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Judge Finds Trump in Contempt for Violating Gag Order as Fifth Day of Testimony in His Hush Money Trial Begins; Michael Cohen's Banker Resumes Testimony in Trump Trial; Now, Defense Cross-Examining Michael Cohen's Banker. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired April 30, 2024 - 10:00   ET

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

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JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to CNN special live coverage, a busy morning inside 100 Center Street. Gary Farro is back on the stand. Donald Trump is also here running up a tab with the court, Judge Juan Merchan fined Trump $1,000 each for nine different violations of a gag order. He also ordered Trump to delete the offending posts from his campaign website and from his social media, Truth Social, by 2:15pm today. If Mr. Trump disregards the order again, the judge said he may impose an incarceratory fine punishment, that would suggest prison or rather jail time.

Right now, just to bring you some updates from what's going on inside the court, records show that Cohen's wife is also listed on the home equity line of credit connected to their personal property. This has to do with Gary Farro saying that Cohen got the home equity line of credit transfer to pay this settlement, this alleged hush money, to Stormy Daniels.

And, Laura Coates, first of all, kind of interesting that, uh, the judge is actually talking about incarceratory punishment, saying, if this keeps happening you could go to jail.

LAURA COATES, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: We did know that there had been some reporting of coordination or at least prospectively discussing what would that look like. He's a Secret Service agented person, right? As a former president of the United States, how would that work in terms of a holding cell and beyond? But the average defendant, if they violate a court order, not only is the punishment normally swift, it normally wouldn't take so long to make a decision on this, and here's the reason why.

The gag order is in place to protect a fair trial, and of course to protect the safety of the witnesses, the jurors and the personnel so that nobody feels intimidated or less able and capable of going forward. Remember, we already had a juror who initially said I was impaneled and said I got to be off this case because I think my anonymity has been compromised. That seemed to be around the time that the Jesse Watters statement, although Jesse Watters says he was not fully quoted by Trump in his post, was there. And then you had another person on day one of the opening statements, they look similar. And so the judge did take his time, nonetheless. So the judge certainly has it in his in his purview to do so in his wheelhouse, but the fact that he hasn't done it, so now I wonder how deterred he will be knowing that Thursday there's another hearing on four more things. Is he going to impose incarceration then when those have been before this initial sentence? I doubt it.

TAPPER: And right now, Kasie Hunt, what the jury is being shown is information records relating to Michael Cohen setting up this LLC, the shell corporation in Delaware in order to make what Cohen says was hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. The jury is seeing emails right now labeled high importance, as they seek to make the transfer from Cohen's line of credit to the essential consultant's account. And this has to do with Michael Cohen getting a home equity loan, apparently, I believe, unbeknownst to Michael Cohen's wife about this loan so that he can make this $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels that he is, according to Cohen later repaid by Donald Trump.

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: I have a lot of questions about how you can take out a loan on your house without your spouse's knowledge.

TAPPER: I might have that detail wrong. I might have that detail wrong.

HUNT: Either way, if you're taking out a loan on your own home, it shows the level of importance of the task at hand, right? It's putting -- it's a significant risk and decision to do something like this for Michael Cohen to do this. And I think we're also getting some details around the urgency in terms of the timing. It says they made this transfer from the home equity line into the checking account within 23 minutes of the checking account opening so that he can then cut this check.

I mean, it really does kind of give you -- if what they're trying to do here is connect the campaign and the way they felt about that and the time pressure and deadlines as they approached the election, I think this kind of helps -- in a certain way, helps you understand that part of the case in addition to obviously, Jamie, as you've been pointing out, just laying out the facts. Right.

TAPPER: Michael Cohen wrote to the bank at 4:11 P.M., October 26, 2016. Can you please send me confirmation that the funds were deposited into the other account, important. And this is important, that his home equity loan was transferred to the shell Corporation, so that Stormy Daniels could be paid, so she would not then tell her story. Four minutes later, Cohen has told the funds have been deposited.

And this is about, Jamie Gangel, the urgency that Michael Cohen took this issue allegedly at behest of Donald Trump. Fully funded and live for business, Gary Farro, Michael Cohen's banker, tells him of the account. Fully funded, live for business, meaning, go ahead and this paint -- and we have no idea if Gary Farro knows, probably had no idea, and Michael Cohen then makes this payment to Stormy Daniels, allegedly buying her silence right before the 2016 presidential election.

