get a little bit of their cross examination n. why? because the prosecutor can't speak to her then. they want to start a little bit of that this afternoon. >> mary mccord, this is a pretty powerful way to take the lunch break on a friday. >> it absolutely is. it is going to be a slightly early adjournment today at 3:45, but that still gives them a couple of hours after luchlk. i think we'll hear a lot more. defense is going to hope they can get to cross examination. i'm not sure that's going to happen today. >> thanks to you, mary mccord, to catherine christian, vaughn hillyard, peter alexander, david henderson, and victoria defrancesco soto and of course ashley parker, thanks to all, an extraordinary friday. that does it for us for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." "chris jansing reports" starts right now. ♪♪ good day, i'm chris jansing live at msnbc headquarters in new york city. hope hicks on the stand, just

moments ago asked when she first heard the name stormy daniels and karen mcdougal, two women at the heart of this case. and for the last 90 minutes or so, hicks has been telling her story under oath just feet away from her old boss donald trump. will her testimony connect the dots for the prosecution in his hush money trial? plus hope hicks is today's headliner, not every witness can be a household name. why the less flashy witnesses testifying about cell phone data and c-span tapes could be the glue that ultimately holds the prosecution's case together. and with trump constantly complaining that he can't be out on the campaign trail, should he be moving more quickly to find someone to help him out. what nbc news has learned about his search for a new running mate. that's coming up. we start in the new york city courtroom where it would be hard to overstate the legal drama that's playing out. when court resumes after a lunch break, donald trump's long-time

aide, hope hicks, someone he treated almost like another daughter will continue testifying in a case that could see her former boss go to jail. and while not speaking about the stormy daniels payoff specifically, she acknowledged trump was the one calling the shots for his campaign, testifying, quote, we were all just following his lead. i want to bring in nbc's yasmin vossoughian who was outside the courthouse. stuart stevens is a senior adviser at the lincoln project and helped lead mitt romney's 2012 presidential campaign. he's also author of "it was all a lie: how the republican party became donald trump." eli stokols is while house's correspondent for "politico" and with me here in studio, katie phang, attorney and host of the "the katie phang show" here on msnbc. few people had as much access as hope hicks did. everybody that works there in some sense reports to mr. trump, that mr. trump was the one

responsible. and then when it came to politics to the white house, she said, we were all just following his lead. what has she brought to the prosecution case so far? >> she is the proverbial fly on the wall, is she not, chris? she heard it all. she saw it all. and most importantly from what you just said to the viewers, she directly brings donald trump's involvement and knowledge into it because if you're donald trump, maybe one of your defense theories is michael cohen did it on his own. he went rogue. he decided that he thought that he could help his boss, donald trump, by making these payments and by trying to help donald trump and/or the trump campaign. but when you hear from somebody like hope hicks who was literally attached to donald trump prior to the administration, during the campaign, one of the closest people to donald trump, you hear that donald trump was actually having his hands on everything. that in and of itself eliminates any defense from trump that he had no idea, that he had no idea

what rhona graff was doing in trump tower, what allen weisselberg was doing, what michael cohen was doing. it flies in the face of any type of defense that trump has absolved himself or wiped his hands clean of any type of involvement, and that is really why hicks is so important. she's not there voluntarily. and from what we've heard from reporting from the washington post, for example, she's reluctantly testifying. it's not like she raced to the courthouse to bring him down. >> she said on the stand she was nervous. >> but being there she swore to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. she hasn't necessarily said, you know, donald trump himself said this, but my gosh has she not delivered some damning evidence for the prosecution. >> it was striking in the beginning how she seemed almost to be speaking to her former boss who, by all accounts, she still has warm regard for. she praised his work ethic, his ability to multitask, his communication skills. the fact that she is saying to

the jury that she so clearly admires him, does that make damaging testimony all the more powerful? >> it does. it just shows she's not there to be able to help the prosecution necessarily, but if it ends up helping the prosecution, obviously they'll take it. you hear that trump was so involved and he was such a multitasker, he's still slumping in his chair at some points with his eyes closed at some points, conveying a message to the jury that he either is indifferent or he just doesn't care that this is going on. and either way it's not the right message to send. >> eli, some of the most riveted and contentious testimony surrounds the reaction by donald trump in the white house to the access hollywood tape. right? the jury knows what's on that tape, but they aren't going to hear it so let me play a little bit of that, this specifically. >> you know, i'm automatically attracted to beautiful -- i just start kissing them. it's like a mag et net, and when

