Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Closing Arguments Won't Take Place this Week in Trump Trial; Cohen Retakes the Stand Today in Trump Trial. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired May 20, 2024 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[09:00:00]

NORMAN ROULE, SENIOR ADVISER, TRANSNATIONAL THREATS PROJECT: You're welcome.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you.

And thank you all so much for sticking with us through breaking news upon breaking news this morning.

And it will continue today. Reaction coming in to the charges coming before the - from the International Criminal Court and more reaction coming in to what all of this news out of Iran means for that country and stability in the region.

This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL. CNN's special coverage of the Trump trial starts now.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: It's 9:00 a.m. here in Manhattan as we are now entering the final phase of the first criminal trial of a former president. Donald Trump is inside that courtroom right there on the right side of your screen as the prosecution's final and maybe most important witness, Michael Cohen, is about to retake the stand.

Moments ago the judge here, Juan Merchan, just informed the court that he does expect closing arguments will not happen this week, but he does expect them to happen next Tuesday. It means there is no chance of a verdict this week.

Welcome to CNN's special live coverage. I'm Kaitlan Collins in New York.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jake Tapper in Washington.

In minutes testimony resumes with a third day of cross-examination for Michael Cohen, the former Trump do-it-all fixer turned witness for the prosecution.

Todd Blanche, Trump's attorney, will again ask the questions. The Trump attorney landed several notable blows on Cohen, underlining seeming inconsistencies in Cohen's memory. At one point Blanche accused Cohen of inventing, apparently out of thin air, a conversation with Donald Trump about the payment at the heart of the trial, the hush money intended to silence adult film star and director Stormy Daniels. Two critical and unanswered questions this hour, what will the defense presentation look like? Will they call any witnesses? One of the only events remaining that could extend the duration of the trial would bend history and break good legal counsel if Trump takes the stand in his own defense.

We're going to start our coverage in New York with Kaitlan.

COLLINS: Yes, Jake, and that question that you just raised there, whether they will call any witnesses when it's the defense's turn to present their case is still an open question even for them and one that they have been internally divided over is Robert Costello. He's a name that was introduced to jurors last week. There were emails shown that he sent to Michael Cohen after the FBI searched Michael Cohen's house and his hotel room and his office. And Robert Costello is someone who was never formally retained by Michael Cohen, but he did serve as kind of this informal legal advisor. And he was the person who testified to the grand jury before Trump was actually indicted here, he testified on Capitol Hill as well last week, and can essentially trying to dispute Michael Cohen's testimony, at least parts of it, and paint him as a liar, which, as we know, has been the defense's strategy here all along.

It still remains to be seen if they are going to call him. I am told by two people that they have not made a decision as of this morning. So, we are waiting to see what that's going to look like and how it affects the timing of all of this.

CNN's Elie Honig is also joining us this morning.

And, Elie, this was a big announcement from the judge, who was trying to avoid big breaks in what the jury is hearing and when they get these closing arguments. And, Elie, he just said that he - basically they have to make a big break now or take a big break later over the Memorial Day weekend. So, the jury is not going to hear those closing arguments this week.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Kaitlan, I think that makes a lot of sense. The judge - what the judge does not want to happen is to have the deliberation split up. He wants to go directly from closings into jury instructions and then right into deliberations.

Now, looking back at last week, as you mentioned, we had a really dramatic moment in court during Michael Cohen's cross-examination. I want to make sure people understand why this was such an important moment. When Michael Cohen testified on direct examination, when he was being questioned by prosecutors, he talked about a specific call he had on October 24, 2016, with Donald Trump, through Keith Schiller, who was essentially his assistant.

The DA asked Michael Cohen, "why did you need to speak with Mr. Trump at that point in the evening of October 24th." And Cohen said, "to discuss the Stormy Daniels matter and the resolution of it."

And then the questioning continued, "did you have an understanding about whether during that conversation you resolved that you were moving forward to fund the deal," meaning with Stormy Daniels, and Cohen answered, "yes." Key part of the prosecution's case.

