'He is on record': Weissmann reveals key Trump admission that’s 'on paper'

Joining me now is Ashley Parker. She’s just senior national political correspondent, The Washington Post. Andrew Weissman is former general counsel at the FBI, and Neal Katyal is the former acting US solicitor general. So I want to get into the whole pics of it all, but I want to start, Andrew, with you because you said that her testimony was devastating to Trump’s case. Why so? I think you outlined it very well, which is sort of you. You really have to think about where is this case going to be at the time of summation. And what she gives is really direct evidence from Donald Trump’s mouth that he was aware of the hush money scheme. With respect to Stormy Daniels, that was a hole in the case until she testified because if you recall, until she testified, there was a lot of talk about how Donald Trump didn’t sign the agreement between Stormy Daniels and essentially Michael Cohen, that there were four signature lines, but only three were signed. Donald Trump didn’t sign. And so there was this issue. Did Michael Cohen do this on his own and Donald Trump never knew? Well, she basically made it clear, of course he knew. And she has a direct statement from him as well as, as you pointed out, her concern that, you know, there’s no way Michael wouldn’t have told him because she would. He would have wanted credit. And he’s also not the kind of guy who would have done this on his own. Notably, what she didn’t say is that Donald Trump, when he learned of this, was like, Oh my God, what did you do? In fact, he said it was in his interest to do that. Finally, we’re going to see this week the sort of the end result of what she’s saying, which is that he reimbursed that $130,000. And I just want to make it very clear, he is on record in a civil case saying I reimbursed Michael Cohen for those hush money payments. So this remains in the case is something that is on paper. So you really can see the end of this case coming up fast and furious with the DA just closing it out on the actual reimbursement scheme which is something that cannot really be denied credibly by Donald Trump’s team. Right. So Andrew gave us kicked off on kind of the legal why now Ashley, even you covered the Trump team. You know them well. You wrote a great piece about Hope Hicks or she was a central piece and per person in it. Where you wrote Hicks is reemergent at the at the reemergence at the criminal trial of her former boss is another grim reminder of Trump’s force field the seemingly inexorable poll he exerts intentional or not, over nearly everyone who enters his world. You also say that since she testified to Congress about the January 6th attack she hasn’t spoken to him. There’s a lot of spec relation out there about why she cried on the stand. You know her, you know the team. Why do you think she did? She hasn’t talked to him since January 6th since she testified, I should say. Yeah, that’s right. So a little context, right? Hope Hicks works the way she ends up on his presidential campaign as she works for the Trump Organization. She knows his children. She knows him. He asks her to be one of the first staffers on his campaign. It’s sort of so far fetched. The idea that she would be on a presidential campaign is so far fetched, the one he asks. She thinks he’s talking about a campaign, a marketing campaign for one of his golf courses. Right. She sort of occupies this role as almost a a daughter. And there’s a lot of warmth and affection between the two of them. And when I was covering the Trump White House, I was struck by, as his bid reported, there were a lot of leaks in the media because there were these warring factions within the White House, within the White House, within the White House, there were warring factions. And a lot of people, you know, were leaking because they didn’t like what the president was doing on their their trade agenda or on this issue or that. And when Hope would deal with the media, when when she got upset, she was non ideologic, she truly came through that she was upset because she thought the stories were hurting Mr. Trump, as she would call him, or President Trump both politically and personally. So again, she really cared about him, right? So then she testifies before January 6th, she is compelled to testify. But that adds, I don’t want to say a full rupture, but a cooling of their relationship because my reporting showed that Ivanka, the president’s daughter, was furious with Hope for text messages that came out, that Hope it sent that day, sort of saying the president is destroying everything we worked for. The only job we’re going to be able to get is on a local Proud Boys chapter, and Trump himself thought they had gone. She had gone too far. But in talking to people, they said, look, there’s real warmth, there’s real affection. She doesn’t want to be doing this. She’s angry. She’s frustrated that she’s being called again. She thinks it’s a waste of time and money. So again with all of that reporting, then