you're a star, they let you do it. you can do anything. >> do anything you want. >> grab them by the [ bleep ]. >> hope hicks testified she told trump when he asked her this isn't good. how much of an understatement was that considering what followed? >> something of an understatement, chris. i mean, hope hicks was sort of the accidental tourist in trump tower during that campaign. did not have any political experience. took her cues from donald trump. but his willingness and belief that he could bend reality, right, she sort of adopted that, but it had its limits and clearly when confronted with a videotape with donald trump's voice on it saying those things, it was donald trump saying, oh, that doesn't sound like me, and i believe that hope hicks just told the court that she was not, you know, going to just immediately deny that because it was obvious to her that that was donald trump on that tape saying those things, and those of us who covered the campaign recall how, you know, initially it was, well, that wasn't my voice, and then they had to push him, and

he recorded a couple of versions of a video statement, acknowledging it, dismissing it like locker room talk, and saying what bill clinton did was worse. we see him on the campaign trail disparaging other women by their looks, women who came up and said i had similar experiences to what donald trump was talking about on that access hollywood tape. over the final weeks of the campaign, you did see donald trump moving around from position to position, trying to swat these things away kind of in realtime, and hope hicks for all her, you know, naivety or lack of experience on the campaign, she recognized that this was a real liability with women at the end of the campaign. that's one of the reasons why donald trump was calling hope hicks up to the stage at rallies in october of 2016, and she was, you know, deeply involved in trying to figure out what else was out there and trying to figure out how the campaign was going to respond. >> during testimony about the

tape, our reporters on the inside say trump was watching hicks on one of the monitors instead of looking at her directly. read into that what you will. when she told him what was on the tape, she said his response was this. didn't sound like something he would say. does going over all this, that many people may have actually forgotten the details of, potentially hurt him politically? >> yeah, of course. look, if we remember when this first came out, the republican party responded like a normal party, and they knew that they had a disaster on their hands. reince priebus went so far as to looking at ways to replace donald trump, and then slow le slowly over the next few weeks they again collapse instead any -- collapse instead any kind of moral sense. all of these people who said i'm not going to support donald trump, i have daughters. but three weeks later they still

had daughters but they were supporting donald trump. i think it shows the moral emptiness of the republican party, but most people when they hear this, they think it's appalling. it's not how guys talk in locker rooms. i've been in a lot of locker rooms. guys don't talk like this, and it -- it's disgusting, and you know, i just got to say, hope hicks knew who she was working for and it's good she's coming forward now, but she knew that she was working for a guy who bragged about sexually assaulting women. that was just fine with her. she could get a job in the white house, and i think everybody should find that very, very troubling. >> we'll see if the jury makes that a part of the consideration, but charles, there was an interesting portion where matthew colangelo who was the prosecutor who was questioning hope hicks asked her about congressional reaction to the access hollywood tape, and he named names. he went one by one by one over people who had been critical of what was on that tape. there were a lot of objections that went on. what was that all about, that

back and forth from both sides, both why they were trying to put that out there and why all those objections were raised. >> a lot of it has to do with the fact that hope hicks is another witness that is going to help connect the impetus for everything that we're talking about to the notion of affecting the political campaign and the outcome of the election. so when you're talking about these other elected officials who were involved, who were engaged, who are weighing in on this conversation, it bears on the point, the prosecution's point that, look, everything that we're talking about big picture wise, when you step back, when you take these different pieces and you actually put them together on summation, you want to make it very clear, this was all about the election, and it was a politically motivated action. and even as you sort of isolate these different things, you want to point out the fact that this access hollywood tape really had people concerned, and it was something that wasn't under the radar in any respect at all, so much so that you had some of the most important people in the

country weighing in on this actual issue, and the objection, or the objections were basically trying to minimize that to try and quiet that so that people didn't necessarily get the magnitude and the scope of how big this access hollywood explosion really was. >> yasmin, i want to pick up at that point, you've been there every day. you've followed all of the testimony. hope hicks does indeed know all the players, including people like rhona graff who have already testified. did she sound to you as you have been following this in your mind as the person who can help the jury understand how everybody and everything fits together? >> reporter: to me, short answer yes to the jury, possibly so, because i can't necessarily speak for them, but i would say that's essentially what the prosecution is trying to establish here, right? do you know rhona graff? she answer those questions, right outside of donald trump's office on his floor. do you know allen weisselberg,

do you know michael cohen, do you know stormy daniels, do you know karen mcdougal. do you know each and every one of the players? do you know david pecker? do you know keith davidson. each and every one of the players we may be hearing from, folks that we've already heard from as well, and then connecting some of the stories, interlocking some of the stories that we've heard, specifically from david pecker, some from rhona graff as well, keith davidson as well, some of the communications we've heard from them as well. a couple of the rapid fire questions i thought were really interesting, right? essentially this case is about did donald trump know what he was doing, right? did he know michael cohen was paying off stormy daniels and karen mcdougal that he subsequently then paid michael cohen back for and establishing that intent, right? and some of those rapid fire questions at hope hicks i thought were fascinating. did he feel as if in the lead up to the election after the access hollywood tape was released that he was going to lose votes with women? were there reactions from other republicans? what were those reactions?