However, fast forward now to the cross-examination. That call happened at 8:02 p.m. Michael Cohen to Schiller and Trump. Turns out there's a bunch of text messages before and after, but they're about something else altogether. Earlier that night, about an hour earlier, Cohen was receiving a series of harassing texts from some unknown 14-year-old kid. And Cohen is exercised about this. He texts Keith Schiller and says, "I need to talk to you about these harassing texts." At 8:02 p.m., just before the call, Shiller says, "call me." They have the call at 8:02 p.m. And then right after Cohen texts Schiller the phone number of these 14-year-old kid.

[09:05:03]

So, it looks like that call was actually about the 14-year-old kid who was harassing Michael Cohen. And when Cohen was confronted with this seeming inconsistency on cross-examination, here's how he answered. "Part of it was the 14-year-old, but I know that Keith was with Mr. Trump at the time and there was more than potentially just this. So, it's unclear if Cohen is saying maybe I got it wrong, maybe it happened some other time, maybe we discussed both things, but very different from what he testified on direct exam. Very different from what Michael Cohen told the grand jury.

Now, as we move into the remaining portions of Michael Cohen's cross- examination, watch for these three main themes. First of all, Michael Cohen has made several prior false statements. He, of course, pled guilty and was convicted to federal campaign finance violations relating to the Stormy Daniels payments. He made false statements to Congress. He lied about Donald Trump's efforts to build the tower in Moscow. And he pled guilty to both tax fraud and bank fraud in his personal capacity. The prosecution is going to note that Michael Cohen, beyond his guilty plea, he lied to Judge Pauley. He claims that when he pled guilty to tax fraud and bank fraud he was actually lying about having committed those crimes. The prosecution is going to point out that Michael Cohen lied to Robert Muller when he first went in to meet with that team, lied to the FEC about the Stormy Daniels payments, even lied to the media many times over, including about Stormy Daniels.

The second main theme that I think we're going to see the Trump team pursue with Michael Cohen today is that he has a personal bias against Donald Trump. He has very strong feelings against Donald Trump. "Hope that this man ends up in prison." "I want this man to go down and rot inside," plus all the normal personal insults that you hear Michael Cohen throwing at Donald Trump.

And I think the third theme that Trump's team is going to continue to stress with Michael Cohen is he has a financial motive in the outcome of this case. They will point out certainly that Michael Cohen has made millions off of his books, that he has a podcast very much centered on attacking Donald Trump. He's selling TikTok subscriptions apparently now for $5.99 a month in his anti-Trump screens (ph). He's even selling merchandise, including this t-shirt showing Donald Trump behind bars. So, Jake, the prosecution is going to stress - excuse me, Trump's

defense team is going to stress these three themes today as their cross-examination of Michael Cohen resumes and should conclude within a couple of hours.

TAPPER: You know, the only person I know who subscribes to the Michael Cohen TikTok, and I don't - I don't - I wouldn't be surprised if he has lots of followers, et cetera, but the only person I know is David Urban (ph), who I think hate watches them.

HONIG: (INAUDIBLE).

TAPPER: So - so - so, I, you know, I guess you get your customers where you can get them.

Look - yes, it doesn't - well, I don't know that he pays for it, because he says that he watches him.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: He might.

TAPPER: He's - he's -

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: He hasn't denied to us that he paid for it.

TAPPER: Well, we will ask. It's clearly a hate watch. SO, you know, it's -

BASH: Yes.

TAPPER: People do that.

Let me start with you, Jamie.

Michael Cohen's expected to be back on the stand in about 20 minutes.

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Right.

TAPPER: And the defense is expected to finish their cross of him.

Overall, how damaging do you think Trump's cross-examine - the Trump team's cross-examination of Michael Cohen has been.

GANGEL: So, first I think we have to see what the prosecutors do and if they're -

TAPPER: IN terms of the cleanup.

GANGEL: In terms of cleanup and take that on.

Juries are unpredictable. We don't know what is going to affect them. There are also two lawyers on this jury, which I would argue has perhaps undue influence. But let's remember, prosecutors tried sort of tried to inoculate Michael Cohen from day one by laying a lot of this out there. The one thing we knew, by the end of the prosecution case, was, nobody liked Michael Cohen very much.

HUNT: Yes.

TAPPER: Yes. I think one of the questions, though, Dana is, how well did they inoculate him? Like, did they - were they tough enough? We've had some of the lawyers here saying they could have inoculated him more.