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: So, the date is very important there, October 26th. And just to remind everybody, the Access Hollywood tape had come out on October 7th. That was a bombshell for the campaign. They were worried about it. Now, they're two weeks before Election Day.

And, you know, there was a quote from Farro earlier, everything was urgent with Michael Cohen. Then you see 23 minutes later, he's funding the account. By 4:11, you know, he's doing the next step. It sets the speed, urgency, and speaks to the underlying argument here by the prosecution that this was not because he was worried about his family. He was worried about the election.

COATES: In contrast this with what we learned from David Pecker's testimony about the pacing of the payment to Karen McDougal, the pacing for others, why this was a little bit different than the other cases, the other catch and kill schemes, so to speak.

Remember, the prosecutors have to prove not that this is something that, you know, is normally done in business or that this was just for personal reasons. They have to show it was connected for the fallout as well from what happened in Access Hollywood. Why? I remember they cannot actually show the Access Hollywood tape. The judge has already said it'd be too prejudicial and not probative enough, but they can talk about the fallout from it.

And as to your point, the fallout includes the urgency, the why now, the timing of all these aspects of it, the fact that it was always urgent, but particularly urgent now, particularly given these were allegations that had come before. We know from Rhona, the right hand woman of Donald Trump, that she had seen Stormy Daniels in Trump Tower in the past, that there was some conversation about her possibly being cast in The Apprentice. Her own book talks about that as well.

And so the timing is going to be so crucial to layout, you know, the mundane details of opening an account, but also the win.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: And some people understand at home, this is a two-step transaction, the payoff to Stormy Daniels. And this is the crux of the crime. Okay, so we're hearing Rebecca Mangold, the D.A., is showing the wire transfer authorization form that Cohen filled out the morning of October 27th, more to that urgency theme.

The first step in the payment was Michael Cohen getting this money off his own mortgage, $130,000. He paid Stormy Daniels directly. Part two of the transaction happens later, where Donald Trump and his organization, they reimbursed Michael Cohen for $400,000-something, which covers the $130,000, plus more, over a series of checks over the following weeks. And the allegation is that this entire payment structure was falsified to make it look like, well, this is just a person paying his lawyer, attorney's fees, rather than the hush money. When you hear falsification of business records, that's the crux of the crime, and that's that second part of the transaction, that's what Gary Farro's testimony goes. BILL BRENNAN, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I'm with you guys until the bottom of the ninth. I agree that it was an urgent transaction. I agree that Cohen was very pushy with Farro, but an argument could be made by the defense that there's no opportune time for a married man with children to be outed about an alleged affair, especially with somebody in the adult film industry. So, October 26 may have been the Access Hollywood tape day. It's also another day in that marriage and that family.

And you have to remember that the prosecution has the burden and must tie these events to the motive of another crime, that being either campaign finance or politics.

And Cohen was a sycophant to Trump at this point. He was like a dog looking for a pat on the head. And I find it interesting that he had to go out and get his own home equity loan.

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And I find it very curious that the wife apparently didn't know, but she's on it.

So, I think a strong argument can be made that Cohen went rogue, Cohen did what he did to get a pat on the head from Trump and it had nothing to do with politics, collateral effect.

TAPPER: And that is without question, one of the arguments that the defense for Mr. Trump is going to make in front of a jury. And just remind our viewers all he needs to do is convince one juror that that is the truth and there goes the case.

And just to settle this before I throw back to Kaitlan, I was correct. Michael Cohen said he used the -- this is a quote from his testimony before Congress in 2019. I used the home equity line of credit as opposed to cash I had in the exact same bank that I didn't want because I didn't want my wife to know about it. She handles all the banking and I didn't want her coming to me and asking what's the $130,000 for. So, apparently, this home equity loan was done around the back of his wife so she would not know. Kaitlan?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, Jake. Michael Cohen has made clear he had the money to technically pay this six figure sum but he trying to also hide it from his wife as they were trying to negotiate this in the final days before the election.

And I should note we're getting an update from inside the courtroom as this banker who helped facilitate this payment unwittingly, he says, to Michael Cohen said that it wasn't unusual and that there could be a number of reasons why an attorney would be transferring this money and would pay a retainer to another attorney in a real estate transaction, as he is saying, that they did not know that it was to benefit a political candidate, that there would have been additional scrutiny if so.

And, Paula Reid, you know, we have been hearing from David Pecker and Trump's former assistant, and we're going to have a lot of other salacious witnesses coming before us, but this is important because this is the way they are getting this evidence into the record here.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. The prosecutors had just a few hours late on Friday, and they chose to bring in a couple short witnesses, certainly not household names, to help them get this important evidence in and get it verified.