did he feel as if it was going to affect the election come november after the release of this access hollywood tape, right? establishing the intent, the desperation, establishing the desperation of a man running for president of the united states who knew all of the ongoings inside of his organization, all of the ongoings inside of his campaign as hope hicks talked about. why would he not then subsequently when this information came out, reaching out, hope hicks talking about that, the reach out was to hope hicks herself about the karen mcdougal story. she subsequently reached out to michael cohen as well, michael cohen denying it, david pecker saying it was for legitimate work. putting all of those characters, all of these stories together, she is integral. she is an integral piece, chris , to this puzzle. one more thing i want to add to this, wrapping at 3:45 today, a juror has an appointment. we're going to get out a little earlier today. i expect that we're going to

remain in prosecution. we're going to remain with the people's attorneys in questioning of hope hicks. they're not going to toss this off to cross examination before monday. that is my expectation. when you think about when we're going to return from lunch. they've only got about 90 minutes or so left in their questioning of hope hicks there. >> so charles, if you were -- thank you very much, yasmin, for that. if you were the prosecutor, what would you be doing as we come back from lunch? >> i'm doing the same thing that yasmin just described. i'm not going to necessarily try to give them a chance to start their cross examination. i'm pretty sure that that's it. i'm also going to, as much as i can, drive home the proximity that hope hicks had to donald trump. for most people who follow the news, that's not a surprise. however, for people who are out there saying, well, it's obvious how close she was, that's not as obvious to someone who's sitting on that jury who doesn't follow the news and who may not

necessarily be politically astew. it matters because what it does is helps to bolster her testimony because she's one of the few witnesses like a david pecker, for example, who doesn't come in with a shroud of credibility issues hanging over her shoulder. and so because of that, you're going to want to say when you're on summation, because, again, part of what you're doing when you are a prosecutor is that you're getting different dots, and you're putting dots in front of the jury, and then when it's time for summation, it's your job to connect the dots in a way that your argument makes sense to the jury. the dots you want to get from hope hicks, you're going to say, look, you heard from david pecker, someone who was close to donald trump, who was able to establish what this scheme was and lay things out for you. you heard from this person and that person, and hope hicks is another person who's not going to have a huge issue around credibility out of her. you want to get as much out of her in terms of her proximity it to donald trump and her understanding of what donald trump was thinking so that you can explain to the jury what his motive was in all of this. >> and the presentation and the

way the jury reacts to her to state the obvious, eli, is so important. help us understand about the relationship during the white house years, and obviously during the campaign between hope hicks and donald trump. there were also some reports that after she did testify to the january 6th committee, he turned a little cool toward her. i don't know how much you know about that but also the way she presents in person because i have heard folks who have seen her the way most people have, which is on television and not very much because she was not someone who ever sought out the camera. that's for sure. that she's kind of mysterious. give us your sense of hope hicks and how she fits into all of this. >> i think all of those are really smart points, chris. going back to the campaign, this is someone who came from the trump corporation, had no political experience. donald trump immediately took a liking to her, and over the course of the campaign, she became kind of like an extended

family, another daughter, someone who was so close to donald trump and really had earned his trust. she was there, you see it in all these pictures you're putting up on the screen. she was there next to him at almost every appearance, on the plane with him almost every flight. she testified when there were reports of karen mcdougal stories going around "the wall street journal," she was the one who asked jared kushner, hey, can you maybe reach out to rupert murdoch, can you see what's going on here and maybe knock this down. she was in the middle of everything, and for someone who spent that much time kind of in the eye of the hurricane, you know, over the course of the campaign and then in the white house, for as young as she is, she does have this sort of preter natural calm about her, it's one of the things that i think endeared her to the trump family in the beginning and then they saw somebody who was competent and capable and who presented well outwardly. she will probably come across the same way to members of the jury, that this is not someone with an axe to grind.

