Law Professor Explains How Trump Defense In NYC Hush Money Trial Has Been 'Really Aggressive'

8 months ago

Randall D. Eliason, Professional Lecturer, GW Law joined Forbes Senior Law Editor Liane Jackson on "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss the hush money trial against former President Trump.

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Transcript

00:00 what kind of a hurdle and how hard do you think it will be for the prosecution to create that

00:06 nexus and to get that to the next level from just, you know, this is business finance,

00:12 this is just financial records, to actually convince a jury and convince the public that

00:18 there was a broader conspiracy and that involved election fraud and that Trump was at the center

00:23 of this to actually get a conviction on that? What are your thoughts? I mean, you worked as the,

00:28 in the U.S. Attorney's Office for D.C. as the chief of the public corruption section. So,

00:33 from your experience and analyzing what's happening, what do you think?

00:37 I feel like it's a pretty strong case. The government's going to put on a pretty compelling

00:42 case. These documents cases like this, you know, that they're really hard for, to defend against,

00:48 usually, because the documents kind of speak for themselves, right? I mean, the documents are false.

00:52 I don't think they're going to really be able to dispute that they were false,

00:56 although it sounds like they'll try. You know, they're going to try to suggest that

01:01 they were actually paying Michael Cohen for real legal services and there was nothing false about

01:06 them. But I think that's, you know, the approach that defense has taken, at least based on their

01:11 opening, is really aggressive. It's sort of, you know, these weren't false and everybody else is

01:15 lying and everybody's just out to get the president. Instead of something maybe a little

01:19 more nuanced, which could have been, well, he didn't want his family to find out about this,

01:23 so yes, he, you know, paid to have the stories, you know, bought and suppressed, but it wasn't

01:32 about the campaign. It was about personal embarrassment in his family and it's kind

01:36 of a natural thing, you know, try to kind of downplay it that way without necessarily saying

01:40 everybody's lying. But that's the approach they've taken. So I think that combined with the strength

01:45 of the government's case is going to be pretty compelling. You know, Michael Cohen, of course,

01:52 kind of the star witness, has a lot of baggage, but there will be a lot of things to back up

01:57 everything he says, including Pecker's testimony, you know, already. So the jury's not going to have

02:04 to take just Michael Cohen's word for anything. You know, everything he says is going to be backed

02:08 up by other witnesses and by the documents and I think when you put it all together, it's going

02:12 to be a pretty strong case.

Law Professor Explains How Trump Defense In NYC Hush Money Trial Has Been 'Really Aggressive'

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