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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NewsTranscript
00:00 Yeah, and as you mentioned, in terms of putting on the first witness, choosing David Pecker
00:04 instead of Michael Cohen, David Pecker doesn't have the same sort of baggage.
00:09 In fact, he was a confidant of President, former President Trump.
00:14 So to your point as well about that everyone's lying, clearly they're going to try to impeach
00:21 and poke holes in the testimony when Michael Cohen does get on the stand and call him a
00:26 serial liar, a convicted liar.
00:29 But you mentioned that the documents speak for themselves.
00:33 However, is there direct, will there be?
00:37 I mean, there's no way to necessarily know direct evidence that former President Trump
00:44 specifically ordered these things to happen.
00:47 It does become his word versus the other witnesses.
00:52 Is that how it might play out?
00:54 Or you feel like-
00:55 Yeah, I think the best chance the defense has is that kind of suggestion that he really
01:05 didn't get his hands dirty with all the details.
01:07 So maybe there was this scheme going on involving Cohen and Pecker and Alan Weisselberg and
01:13 some others, but he wasn't really focused on the details.
01:17 He just kind of, they put the checks in front of them and he signed them and he wasn't really
01:21 paying attention.
01:23 That's probably kind of their best argument.
01:26 Although again, they didn't really say that in opening.
01:29 They said in opening, they said everybody's lying and the documents weren't false.
01:37 But yeah, challenging his personal involvement I think will be one approach, but there are
01:42 going to be multiple witnesses, Pecker and Cohen and Hope Hicks and maybe others who
01:50 are going to testify about conversations where Trump himself was involved and where this
01:54 plot was hatched.
01:56 So I think it's pretty hard to take the approach that everybody's lying, but that appears to
02:03 be what they're going to try to do.
02:04 Right.
02:05 And at some point it does become the jury will have to weigh all the fact, weigh all
02:10 the testimony and make a determination whether there's actually concrete written documentation
02:15 that Trump was behind certain things.
02:18 It's a question of balancing the evidence.
02:20 That would be the obligation of the jury.