this is not someone who's out to get donald trump. there's no mistaking her for a cassidy hutchinson or alyssa farah griffin, one of these formers from the trump white house who has turned into a never trumper figure. that is not hope hicks. the way she speaks, she's very deliberate, methodical. reports from the courtroom is she has not had a lot of i don't recall moments. my sense is that she will come across rather credible in demeanor and, you know, the questions are presented to her to illuminate just somehow involved and how close she was to donald trump, the family and to these events. i'm assuming that she will answer them pretty straight forwardly and make it very clear that she was right there this whole time. >> which leads me perfectly, eli, thank you, to the folks who we're hearing from for the first time. our reporting team just got to the cameras. let me bring in msnbc legal correspondent, lisa rubin, and msnbc contributor and "new york times" investigative reporter sue craig who have been in the

overflow room where members of the press can listen to what's going on because there's limited space inside the courtroom. i'm going to pick up right there, lisa, who is the hope hicks we saw on the stand or rather, i should say, you saw on the stand? >> the hope hicks that i saw on the stand today, chris, was the one that i was expecting, but i'm not sure that everybody in the legal field was. when michael cohen pled guilty and after the southern district of new york decided that they were no longer going to be investigating anybody in connection with an investigation, you remember in the summer of 2019, they released a bunch of documents relating to the cohen investigation including some search warrants, and those search warrant affidavits go through in methodical detail who talked to who and when in october of 2016, and there were a number of calls between michael cohen and hope hicks. there has been an assumption on many people's parts that that meant that hope hicks knew all about the stormy daniels and

karen mcdougal payments. but as she testified today, she only learned about the karen mcdougal situation when "the wall street journal" contacted her on november 4th, 2016, and similarly, she said she had only heard stormy daniels' name once before in the context of flying on trump force one when some guys on the plane were apparently joking around with the former president about a celebrity golf tournament at which stormy daniels had been a guest. now, you might say how could she deny that, the record is there. there are all these phone calls. if you look at what hope hicks has said in the public record in the past, perfectly consistent. she told them what she is telling this jury now, that as close as she was to donald trump, as much as she spearheaded the campaign's communication strategy, she was not aware of alleged hush money payments to either of these women until notified about them

by the press. so what i'm most interested in today from hope hicks is not what she's talked about already. it's the time period beyond here when she goes to the white house. i want to understand how did hope hicks come to understand a version of this story that's different than the one that donald trump and others were telling her in and around october of 2016. because she's testified today she spoke, and all of them told her that they didn't either know about the arrangement, which was cut with ami or that it was an arrangement for services as david pecker persuaded her by phone. at some point on the other hand, hope hicks comes to learn the truth. that's because david pecker has already told us that sometime in 2018 he gets on the phone with sarah sanders and hope hicks and talks to them about whether he should prolong karen mcdougal's settlement by extending it and paying her more money, and they agree at that time it's a good idea. you don't tell david pecker you think that's a good idea unless

you have some inkling about what karen mcdougal might say in the public domain if freed from those obligations. and so i'm really looking forward to this afternoon, but the person i saw is totally credible, even if the story she's not telling is the one that some folks anticipated. >> you know, chris, it's interesting because i just also watching her was fascinating. she was a little bit nervous at first, but she's a credible witness. she does present well, but i have to say what i was fascinated with was just how almost immediately she put us back in october 2016, and she had a front row seat to that access hollywood tape, not when it ran, but before it ran, and she talked about how on october 7th at 1:29 p.m., she got an email from david farenthold then at "the washington post" saying we have this tape. he had attached a transcript of it to the email, and he had told her it includes very vulgar language and that he wanted

response immediately from the trump o. organization. and in fact, they ran it a few hours later. we saw what happened right after that email landed at the trump organization. she forward it is to a number of senior people including, i believe, kellyanne conway was on that, steve bannon, a number of senior people at the campaign who happened to be doing prep for a debate, and one of the things she puts when she forwards it is deny, deny, deny, and then she goes up and she finds them doing the debate prep, and they have a meeting about it that eventually catches donald trump's attention, and everybody is freaked out about the effect that this could have on the campaign, and she can't remember exactly if she saw the tape. i think it was before or after it was published, but the effect that it had on the campaign was nuclear, and at one point she even said there was a hurricane -- i think it was hurricane matthew, category 4 hurricane was, you know, barrelling through and about to

make landfall and nobody remembers that. it was just this tape just consumed multiple news cycles. so it was just -- it was really interesting to hear her -- just her side of what happened right when that tape hit. >> yeah, there was a political hurricane blowing through. we got observations about hope hicks, now we want to talk a little bit about donald trump, and for that i want to bring in msnbc's host of "the last word" lawrence o'donnell who was inside the courtroom today. we're showing a picture of you behind former president trump in court yesterday, and ab on serve observer from sue's paper "the new york times" wrote as he walked by he was squinting strangely. i wonder if you were aware of that moment but also your observations of trump today in court. >> well, i was very aware of that moment yesterday. the whole courtroom was. everyone who had been there -- this is my first day yesterday.