Just to illustrate this, on Thursday, Todd Blanche, Trump's attorney, pointed out a series of things that Cohen had said false under oath. Blanche, "so just as it relates to that issue, you lied under oath, correct?" Cohen, "yes, sir." Blanche, "and you lied again when you met with the special counsel on August 7, correct?" Cohen, "correct." Blanche, "and you, as we talked about in November, November 29th of that year, 2018, you pled guilty to lying to Congress, correct?" Cohen, "I did."

That's a lot. And that's - those are all -- that's not just like lying, you know, to your bookie.

BASH: Right.

TAPPER: That's - that's lying under oath before like official proceeding.

BASH: Right. Or lying to us, lying to the media, lying to anybody in your life. That is a very, very big deal. You're right. And that was just one example.

Elie just laid out what we're going to see today. So, there's going to be more icing on that cake, if you will. So, the inoculation that the prosecuted - prosecution did in their - in their direct, they're going to have to do even more so in their redirect. And it's an open question whether or not they can clean it up because the jury has heard so much from - thanks to the questioning from Trump's defense that really puts what is the most important thing for the defense in the jury's mind, which is reasonable doubt.

[09:10:05]

TAPPER: So, right now in court Emil Bove, who is Trump's attorneys, is talking about what Mr. Smith can say and what Mr. Smith cannot say. I think this is an election law on campaign finance expert and they're getting into the nitty-gritty of what is important and what is not. Bove's arguing that the information they want to get into the record through their campaign finance expert is, quote, "absolutely critical to the jury understanding of the government's allegations in this case."

But let's take a step back. I want to ask my attorneys about this delay because we had thought that possibly tomorrow there would be closing arguments. And now the judge, Juan Merchan, just announced that because of conversations over the weekend closing arguments are expected a week from tomorrow.

What gives? What happened?

LAURA COATES, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Well, you want the jury to have an uninterrupted ability to deliberate. And, remember, they're - as much - when the closing arguments end, then there's the jury instructions. Likely to be some fights over what's going to be in those jury instructions. This is a very important part. Remember, you're talking about a misdemeanor elevated to a felony. You're talking about issues in terms of circumstantial evidence, about what credit to give to different people, if there's an expert testifying, how they should regard that person as well. And so this will take some time to do. And he doesn't one want to have a start and stop.

That can oftentimes be hard on a defendant, frankly, and their right to a fair trial and deliberative process because if somebody's stopping and starting, we're thinking, let's get it done before Memorial Day. I've got plans. That's not good for a defendant. It's not good for the prosecution either, but not for a defendant. So, he wants to have a continuous flow of information and deliberation.

HONIG: Yes, Judge Merchan had two options here. Both of them bad. And I think he chose the better or the less bad of the two. Option A was, have the parties close say tomorrow, right? But the problem is, then the jury could - would start deliberating Thursday. There's no court Wednesday. And then they'd have a five day break in the middle of deliberations. If they started Thursday, it would carry over till next Tuesday. You do not want that for exactly the reasons Laura said.

TAPPER: Why? Why don't you want legal - why not -

HONIG: Because it just interrupts the continuity of it. You - when a jury is deliberating, you want them on a very short leash. Things can go bad. Someone can see something happening. If that happens during deliberation, that is a big problem. So, you generally want to keep deliberations altogether and as close to closing as you can.

So, option b, which Judge Merchan has chosen is, we'll finish up the presentation of evidence today, may slightly into tomorrow. We'll take a week long break, but then every will come back. We'll go closings, right to jury instructions, right to deliberations. It's smoother that way. I think he did the right thing.

COATES: I think they have a jury note, right, to the judge.

TAPPER: Yes.

HONIG: Yes.

COATES: That's the part where you get concerned as a prosecutor or a defense counsel because you don't want them trying to fill in the blanks. You want to have some surjection (ph) from the judge. You want to have them not having the delay and thinking to themselves, I'll just figure it out, or it's not that big of a deal on the end - in the end game. That's not good for either side.