And the fact that, you know, this quote that we have up here explaining why an attorney would pay a retainer to another attorney in a real estate transaction, that's significant, because at this point in the story, Farro thinks this is all for a real estate transaction. He has no idea that this money is going to be used to pay Stormy Daniels to suppress her story in the days leading up to the election.

So, again, not a household name, not the most sensational testimony, but really crucial for the prosecutors to build the blocks of this case, because, yes, it's about sex, it's about politics and a campaign, but at the core, it's about paperwork.

COLLINS: Yes. And we also have Jerry Goldfeder here, who's an election and campaign finance attorney. And, Jerry, it's great to have you, because as you're hearing what this banker is testifying, why is it important for him to say, you know, I did believe this was for a real estate transaction but I didn't know that this was on behalf of any political purpose?

JERRY GOLDFEDER, ELECTION AND CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAWYER: Well, it shows that Cohen was lying to the banker. Look, a trial is about a narrative, telling a story. We've heard a riveting testimony from Pecker about the catch and kill scheme, and he laid it at the feet of Trump that the intent was all about the election. And we're going to hear some colorful testimony from Cohen.

But we also have to drill down on the facts, and we see this bogus banking transaction. And we're going to hear about the phony invoices and the checks. All these little details are what the prosecution is weaving into their main story. And the jury needs to put all that together. And the prosecution is calling witnesses and putting in documents so that they can understand the story, as Pecker testified to.

COLLINS: And, Jerry, the other thing that sticks out is Michael Cohen is very clearly acting with urgency. I mean, he transferred the funds within 23 minutes of the account being opened. There was a 3:00 P.M. deadline that he met. I believe it was three minutes before, according to what this banker testified. What does that say to you about how quickly he was moving here?

GOLDFEDER: I think that they were crazed after the Access Hollywood tape. The election was approaching quickly. They wanted to pay off Stormy Daniels. They wanted to cover it up. They wanted to make sure that the American electorate had no idea of what was going on. They were very much concerned because the election was approaching. I think that's what Cohen's acting so quickly shows.

COLLINS: All right. Jerry Goldfeder, stay with us because that's an important perspective on what was driving all of this. And I should note we are being told that Trump is whispering in his attorney's ear, also passing him handwritten notes as we are hearing this testimony from the banker who helped facilitate what clearly was a very urgent transaction by Michael Cohen.

And, Karen, you were just reading through the gag order and found this really significant line where the judge is basically lamenting that $1,000 is not enough, that maybe it works in some instances, but not when someone can easily afford it.

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And he says that they don't have the authority to make it a higher fine, maybe $2,500. He even floats $150,000. And he says, because the court doesn't have that discretion, if the violations keep happening, jail may be a necessary punishment here.

KAREN FRIEDMAN AGNIFILO, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. So a gag order or holding someone in contempt is really designed to do two things, number one, to punish, but, number two, to get the behavior to stop. And, really, that's what the judge is focusing on, is this is not going to get you to stop a thousand dollars because you're very wealthy.

And so I will be left with no choice because the statute doesn't allow me to fine you more. That will make it an impression to get you to stop. And so if I'm left with no choice, I will put you in jail if I have to. I mean, that's essentially what the judge is saying in this gag order. So, it was very interesting.

The other thing he says in there also is he talks about Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels, that, look, although they're not gagged, he does acknowledge that Trump can respond if required. And so he almost is sending a message in here as well, saying, look, if it turns out that other people are using this gag order as a way to attack you, if you can't attack back, then it's not going to -- then this gag order is not going to apply to those witnesses who clearly aren't afraid to provoke you. So, he really was drilled down on what is allowed and what's not allowed.

COLLINS: Yes, and we'll continue to see how he handles this. I mean, there is another hearing on this on Thursday.

And I should note, inside the courtroom right now, we're hearing the testimony from the banker who helped Trump's fixer allegedly silence Stormy Daniels. About 50 minutes after Michael Cohen walked into the bank to initiate the wire transfer, he received email confirmation that the wire was sent to Davidson. That is Keith Davidson, Stormy Daniels' attorney, who helped facilitate this matter. Much more on all of this as we are continuing live coverage of Trump's criminal trial. Back in a moment.

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[10:20:00] TAPPER: Welcome back to live CNN special coverage. Cross-examination just started inside the court. Michael Cohen's banker, Gary Farro, is now being questioned by attorneys for Donald Trump, namely lead attorney Todd Blanche. The former president is sitting back in his chair as he listens.