everyone said it was the strangest thing they'd ever seen him do in a courtroom. he was getting up to leave, and i was sitting actually in the late afternoon at an even closer seat to trump than the one in that shot we just showed. i was on the aisle, and so when he was walking by my position at the aisle, he decided he was going to stare at me and what i'm sure he was hoping was some kind of intimidating look, but he was trying to load so much into it, anger and hatred that it just became a crazy look. it was just a crazy face, and i was just, you know, lightly smiling back at him hoping he could read my mind, which was to -- which would have been if i had a question, how stupid does it feel that your life has ended up in this room in this way. i was completely relaxed about it, but you know, it was very

peculiar, and of course -- and i said last night, you know, at the last word ten feet in where i'll be reporting again tonight, that donald trump shouldn't have done that. he shouldn't have given the whole room this hateful reaction to someone in the audience and letting everyone see how much just the presence of another person in that audience got to him. and of course today he took my instruction from last night on television and this time he studiously avoided looking at me, and there was a moment during a recess where he turned around and was looking at the entire audience just letting his eyes wander around the room. it's something he likes to do. he likes to see who's there. anderson cooper is across the aisle from me. that's the kind of thing donald trump likes to take in, and his eye movement was flawless in the way it stopped right at the line

of the man sitting beside me and would never -- would never then move another, you know, half inch to take me in. it was a very -- it was the most studious avoiding of eye contact that i think i've ever seen. >> i'll just say i've known you and we have worked together for i think close to 25 years now in one form or another, and i have never known you to be intimidated, so there's that. but today was there any moment when you were observing donald trump that a particular part of the testimony he seemed engaged to you or he reacted to, lawrence? >>. >> well, i think we are always trying to find something in a silent character in a room that especially a defendant in a courtroom, we're always looking for things and trying to interpret what does it mean that the jury never looks at him?

what does that mean when they walk by him and they speed walk past him as if they're trying to get past a horrible thing. they never look at him. some jurors in other cases will look around the room, they will take in the defendant, and then there's the question of what's the defendant doing. and i think today we actually had what may be a meaningful moment of that kind of observation, and it was right at the end as we broke for lunch when witness hope hicks was leaving the witness stand, and she walked by donald trump within less than an arm's reach from each other and neither one of them looked at the other. donald trump made sure that he was busy talking to todd blanche, and hope hicks very deliberately avoided any regard at donald trump, any look at him. it wasn't like david pecker's smile to the defense table when he walked by. that's allowed. you know, there's nothing wrong

with hope hicks saying hi to her former boss as she walks by the table or nodding or smiling, that's all available within the normal kind of behavior of that courtroom in that moment, but there was nothing. there was absolutely nothing between those two. maybe that will change. maybe there will be another moment where they exchange some kind of silent human contact, but not today. it didn't happen when they broke for lunch. that was the first opportunity for it and hope hicks didn't take it, and donald trump didn't take it. >> lawrence o'donnell, thank you for coming out and talking to us. that is absolutely fascinating. let me go back to sue and to lisa and, sue, let me ask you the same thing. we always look for the momentums, right, that either the jury reacts or donald trump reacts, but there's also an objective sort of analysis of a moment in a trial, not necessarily when it turns.

i'm not asking you about a smoking gun, but when it's clear that something has landed that will either set the stage for the rest of the trial or may make a difference in jury deliberations. did we have that moment yet with hope hicks? >> two come to mind, and i'm a reporter so they both speak to the reporting aspect of this, but there was one when "the wall street journal" sends an email over and they are preparing to run a story about karen mcdougal right before election day in 2016, and when that note landed, it was from michael roth at the journal, he now works at "the new york times." chaos ensues at the trump organization. the reflex was to take it up the chain to rupert murdoch, and jared kushner made a call to rupert murdoch. he ended up not getting through. it shows you the reach they felt they had, they had access to

that sort of individual, the head of fox, the company also owns the wall street journal, and there was another moment where hope hicks, you know, we've heard she's sort of in and out of meetings a lot at trump tower, and early on there was this moment where donald trump is on the phone with david pecker, and he happens to be on speakerphone with him, and they're talking about a story. it happens to be one of the case was a story about ben carson and the "national enquirer" that he had left -- that ben carson had left a sponge in somebody's head. we now know it was a story that either michael cohen or somebody made up and sent over to the "national enquirer" and it was embellished. and donald trump was talking toed david pecker about this story and tells david pecker he should win a pulitzer for it. this moment with david pecker, really underscores the close nature of the relationship of those two men, which will be

very important this this trial and is important. >> i also want to ask you rnd that sort of same heading of things that ultimately are important, if i can, lisa, about something you wrote about and that struck me before court got started for the day, which is the sort of back and forth, what should go in, what shouldn't go in and the idea of stipulation. there are certain things that can be put into evidence that the defense could simply say that's fine. we'll let it go in. we don't need to bring in a witness. we don't need to go through a bunch of questions or big rigamarole, and yet, they have not done that, and i wonder -- well, let me read a little bit of what you wrote in our document that goes internally, you said you found that strategy silly at best and obstructionist at worst. at its most absurd when it comes to trump's own words on social media platforms. help folks to understand what you were talking about and why it is important because i wonder if it gets to the jury, if it sort of gets messaged to the