TAPPER: Tim, let me just ask you, some of the lawyers that we've talked to have said that they think the prosecution's case has been so weak that as soon as the prosecution is done presenting they think the defense should - I'm not exactly sure what the legal term is, but ask the judge just a kill this thing. TIM PARLATORE, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: Oh, there's no question. Yes.

Once the prosecution rests, then the defense has an opportunity to make a motion for a judgment of acquittal, and basically go through the elements of the crime to show that, yes, that they have failed to present evidence on certain issues. And that as a matter of law, there's no way that any reasonable juror could find, you know, for a conviction.

I can imagine that they would do that, you know, for example, all the checks out of his personal account saying those aren't business records. They haven't shown that it's anything other than his personal account. I can imagine that they'll do it on the - on the subject of, you know, what is the target crime that they were trying to conceal since, you know, right now they're arguing about whether to bring in FEC experts of, have they actually presented evidence of what these supposed campaign finance violation would be as a matter of law.

And so, with those things, you know, the judge can - he can either get rid of the case entirely at that point -

TAPPER: He probably won't, right? I mean -

PARLATORE: He probably - he probably won't. He can cut it down. I've seen judges do that where they'll take, you know, a long list of indictments and kind of take some of the counts out at that stage. And oftentimes what they'll do is they'll defer judgment on it because they want to allow the jury to render their decision.

TAPPER: Right.

PARLATORE: Because if they simply dismiss the case at that point, it limits the appellate issues. And so if - or the - the ability for the prosecution to appeal it at all, whereas if they have a conviction and then (INAUDIBLE) brings in (INAUDIBLE) after the jury had already convicted, and then that gave prosecution the grounds to appeal that judgment and it was ultimately reinstated.

TAPPER: So, let me ask you, is it - is it - is it perceived as annoying when a - when a defense team does that? I mean, like, I could see that -

HONIG: Yes, but I -

TAPPER: Again, I'm not a lawyer here.

COATES: Everything that does (INAUDIBLE) annoys a prosecutor, yes.

[09:15:00]

TAPPER: Well, right - no, no, not the prosecutor, I mean annoying the judge. Like, I mean, it just seems like, oh, knee-jerk that if I'm - if I'm a defense attorney, I'm just going to make that movement. I make that motion every time.

COATES: No, you -

TAPPER: No, you wouldn't do that?

COATES: You - it's expected that you would do so.

TAPPER: OK.

COATES: This is a really common thing to have happen.

TAPPER: OK.

COATES: It's also equally common for a judge not to grant it.

TAPPER: Right. OK.

COATES: But there are reasons you have to preserve things for the appellate process. Most objections might get sustained or overruled, but you have to still preserve your ability to do so. And if you don't do so, you lose it forever and you want to have every advantage to have it not go to a jury.

And there are instances when they - the prosecution has failed to make a very basic thing into the record in fact, and the judge can say, you - you have failed that and it's the - our obligation to not have it go to a jury. This is not the case.

TAPPER: All right, very interesting.

Kaitlan Collins, back to you in Manhattan.

COLLINS: Yes, Jake, we are still waiting for Michael Cohen to get back on the witness stand. As we know, he may very well be the prosecutions last witness. But then the defense will have - the prosecution will have a chance to question him once again once Trump's team is done.

I have CNN's Paula Reid and John Berman here outside of the courthouse with me.

And, Paula, obviously, you know, one of the things that they're still designing is, once they're done with Michael Cohen, which, you know, could go back and forth for a little bit this afternoon, is whether or not the defense is going to call witnesses besides the FEC export that they're talking about now.

I mean you've been tracking the Robert Costello issue very closely. What's the thinking and why they still haven't decided yet if they're calling this witness?

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: So, they have to see how Michael Cohen's testimony wraps up to answer whether they really need to bring Bob Costello back in to further undermine Cohen's credibility. There's a belief that Blanche has done a pretty good job so far and that they don't need to drag this out any further by calling Costello in. But, obviously, Cohen's testimony is not done. So, it's still an open question.

But as we've reported, there's a divide within the Trump team about whether calling him all, if that would be beneficial. If they don't call Costello though, the only witness that we really do expect them to call his Brad Smith. Right now he's a top Federal Election Commission - a former top Federal Election Commission official. Now - right now the Trump team is sparring with the judge over how much Smith can say if he took the stand.

