing to fill out this form. yes. the form is partially filled out, right? if you turn to page three, ask about your spouse's income, you say that's unknown, right? when you filled out this form, you did not give your spouse's income, right? i would not give information that endangers my family or my daughter. it asks about the cars you own or are buying. you also refused that information. sustained. you say you have no bank account. so she's going on and on about refusing to provide the details in this document. besides them trying to impugn her character, she's not doing what she is legally bound to do,

is this going on a little bit long or she needs to really pound this home. >> i don't think this is too long. just remember, this is a criminal case. this is a witness against the defendant. and necklace is entitled to test her credibility and bring up facts the jury could find to be relevant and if she's hiding from a court order, you could bring that up. the irony, we are not, we can step back and look at the irony of the fact that it's donald trump's counsel. he just was convicted of sexual assault. defamation. and wait for it. fraud. so the idea that this is very much standard, but it's fair in the sense that she is now on the fan and that means that she is subjected to all of this. i do think when you get to redirect when the prosecution gets back up, one of the things they are going to say is you

know, you think she wants to be here? you think this is like a great thing for her? this is somebody who was attacked by the then president and now the former president with a huge following who then is cross examined, who had a lawyer who was now in jail. there's a way that can backfire when the state gets back. >> that can all come up in redirect. >> absolutely. >> and it looks like they're going more into her own personal financial situation. necklace asking didn't you tweet that pornography made you enough money that you can buy a new ranch home. daniels, i'd have to see the tweet. i don't own a home. necklace, i just pay for my new ranch. she says she wrote in a tweet in december 2022 that's what she's referring to. was that a lie. daniels, i pay rent at a ranch. i didn't say i purchased it.

necklace, isn't it true you had been hiding your assets because you didn't want to pay the judgments? daniels, no. and you didn't create a trust in the name of your daughter? daniels, no. what strikes me about this line of questioning, it has nothing to do with what the defense was saying they wanted a mistrial over when the judge was saying you can address all of those issues in cross-examination. are you surprised they're going this way, not that way? >> i think that daniels may be subject to cross-examinationfor a while. >> so we could circle back to that other stuff. >> i think there's going to be a lot of material. you look for 12 different ways to attack the central core of this case that we have a series of witnesses the defense will argue in closing that were lying and who concocted a story. a story that trump had nothing to do with. so yes, this form, it feels very far off right now, but it's one

of points where they'll say he's a liar. >> i want to bring in civil rights attorney, former prosecutor and msnbc legal analyst, kristen gibbons. put yourself in the place of the prosecutor here and she's getting a good grilling and everything is being brought up. the fact she was a porn star, she made money off this. she's not following the law by filling out this form. suggesting she owns her home. what kind of notes are you taking? how are you preparing for coming back against this or is there absolutely nothing you've heard so far that you think the prosecution couldn't anticipate? >> i think the prosecution hopefully has anticipated all of this line of questioning. it's proper cross and it really does attack the credibility and

the veracity of daniels. i think on redirect, what a prosecutor's not going to want to do is rehash all of these very disparaging and negative facts about daniels. they're going to want to focus on kind of the overlooking the credibility issues the defense is really highlighting. they're going to overlook that and talk about the corroborating evidence, which i think they did a great job outlining within their direct examination of her. specifically linking the hush money payments directly to donald trump, taking about how there was an agreement. talking about how it was canceled. talking about how in the renegotiations of it right before the election again, donald trump actually used a pseudonym. so they're going to talk about that in direct, but corroborating evidence that really focuses on the fact that whether or not they believe that there was an affair or not, whether or not they thought she lied about it or thought that

this story was motivated by something other than the truth such as money, the facts remain that donald trump really truly served to silence her regardless of the truth of the story so that he could influence the election. that's really the goal of the prosecution. now with that said, i agree with carol. undermining her credibility is going to be detrimental to her because at the end of the day, what it does is it paints donald trump as the victim of extortion as opposed to a cheating husband. but i think if the prosecution can really hone in on the fact that it is the silencing that is the focus of this, they will truly be able to meet their burden with this witness. >> let me read you more from the courtroom right now. necklace asks the question you've been making money by saying you had sex with trump for more than a decade, right? daniels says i've been making money by telling my story. that is what happened to me.

necklace exasperated is how it's characterized by our reporters, that story made you a lot of money, right? daniels, it has also cost me a lot of money. necklace, before you said you did you were denying it. and in 2011, you spoke to gloria alred about compensation. i told her i had sex with donald trump. this is your book. daniels full disclosure is the photo and what it says. necklace, phone call. who was gina rodriguez? a talent manager. some color. these questions all over the place, hard to believe the jury's able to follow where necklace is going here. what do you make of it? >> yeah, i think that it might be hard for the jurors to follow if they are taking the testimony, which is what they're supposed to do.