jury, even though they're not in the room when this back and forth is happening. >> let me say this, first of all, from the trump team's perspective, they know that these statements are substantively damaging. they're taking a hypertechnical view of the law and trying to find rules of evidence that might support their ability to keep out these statements. one of the things that they were saying is the very date and time stamp on some of these tweets and truth social posts were themselves hearsay, that a date or a time is itself an out of court statement being offered for the truth of the matter asserted and, therefore, it should be kept out of evidence, for reasons i don't think our viewers care about. judge merchan didn't agree with them, and he let those in. it really shows some desperation on their part to avoid the jury seeing these documents. as for the fact that the d.a.'s office has had to painstakingly lay the admissibility and foundation of these documents, it sort of cuts both ways because on one hand, some of

that testimony is dull. it's far from scintillating. it's like as far afield from keith davidson talking about hulk hogan and lindsay lohan as you could get. on the other hand, it also means that the jury will see some of this evidence more than once. so for example, there are a series of tweets that donald trump wrote in mid-october 2016 as he was already under siege from the access hollywood tape, and then was facing new allegations from women who were not stormy daniels and karen mcdougal, but who had nonetheless come forward to say in the wake of access hollywood, that too had been abused or at least objectified by donald trump. those are tweets that the jury saw twice today. saw it first through the witness who had to authenticate it and then they saw it again through hope hicks who was asked do you remember this and who else besides trump had the authority to write this. she had to affirm that was trump's language. either he wrote it or approved dan scavino sending it. >> i'm not a -- go ahead, chris.

>> i just want to read what she's referencing and i'll go back to you, sue, but as long as she referenced those tweets, i think it's important for people to see what she's talking about. may 3rd, 2018. trump tweeting mr. cohen an attorney received a monthly retainer not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he sprd into through reimbursement a private contract between two parties known as a nondisclosure agreement or nda. these agreements are very common among celebrities and people of wealth. in this case it is in full force and effect and will be used in arbitration for damages against ms. clifford, in other words stormy daniels. the agreement was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about the aaffair despite already having signed a detailed letter admitting there was no affair. prior to its violation by ms. clifford and her attorney, this was a private greem. money from the campaign or

campaign contributions played no role in this transaction. charles, you're smiling. >> i am because i understand lisa's point generally around the reticence to stipulate, particularly things that are on social media, but it's also important to understand it's not donald trump's defense attorney's job to make the prosecution's case easier. it's not their job to try and allow them to get more information in that to her point about them hearing tweets twice that they will hear multiple times. i've been on trial a number of times where there have been things as a former prosecutor that i thought why wouldn't you stipulate to this. why wouldn't you sort of make this just easy to come in, and the simple answer is because i don't have to. and you also have to remember just in terms of understanding the technical nature of trial, donald trump's attorneys work for donald trump.

he is not comfortable and not allowing his attorneys to simply allow things to be stipulated into evidence or stipulated as truth, for example, even if it means making arguments to lisa's point that the time and the date stamp are hearsay, an argument which judge merchan didn't sort of buy into. i think it represents a very interesting dynamic of when you have a difficult client and someone who forces you to make very tricky decisions that ultimately could compromise your credibility in front of the judge. many of us have been there, especially on the defense side. it doesn't necessarily make your job easier because you're trying to balance what you know is a good argument and a strong argument in front of the court versus the preferences and desires of your client, and i think that that's where donald trump's attorneys, you know, are. so i don't necessarily see the resistance to stipulation as silly. i understand it. i think that there are some

instances where they could have avoided it. there are others where looking at it objectively, i get why they weren't so eager to stipulate, hey, this is fine, and we're accepting this as is. >> so much of this takes place not in front of the jury, though. let's make sure this is clear. the jury doesn't see this. >> this was all before the jury was even called in. >> exactly. >> i need to go back to lisa because apparently in the many tweets that donald trump puts out every day and in this case on may 3rd, 2018 those are not the exact tweets you were referencing right? >> no, i was referencing some tweets from october of 2016 because one of the things that the prosecution is using hope hicks to do is to sort of contextualize what was happening in the campaign during this frenetic period in which michael cohen is trying his damnedest to get a settlement for stormy daniels. hope hicks is bringing us back as sue said to the campaign, but also reminding us that in