Now - that he's going back and forth with the judge. The defensive team kind of backed off of their aggressive advocacy for having to allow Smith to say more than just basically what the FEC does, because at this point if they put Brad Smith on, they're just doing it, I'm told, to preserve issues for appeal. He'll be on there for a couple of minutes. He'll talk about with the FEC does and then he'll step down. And as of now, he's the only witness that we believe they're going to put on the stand. But the judge has really limited how much he can say.

COLLINS: Well, and, John, it's so notable to always watch these interactions between the Trump team and the judge. I mean he just told Trump's attorney to relax, which he did so with a smile, our team in the room says, as Emil Bove, Trump's attorney, was arguing for what this witness can or cannot testify to, what the judge is going to say to the jury. I mean it just is - he's ruling against them basically on this saying, I'm going to stick with what I previously decided on this.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: It's really interesting. Look, we're all waiting to see Michael Cohen back on the stand right now. But I actually think what's going on right here in many of these lawyer's minds is more important than what we're going to see on the stand today. They are posturing and positioning for closing arguments. They are posturing and positioning for even more importantly the jury instructions from the judge, which really could be decisive in this case right now.

The reason they're arguing about having this defense witness on election law is Donald Trump's team wants to argue there was no election law broken here. This hasn't come up at all yet, really, in this trial. They need to figure out how and where they'll argue that, if it's only in closing arguments, is with this FEC witness, Brad Smith. It looks like it's only going to be in closing arguments based on the rulings we're getting right here.

And as for the prosecution, they're trying to, I think, line up how they're going to head into their final argument about saying, look, you heard from Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen's flawed. But you only have to believe some of the things that he said.

COLLINS: Well, and this is someone who was the FEC chair. He was appointed to that position by President Bill Clinton. And he's someone who had - basically the concern that I heard from the judge when I was in the courtroom last week was that they put him up and then the prosecution feels like they have to put their own witness up. And then the jury is left kind of confused because it's this battle of the experts playing out when we kind of know what it is. And the prosecution is getting up to argued Trump's leaning into Blanche, hitting him on the arm as he is whispering something to his attorney. That's notable. I mean, obviously, defendants interact with their attorneys all the time, but Trump seems to be dictating often a lot of the strategy with his movements in court to his attorneys.

REID: Absolutely. I mean he's clearly interested in this. And this is pretty much their entire defense. And one of the things the defense is arguing here is that the reason this case is charged as a felony is because prosecutors allege these documents were falsified in an effort to interfere with the election. And they've laid out a few potential different election law violations. But the judge says, look, they are just - they are not charging that formerly. That is - that is part of falsifying business records, but he hasn't actually been charged with an election crime. They don't need to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt. And that is why he is limiting this witness.

[09:20:01]

Now, I've been told that if the defense brings Smith on, that the prosecution actually may have a rebuttal witness anyway. So, they may hear from at least two witnesses. But it sounds like it's going to be pretty narrow and they're not likely to get into this, you know, dreaded battle of the witnesses.

BERMAN: One of the things they wanted to avoid is having this witness come on and testify about John Edwards -

REID: Yes.

BERMAN: Former senator, former vice presidential candidate, who was charged with violating election law. And they didn't want to have that come out. The prosecution doesn't want to have that come out because there was a hung jury there and they didn't want this expert to explain why he thinks there was a hung jury in that case.

COLLINS: And right now he's asking the attorneys to approach the bench on a scheduling issue. When that happens, you know, if you're in the courtroom, the jury's not in there, obviously, right now, you cannot even hear what they're talking about. We often find out later on a transcript.

REID: Yes.

COLLINS: But, Paula, Michael Cohen is waiting to retake the stand. He's in a small room off the courtroom. He's been there for a few hours. We saw him leave his house this morning. They've kind of had all weekend, since Thursday, to talk about -

REID: Yes.

COLLINS: Because Trump was at his son's graduation on Friday, to think about what they're going to use these last two hours or so on Michael Cohen, how that line of questioning is going to go. They've been feeling pretty good about how it's gone too far.

REID: Absolutely. Three whole days to look through everything he has said in the past, what he said on the stand and what they still need to do. And we've seen that the Trump defense team uses their time pretty effectively. They had one extra day to go back on Stormy Daniels, and we saw that that completely changed their approach to her and they came back guns blazing in terms of their cross-examination.