only taking the testimony as it comes in from the stand. they're pointing out that she was only doing this to try to make money. again, they're trying to really make donald trump the victim of this all. they're trying to shape that narrative so that they can potentially really support what they're going to probably use as the closing argument. this was a liar. she did this for money. she is not to be believed. and these are all red herrings. but i think one of the things a prosecutor could aim is like it, love it, hate it, whatever. she really had no moral obligation to really disclose this prior to the election. she was paid to be silent. again, that's the main focus. and so the prosecutors really have to, i've done it before in my line, it's not easy, but the jury does not have the like stormy daniels. she is not the complaining

witness in this case. yes, she is an important witness, but she does not necessarily make or break the prosecution's case. she merely is a critical witness because she tells the story. particularly to allow the prosecutor to get the felony, but again, underlying all of this is the falsification of these records and whether or not the hush money payment went to her in a falsified manner. >> is it important though for the jury to think that her motivation is not necessarily the fact that as she just admitted on the stand, she hates donald trump and if he gets convicted, she would like to see him go to jail, but that she's here to tell the truth. i thought it was interesting when necklace asked, exasperated again, that story made you a lot of money, right? she said it also has cost me a lot of money and this is a woman who has said in the past and could say on redirect, not only

has it cost her a lot of money, but in the six years since this encounter with donald trump, her marriage ended. she talks about having a difficult relationship with her daughter. she talks about the safety concerns in the documentary. she shows where her horse has a mark on him because people came on to her property and fired rubber bullets. so is it important though for on redirect for them to establish yes, this is a woman who's not perfect but she is not here to lie. she is here to tell her story. and that story is credible. >> yeah, absolutely. because what it does is it allows the jury to see that but for the subpoena, she would probably not be here. but if the subpoena, she would otherwise not be involved. and what that does is it breathes credibility into her testimony. she doesn't want to be there so the fact she hates donald trump and wants him behind bars is

really undermined by the process because if she really wanted him, she would be there voluntarily. not have went into all of these things. to tell another story, perhaps it wouldn't have been so emotional for her to talk about all of the safety concerns she faced, all of the familial issues she encountered as a result of going forward with the fact she had a relationship with donald trump in 2006. i think it breathes credibility into her testimony and makes her a sympathetic witness, but i think at the end of the day, she is the jury is either going to love her or hate her and the prosecutor has to focus on why she is there in the first place and that is to show that there was a direct link between donald trump's knowledge and even if it's directly shown through circumstantial evidence, that donald trump knew that the hush money payments were being paid to pay her and were not to pay cohen as a legal expense.

>> thank you so much. we appreciate your insights and expertise. what's happening right now in the courtroom, necklace continues this cross-examination of stormy daniels. and she's asking daniels about some interaction she had with another lawyer named gloria allred who's taken on a number of high profile cases. you told gloria you did not have sex with donald trump. she says no, i did not say that. i told her that i did. necklace, is there anything else and you said no. daniels, correct. i did not tell her all the sex details. i did not trust her. and necklace asks you're making this up as you sit there, right? and daniels says no. and again, daniels reiterates i did not tell her all the sex details. i did not trust her and she wanted me to accuse him of

force. basically rape. so she's pushing back on her necklace is characterizing her conversation with her. so she goes on to ask daniels a story about president trump that doesn't include sex will make you no money, right? daniels says it taught me that i should tell the truth. necklace, in other words, it taught you that if you wanted to make money off of president trump, you better talk about the sex. and daniels says no. although that does seem to be the case. so andrew, as you're hearing this back and forth, how do you think daniels is holding up to the cross-examination? >> it's hard to tell unless you're there. so you have to get a feel for it. interesting pieces to this. first of all, having a witness who's saying yes, i hate him. is actually useful for the prosecution. she's not saying no, i like him. it is fine for her to be like you know what, if she is telling the truth and this is what she lived through and she's living

through this person berating her to this huge, with a huge megaphone, don't blame her. and it's sort of a touch of, sort of badge of credibility that she's saying yeah, i don't like him. i found her conversation about with gloria interesting in two ways. one, where's the attorney client privilege? it's just odd to have the conversations with her counsel. you know, perspective counsel. that's covered by privilege so it's a little odd that that's coming out in how the defense knows about it. it suggests somewhere, someone talked about it. >> would you have expected the prosecution to have asserted themselves? >> it's not their privilege. it's hers. but she may not know that. she's not a lawyer. the other is she raised something sort of interesting. susan necklace wants to say you have to talk about the sex

because you want to sell money. and stormy daniels says gloria alred wanted me to actually accused trump of it being forcible. which stormy daniels has said this was consental. she's not willing to go there. if she wanted to just go for the money, she didn't doing that. she said it was once. if you're making up a story, it could be a lot more salacious. we're thinking this is salacious, but it is, let's just get down to brass tax. it's a one night stand. >> well, but now it's getting a little bit interesting. a little bit interesting. so she, besides giving an interview to in touch magazine, there was also an online website called dirty.com. she's saying you told them two different stories.