a little bit as a viewer reading the tea leaf, she started crying when she I believe was she was sort of asked, you know the the Trump’s offered you this ticket to this world. They’re responsible for your job. And I think it was just truly an an emotional moment for her because it is an incredibly complicated relationship. She didn’t want to be there. She don’t want to be answering those questions and he didn’t want her to be there and he didn’t want to be listening to what she had to say. And I think it was very uncomfortable for her to answer honestly with him. What, 610 feet away? Yeah, no question about it. I mean, given their history, as you just outlined, and people can read Ashley Zechlund story to learn more. Neal, you obviously argued many cases in front of juries. How does a jury digest someone like Hope Hicks? It’s been laid out. She’s close to the person who’s the defendant. She gets emotional on the stand. How do they digest that? And what’s the goal in that case of the prosecution? So I’d say John, the first kind of just big picture point is just how sordid this trial is. I mean, this trial is running through all of Trump’s greatest hits like Access Hollywood tape, the porn star. He paid off. I mean, you can understand why his family isn’t eager to be there in the courtroom, and I think the jury’s probably not eager to be there either. And you can see Trump’s defense emerging while the prosecution’s building its case, which is they’re taking potshots at the witnesses and their credibility. They’ve already been attacking Michael Cohen before he’s even shown up to testify. But at the end of the day, the really hard question is going to be, look, Trump’s lawyer. Cohen like took out a home equity loan on his K, on his house with his paid for this, with his own money and then got it reimbursed by Trump as a business expense. And you know, and there was grossed up by Trump to avoid tax and the like. How could that possibly be Michael Cohen’s own idea with no involvement or knowledge by Trump? So I think that’s really what the jury’s going to focus on. And we saw I think today with the Hicks testimony another possible defense, which is look, yes, Trump knew something about these payments, but he was worried about protecting Melania. He was worried about, you know the story coming out that will have two big problems. One, Trump doesn’t appear to have worried about Melania very much throughout you know, his lifetime. And 2nd that he really appears according the testimony to just want the catch and kill operation to take it through the election. He wasn’t as worried about Melania or anyone else finding out about afterwards. Once he was president, he just wanted to keep it from the American people. And that’s where Hicks was so devastating. I mean, she’s testified that when the Access Hollywood tape come out, everything changed and everyone was terrified. And so the catch and kill operation was part of trying to protect their candidate from the public. So much we didn’t know in the moment is what I keep coming back to Andrew. And this is very consistent with what Hope said. I mean, you described Michael Cohen as a quote dog with a pheasant in his mouth, which actually made me laugh when I when I read that basically someone who wants to show his boss what he did. I mean, how compelling and important is that component of his character? How does that link to what you expect his testimony to be like when he finally takes the stand? Well, the jury is going to be asked what possible reason would there be for Michael Cohen to have kept this to himself? And I think there’s sort of two answers. One is, of course he wouldn’t because he would want to get credit for this. In other words, there’s nothing to hide here. There’s only something to make him look good. In fact you see Hope Hicks that Donald Trump’s reaction was thank God Michael Cohen did this because it would have been really bad for us if it came out before the election. I mean she has that statement. That’s where she ends. Her direct testimony on Friday, it was it was devastating. And the 2nd is all of these potshots that Neil refers to that have been taken with respect to Michael Cohen about his character is something that the the DA isn’t going to be hiding from. He’s going to say exactly, exactly. You think this guy is charitable. Everything that you are hearing is that he wouldn’t be doing this on his own and out of the goodness of his heart. So they’re going to sort of flip the script on that issue, saying everything you’ve heard about what he’s like as a person is why he would, of course, have gotten Donald Trump to approve. And finally, by the way, they’re going to be telephone records that show that Michael Cohen, at the time of creating the vehicle used to pay back Stormy Daniels, is on phone calls with Donald Trump just the same day. So the phone records themselves are going to be, I think, another piece, another nail in the day’s coffin. That will be you’re going to hear a lot more about as the case closes.