I would expect this will probably be pretty focused on the actual charges, the allegations here, the alleged conspiracy to falsify business records and trying to effectively undercut other things that he has said. Look, they landed some serious punches. It took Todd Blanche a while to get there. He was sort of meandering at first. But he really landed some serious punches, did some damage to Michael Cohen's credibility and I expect he will be very focused on doing the same over the next few hours.

COLLINS: It also will be key to see how the prosecution is prepared to try to restore his credibility.

REID: Yes.

COLLINS: Michael Cohen will be back on the witness stand any minute now.

The big development that we got from inside the court this morning, first off, is the judge says he doesn't expect closing arguments to happen this week. That means no verdict this week.

You're watching CNN's special live coverage. Stay right here with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:26:45]

TAPPER: Welcome back to CNN's special live coverage of Donald Trump's hush money cover-up trial. Pardon me. Moments ago the former president just left court. The judge had declared a quick morning break. When that break ends, Michael Cohen is set to go back under oath where he will face even more probing questions on cross-examination.

Let's talk about this.

Kasie, during Cohen's across, defense attorney Todd Blanche, on the Trump team -

HUNT: Yes.

TAPPER: Rattled off a list of people that Cohen has blamed for his wrongdoing, other than assuming responsibility himself. Blanche, "you blame a lot of people over the years for the conduct that you were convicted of." Cohen, "I blame people, yes." Blanche, "you blame your accountant?" Cohen, "correct." Blanche, "at times you blame the bank." Cohen, "correct." Blanche, "you blame federal prosecutors, correct?" Cohen, "yes, sir." Blanche, "you blamed the judge?" Cohen, "yes, sir." Blanche, "you blame President Trump?" Cohen, "yes, sir."

Not particularly repentant sounding.

HUNT: No. And I'm not sure - I - you know, I think we're all raised, hopefully, to not do this with our wrongs, but also - I think my question about this exchange is whether it says anything about whether the jury should believe Michael Cohen or not, because at the end of the day it's Donald Trump's actions that are most at question.

BASH: Right.

HUNT: And the question is whether or not Donald Trump did in fact pay this money to Michael Cohen and whether or not Cohen wants to blame all of his problems on other people, it seems kind of irrelevant to me. Maybe the jury will see it differently.

BASH: Whether he paid it and -- its beyond that, obviously.

HUNT: Right.

BASH: I think this is what you were saying. Whether he did it intentionally to skirt election laws.

HUNT: Right. Yes.

BASH: Whether he did it intentionally to skirt his own company books. And that's what's really the question for the jury. And when they come back to the prosecution, not just in redirect, but in their closing, it's hard to imagine that that won't be the focus much more than what Cohen is saying.

GANGEL: Look, it would be better for prosecutors if Michael Cohen was repentant and credible and did not have his TikTok and everything else out there. But the reality is, they brought this case thinking they could make this case. I assume that you guys never brought cases thinking you would lose. You thought -

HONIG: But we were wrong sometimes.

TAPPER: Well, but you've probably brought cases that you were pressured to bring and you weren't sure about them, right?

HONIG: Yes, I mean - I mean prosecutors certainly are not infallible. We brought case - I brought cases that I thought were stronger than they ended up being. I've been unpleasantly surprised by testimony of cooperating witnesses. So, sure, Alvin Bragg, you don't indict a case like this unless you believe you can make it. But I think this case had obvious legal and factual infirmities from the start. And I think some of those have come into sharper relief now.

TAPPER: And also political pressures, right? I mean it seems very obvious, and I don't know that the jury is going to be exposed to this, but obviously Alvin Bragg, as a political - as an elected political official felt some, I guess, the - the most charitable way to put it is, he felt pressure to be bold and go after a former president. And less charitable interpretation might be, he felt pressure as a Democrat in a Democratic city to go after a Republican president that a lot of people didn't like.

COATES: Well, some of that pressure is self-imposed when one campaigns.

[09:30:04] This is - this - you know that was have been, you know, prosecutors who were line (ph) prosecutors not appointed, not elected. And so there has been