'Certainly Connected Trump To The McDougal Payments': Lawyer Analyzes David Pecker As A Witness
Attorney Glen Donath, a partner at Clifford Chance and a former defense lawyer for former President Clinton's impeachment, gave his take on former President Trump's ongoing NYC hush money trial.
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00:00What's been going on today has been Stormy Daniels' attorney has been on the stand, Keith Davidson has been giving a lot of testimony about how he negotiated the hush money, the described hush money payments for not just Stormy Daniels, but also for Karen McDougal.
00:19Can you talk a little bit about what both the prosecution and the defense are trying to demonstrate or trying to show or impeach regarding this witness?
00:29Yeah, happy to Leanne. I think that as with previous witnesses, what the what the government is trying to do is to corroborate Michael Cohen.
00:40Everything is sort of leading up to that climactic testimony from Michael Cohen. And so Keith Davidson was a key, a key actor in this narrative.
00:49He was the negotiator for his his clients, Stormy Daniels, and his counterpart was Michael Cohen.
00:55And so he can corroborate a lot of things that Michael Cohen is expected to tell the jury in terms of how he was acting on behalf of Donald Trump and ultimately arranging a payment for the benefit of the election, the campaign.
01:09So that's that's really what the government is doing. They're telling a story, an entertaining story, but they're really trying to build out as much corroboration around Michael Cohen as they can.
01:19I think what they're trying to do is a establish Michael Cohen as being an unlikable character.
01:25They've done that with prior witnesses, and certainly Keith Davidson has has corroborated that point, an unhelpful point for the government.
01:34They're also trying to demonstrate, I think, that Mr. Davidson's testimony or his recollection might might not be perfect, and they're trying to poke some holes in his recollection.
01:45And thirdly, they're trying to establish the possibility that Michael Cohen might have been freelancing, acting on his own to try to help Mr. Trump in order to curry favor with him.
01:57I think they got out testimony that Mr. Davidson believed that Michael Cohen hoped to be attorney general or some senior lawyer in the Trump administration.
02:06And therefore, perhaps he was doing all of this without Mr. Trump's knowledge in order to give him a gift to do something helpful so he would be benefited later on, even if even if Trump was unaware of it.
02:19So I think those are the two narratives. And I think both sides have have been able to score some points.
02:25They're also trying to smear, it seems like, smear Keith Davidson a little bit.
02:29And what is the purpose of painting him as sort of a serial extortionist and someone who's a shakedown artist?
02:35They mentioned Charlie Sheen. They mentioned Hulk Hogan and other cases involving sex tapes that he may have gone to these individuals of high profile, famous individuals, maybe in the past, also some publications to try to get money for clients.
02:49How is this helpful or not relevant in either way? Or what's the purpose of painting him in this way?
02:56Yeah, you know, I don't know that it's a great tactic. I think, Leigh Ann, there's two two points there.
03:01One is just to show that this whole side between David Pecker and Keith Davidson and it's a very unseemly, seedy business that people come forward, they make salacious claims, they get paid off for them.
03:16And that Trump is sort of a victim of this, like a lot of celebrities are.
03:20There's this sort of underbelly of remorse that are that are feeding off of celebrities.
03:26And so it's to try to as unsympathetic as as Donald Trump usually is to try to make him a little bit more sympathetic.
03:35I think secondarily, it's trying to show that.
03:40That Trump might have had reasons other than the election to try to buy these people off.
03:45These were harmful stories to his reputation, to his his relationship with his wife and his family, that there were other, you know, there are other reasons to give in to these kinds of extortion demands that might not have just been about the upcoming election.
04:00I don't think it's a terrific argument and I don't think it sort of holds together given the timing.
04:05But I think that's the the idea that his lawyers are trying to follow through on.
04:11And the lawyers, one of their arguments, which is similar to that, is that this is a standard operating procedure.
04:16Emily, Emile Bowe might not be pronouncing that correctly, but Trump's one of his defense attorneys was saying that this is what happens.
04:24Killing stories is something that is a stock in trade.
04:27This is standard operating procedure for magazines like this, that David Pecker, this 50 percent of the stories that he looked at were that he would buy them and not publish them, this sort of catch and kill scheme.
04:41But at the same time, they're trying to bring forward witnesses like Keith Davidson to say, but it was my understanding that Trump was the puppet master behind all of this.
04:50And it was my understanding from what David Pecker might say, my understanding was that former President Trump was the one behind this to pay the money to kill this story.
05:01So definitely trying to tie all of this.
05:04The key is to tie up all of it to Trump.
05:06How successful do you think that is when witnesses are saying it's my understanding this is happening?
05:10This is what the text, the implication.
05:13How how strong is that?
05:15Are those arguments?
05:17I think they're pretty strong.
05:19You know, I think Pecker certainly connected Trump to the McDougal payments.
05:24He dealt with Trump directly.
05:26He knew Trump for years.
05:27He had a personal relationship with him.
05:29I think Trump and his lawyers will not be able to run away from Pecker's narrative.
05:35I think with Davidson, he never I think he testified today he never met Trump.
05:38He only dealt with Michael Cohen.
05:40And so there's a little bit of room there to say, again, Cohen may well have been freelancing and negotiating this this stormy deal without Trump's knowledge.
05:49The problem is that there's a buzzsaw that they're going to run into in a couple of days when Trump's checks to Michael Cohen for reimbursement are written in his own hand from the Oval Office, showing that he full well knew after the fact, at least, that the payments were made.
06:01And so I don't I don't know how it helps them right now to bob and weave around whether Davidson met Trump.
06:09Certainly at the end, I think there's no problem in establishing Trump knew about the payments and reimbursed Cohen for that.
06:16Maybe they'll argue he didn't know what he was reimbursing him for.
06:19But that's going to be a hard argument.
06:20Well, the argument is this was just my personal as paying my personal attorney for personal services.
06:25He's my I mean, fixer does not have sort of a negative implication as to what are you fixing.
06:30But at the same time, he also was reportedly handling legal matters for Trump.
06:34But is that also an argument, a tricky argument when you when the numbers don't add up, when the records and receipts don't add up?
06:41I think it's a very tricky argument.
06:43Trump is famously cheap with lawyers and stiffs them all the time.
06:46You know, he wrote a series of checks. I think it was a little bit above the one hundred thirty thousand, but not much.
06:50It lined up pretty closely with with the amounts paid.
06:54And, you know, I think Cohen had a recording about his discussion with with with Trump about the payments.
07:02And I think, as I recall, when Trump was confronted with the facts on, you know, when he was on Air Force One or otherwise, he didn't he didn't deny knowing about them.
07:12And so I think it's very hard for them to argue that Trump didn't know what he was paying for.
07:16That that that runs against everyone's understanding of of Donald Trump and his checkbook.
07:20So that may be part of the grab bag series of arguments, you know, throw it against the fridge and see what sticks that the lawyers tried.
07:28But I don't think it's a particularly persuasive line of argument.