addition to the access hollywood tape, during that two-week, three-week period of time right before the election, there were other women who came forward too. so donald trump was sort of like he couldn't get out under the access hollywood tape because there were these other allegations. the tweets that were shown to the jury twice are tweets from october 11th, 2016, october 15th and 16th. they are ones in which he is denying these other allegations, calling them totally made up and that it's rigged. he's criticizing john mccain for disavowing him. mccain revoked his endorsement of donald trump and trump was quite angry about that. hope hicks has been really useful not only in reading those tweets aloud. jury's seeing it for the second time, but also reminding people of the interparty squabbling going on at the time as people like mitch mcconnell and john mccain and paul ryan and mitt romney were all trying to

distance themselves from donald trump and the remaining weeks before the election. and of course all of this is the backdrop against which the stormy daniels negotiations are taking place. negotiations that donald trump, for as close as he was to hope hicks not only hid from her but lied to her about when she asked him to his face, what is this story about. >> chris, because i remember during that period there was so much going on in addition to biting off the stormy daniels and the karen mcdougal, stuff that was popping up. "the new york times" had run a story on multiple women that had come forward and hope hicks really does put us in there. the other thing hope hicks does that we haven't really talked about is just reminds people back then how small the organization was and that the statements that ultimately did go out in response to these various allegations, donald trump was very involved in crafting the denials, and in some cases we saw what had been planned to go out, which was much longer and then what he

ended up putting together. so it was interesting to see in a remainder just how, you know, there was really maybe less than ten people that were just crucial in this campaign and how he was really in charge of -- he was reading all the media. he was very involved in all of the strategy, media strategy for various issues including the allegations of various women who came forward. >> that's such an important point. this was in no way, shape, or form a traditional presidential campaign. lisa and sue, thank you as always for spending your lunch with us. i don't know when you guys eat, but thank you. joining us now msnbc legal analyst kristy greenberg who has also been in the court overflow room today. one of the things we were talking about before, kristy was the introduction at least initially of this big article that came out in the wall street journal kind of the first major exposure of all of this. i wonder what you think of ha as

a piece of evidence? >> so this was a hugely significant portion of hope hicks' testimony. she testified that just in the days before the election that this "wall street journal" article came out exposing the "national enquirer" essentially squashing a story for donald trump. so hope hicks testified that she called michael cohen about it. michael cohen denied knowing anything about it. he lied to her, and then she called david pecker at ami. and david pecker went with the story. hey, this is a legitimate contract that we had with karen mcdougal to do magazine covers, and what was significant about that is donald trump then followed up with hope hicks and said what did david pecker tell you, right? in other words, donald trump wanted to know is david pecker sticking to their cover story, this had nothing to do with hush money. i thought that was a really

important point for the prosecution to bring out. it's also showing that hope hicks is pretty credible here. she really didn't know anything about these hush money payments. she's trying to find out information. they're not telling her what's going on. that was made all the more credible by when she testified, she said i was hired four years out of college. i was hired to be the campaign press secretary sort of as a joke. i had no experience, but then i was around the campaign a lot, and so i got that title, right? she's there every day. she's talking to donald trump, but she really wasn't part of the inner circle cleaning up his dirty work. she came across as very credible, and donald trump's reaction to that story and wanting to make sure everybody was sticking to their stories was an important point for the prosecution. >> thank you for that. >> eli, again, i think what we just talked about is so smart. when these various things came out, the access hollywood tape or the "wall street journal" and

donald trump became aware of them, a very small number of people were people he really trusted, right? some of those people presumably now as we sort of apply this donald trump who keeps very closely the people he trusts, whether it's in his business, his campaign or the white house, he has this. he has the campaign, he has three other potential trials coming up. the level of closeness, i guess you would say, and the fact that some of the people maybe even at that time that he was counting on, i'm thinking, for example, jared and ivanka who have gone off to do other thing, however you want to phrase it, who is there for him really besides his lawyers as he moves forward into this very critical time both in the campaign and in the trials? >> a lot of those original

associates are no longer there because they've been subpoenaed or forced to plead guilty to various crimes as a result of their work for him. the man's agreeing to their demands that they would do whatever he needed them to do. that's the kind of loyalty donald trump required for people working in his organization. now there are different people who have basically put themselves down at mar-a-lago, aides at the white house. other who are there sort of as a support system for him. it's a slightly different team than some of these originals, but he still has that network. you've seen as fast as he goes through lawyers, as quickly as he goes through staff sometimes, you know, there's some professional campaign folks who are running the trump presidential campaign. there are other advisers who have been in his orbit a long time, and there are other sort of personal aides who are there to assist him to travel with him at sort of fill out his