necklace, on one hand, you're telling a story to in touch magazine that you did have sex and on the other hand, you're telling dirty.com, you did not have sex. daniels says it was not the same time. the dirty came after i was threatened in the parking lot. going back, her statement that she's in las vegas, doing a mommy and me class and some guy comes up to her and she claims, said she needs to stop talking about this. i think it came after i was afraid. necklace, am i correct you made a statement in 2011 to e news that story about you having sex was bs although she used the formal use of that word, which, okay. daniels said i never gave a statement to to e!. i was asked what i thought of all this stuff and i thought it was bs. i wasn't specifically asked. this back and forth just getting to the point, you were telling

whatever story at the moment felt like it could benefit you. is that what susan necklace is getting to? in fact, she did tell two different stories. >> we know that already. let's get real. she was going to tell her story. you give me money, i will be silent. once she had an nda, she was also willing to say nothing happened. i mean, so that's the lay of the land. there's built-in cross material there. that she's willing to do -- should not speak for money and sell the story. two, she was willing to say publicly nothing happened and now she's saying it did happen. so, we know that going in. of course, that means you look for corroboration. let's just remember, though, at the end of the day, it does not matter. >> whether or not they had sex or not. >> that was going to be my question to you, adam. she's spending an awful lot of time trying to suggest that stormy daniels may have made up this story about this sexual

encounter with donald trump. >> while she says that, you're making this up as you sit there, right? >> why do you think she is going there? i mean, is -- is the goal to prove in some way that donald trump didn't have the sexual encounter? he's denied it, publicly, certainly. again, it's the cover-up that's the crime here, not the actual act that stormy daniels is alleging. >> i think that's right. i think she has to think from a broader perspective of attacking the credibility of witness after witness after witness. this is a witness that there are a lot of areas where they think they can attack the credibility of this witness in order to try to attack the prosecution's overall case. you might step back and think, why is the prosecution even need this witness? it could have been a very narrow, a very narrow testimony from her. yes, i entered into the agreement. yes, i was paid she doesn't actually know anything about how it was documented, how the records were kept in the trump

organization. but with a broad witness, the defense now has an opportunity to do what clearly they've been preparing for for a year. which is to drum up all of these inconsistent statements, have all this material in a file on their computer. stormy daniels cross-examination folder. it's there. it's ready and they have a hundred different areas to hit her with on inconsistent statements. >> susan necheles, you were approached by a man in a park willing lot, according to you. this man threatened you and your infant daughter. in 2011 when this supposedly happened, you didn't tell anyone? daniels, i told my close friend. it happened on your way to exercise class? i went to the rest room, but not the class. i did not return to exercise class. i waited until they were done with the class. but you didn't tell your instructor? daniels on why she was late to class, i lied to her, meaning the instructor.

i told her my baby had a blowout in the diaper and that's why i was crying in the bathroom. isn't it true when you wrote the book, you said you went right to the bathroom? so, really honing in on some small details, including like when she went to the bathroom. but also just suggesting with every phrase that, according to you, when this supposedly happened, did you tell anyone? classic defense moves. >> yeah. i mean, just to be clear, one thing that i think everyone is seeing is this is what happens at a trial. a witness takes a stand and you're subject to cross-examination. sometimes it's a soft cross and sometimes a hard cross. it's understandable why this is a hard cross. this may be a lot of theater without a lot of actual import. if you look at the doorman part of the story where everyone agrees that was a false story, and they still wanted to pay the

money to hush that person up. >> we have to say good-bye, but i want to ask you a quick question. net positive or net negative at this point for her testimony? >> positive. >> what about you, adam? >> positive to the prosecution. >> thank you for being our legal guys going through this and thank you for helping us understand the politics, the bigger picture as it relates to this election and what was happening before that election in 2016. andrew weissmann, adam palk, amy barnes, thank you all. >> thank you working with you. >> thank you for joining us. "deadline white house" starts right after a short break. right after a short break. nice to meet ya. my name is david. i've been a pharmacist for 44 years. when i have customers come in and ask for something for memory, i recommend prevagen. number one, because it's effective. does not require a prescription. and i've been taking it quite a while myself

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hi there, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. we'll start with, this is not normal. and then we'll get to the news. who would have thought that a one-night stand at a lake tahoe celebrity golf tournament back in 2006 would have led to today? riveting, bombshell, sometimes ickey testimony from the woman at the heart of the first ever criminal trial of an american ex-president. stormy daniels herself. she's on the