entourage. the through line is donald trump is sort of the singular phenomenon. everything revolves around him. very little happens without him knowing about it, signing off on it or directing it. i think that is one of the things that hope hicks was testifying about today in court going back to 2016, and that is still going to be the situation in terms of the way donald trump is sort of approaching the day-to-day with this trail and certainly the campaign and it's just that's been sort of how he runs his show, you know, for decades, that it's him calling the shots, him making the decisions and the people around him are there to kind of carry out his wishes and to make the messes go away. >> exactly the points that so far with key witnesses the prosecution has been making. thank you both, charles coleman you're going to stay with me. up next while we wait for hope hicks' testimony to resume

and we're less than half an hour away, judge merchan has been running a pretty tight ship in terms of timing, a trump trial zoomout, the most critical witnesses, the most valuable testimony so far and what legal experts are watching for going forward. our coverage continues right after this. ard. our coverage continues right after this so this is pickleball? it's basically tennis for babies, but for adults. it should be called wiffle tennis. pickle! yeah, aw! whoo! ♪♪ these guys are intense. we got nothing to worry about. with e*trade from morgan stanley, we're ready for whatever gets served up. dude, you gotta work on your trash talk. i'd rather work on saving for retirement. or college, since you like to get schooled. that's a pretty good burn, right? got him. good game. thanks for coming to our clinic, first one's free. arthritis pain? we say not today. tylenol 8 hour arthritis pain has two layers of relief. the first is fast, the second is long-lasting. we give you your day back, so you can give it everything. tylenol. number one doctor recommended

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tabloid headlines. like hicks' testimony, donald trump's new york criminal hush money case has so far at times been explosive as the prosecution continues to weave its way through this story with moments that could stand out even for the most seen-it-all new yorkers on this jury. right now, we are on witness number nine, and according to our team, the jury has already heard a little more than 19 hours of testimony as we near the end of week three. charles coleman is back with me. so we did this deep dive on hope hicks. besides her, let's zoom in for a moment. who else do you think has given the most important testimony? who has been the most important witness so far. >> i've got to go back to the beginning and start with the lead off witness for the prosecution, david pecker. he is someone who is unsullied despite his ridiculous past in terms of fake news, his credibility in front of the jury laying out the prosecution's case is solid.

then on cross-examination, he did well. it's been basically untainted, so he's got to be my most important witness to this point. >> he was unapologetic, that's for sure. talk about what you think the most important piece of testimony has been. >> i don't think there's any one piece of evidence that has been the biggest block buster piece of evidence. any and everything, whether that's a time line, a conversation or recording that connects this entire scheme to the time line connected to the election is critical, and it's critical because ultimately what alvin bragg's office is trying to show is that donald trump was trying to influence the outcome of the election, and that's going to be a key element in proving their case. so all of those pieces of evidence that talk about whether it's where something took place in terms of the time line, the content of the conversations, referencing the elections should be paid now or after the election, for example, all of these things shows that the election was top of mind for

donald trump and michael cohen when they went through this, and those pieces of evidence are going to be critical in the prosecution proving their point. >> so we've got a lot road ahead, potentially many many more witnesses, but what are you looking for, watching for going forward. >> let's change to the defense. they have had a two-pronged strategy in terms of how they're defending this case. one of them is to try and create as much distance between donald trump and all of the other actors like michael cohen, for example, such that they could try and get one of the jurors to believe maybe michael cohen acted voluntarily around some of this, in such that donald trump avoids liability. that is one area they're trying to take. the other sort of route they're looking to do is, you know what, we don't have strong facts on our side. let's confuse everybody, muddy everyone up. attack everyone's credibility. i'm curious to see, whether a, that continues, and b, as we get into the witnesses like michael

cohen, how effective it's going to be and is donald trump going to violate this gag order yet again. >> everyone is waiting to see that. somehow i let it slip my mind. charles coleman, thank you very much. coming up, we are moments away from when hope hicks' testimony is set to resume in former president trump's hush money trial. all of those details coming up live. stay close, more "chris jansing reports" right after this. s" ri. when migraine strikes, you're faced with a choice. accept the trade offs of treating? or push through the pain and symptoms? with ubrelvy, there's another option. one dose quickly stops migraine in its tracks. treat it anytime, anywhere without worrying where you are or if it's too late. do not take with strong cyp3a4 inhibitors. allergic reactions to ubrelvy can happen. most common side effects were nausea and sleepiness. migraine pain relief starts with you. ask about ubrelvy.

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. welcome back to our second hour of "chris jansing reports." to quote former trump white house aide hope hicks, this was a crisis, a damaging development that would push things backwards, that's the moment she describes after the height of the 2016 campaign. she'll be back on the stand just about 15 minutes from now, when court breaks for lunch. the prosecution set to begin questioning her about how the pressure on the team continued to build after adult film stormy daniels and karen mcdougal came forward with accusations that they had had affairs with trump. i want to bring in nbc's vaughn hillyard reporting from outside the courthouse in new york. also with us