Joining our panel now is CNN Senior Political Commentator David Urban, a Republican strategist and former adviser to the Trump campaign.

And, David, the first order of business for Judge Merchan this morning was acknowledging that Donald Trump had, in fact, violated the gag order nine times out of the ten times the prosecution had complained about it and fining him a thousand dollars for each one and warning him that possibly if he keeps violating the gag order, he could go to jail. Do you think that that might have any impact?

DAVID URBAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: The thousand buck hit is surely not going to have an impact. I heard you mention it earlier. The threat of jail, I think, is credible and serious. But are they really going to put Donald Trump in prison? Are they really going to make them even a bigger martyr by putting him in jail? I think that's the question, right?

And so there's a challenge to the judge. How do you enforce that without further making him a martyr in this case, right, in this instance, right? And it's going to continue the back and forth as long as the lead witness here is on social media every night streaming live for six or seven hours. Trump is going to feel that he has the right to kind of push back.

TAPPER: You're referring to Michael Cohen.

URBAN: Yes, Michael Cohen is on every night streaming for six, seven hours, right? I think Trump is going to feel like he has the right to push back on that and they're going to be this continual conflict.

TAPPER: Yes. And the expanded order of gag order does permit Donald Trump to respond to political attacks. But the judgment is whether what's a political attack that he's responding to, that he's allowed to, and what is not.

Laura Coates, right now, inside the courtroom, Trump attorney Todd Blanche is doing cross-examination of Gary Farro, who is Michael Cohen's banker, who helped set up these shell corporations in Delaware, through which Michael Cohen allegedly made these hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. And Farro is basically being asked questions by Trump's attorney, Todd Blanche to depict Farro as carrying out the orders of the prosecutors, which is also what's Todd Blanche did when it came to the testimony of David Pecker, kind of establishing, you talk to these guys, these prosecution officials in 2018, how many times have you met with him, met with them? And Is that pretty standard stuff?

COATES: There's nothing inherently wrong with questioning where your allegiances fall. You want to have a witness in front of this jury that's going to be objective and relaying the information without sort of the sort of Damocles hanging over their head that if I don't say what the prosecution wants me to say, I'm in trouble.

But oftentimes when you have an immunity witness though, who is essentially going to be currying favor with the government for that reason. It doesn't mean they're not truthful, but it's part of the consideration. You also know that when you're talking about what they're trying to do, they're trying to establish that you've met with their prosecution enough times such that perhaps your narrative is far in line with what they'd like you to say.

But nothing wrong with talking to the prosecutors ahead of time before you get to a trial, you actually often have either grand jury testimony or otherwise. What they're trying to suggest here though, is here you are, unlike where my client is.

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I'm not a defendant in this case. David Pecker, similarly, not a defendant in this case, has immunity. You are saying you have a ten- foot pole to be extended. I didn't know about this, and had you known, perhaps there would have been more due diligence about the nature of the payment. If it was not known to you that it really was a real estate transaction, maybe you would have done something very different.

And so trying to paint, really, Michael Cohen as a nefarious actor who cannot be believed more than attacking this witness' credibility.

HUNT: Yes. Well, I mean, and that's the whole thing, right? I mean, even as you were kind of reading, well, here's what we know about the thing from Michael Cohen's congressional testimony, you just got to Google Michael Cohen Congress to find that he pled guilty to lying to Congress, right? So, there are all sorts of issues around Michael Cohen's credibility that seem to be the heart of the -- as we were talking about the Todd Blanche situation, where he's trying to urge Blanche to be aggressive all the time.

And I think you were basically saying, well, he's going to reserve that for the whole crux of the matter, which is Michael Cohen's credibility.

HONIG: And I think what Todd Blanche is doing is using the other witnesses to attack Michael Cohen's credibility. For example, Todd Blanche got David Pecker, the first witness, to say that Michael Cohen tends to exaggerate or is prone to exaggeration. That's really valuable.

And I think what Todd Blanche is going to do with the cross- examination of Gary Farro that's happening right now that we're following along with is establish that the person who came in in this mad rush to get this money and deceived his wife in the process was Michael Cohen. And you, Gary Farro, I presume, never had any direct contact with Donald Trump. That's another theme that you're going to see, that the real actor here, the real person driving all of this, was Michael Cohen, and that Michael Cohen, to an extent, kept Donald Trump in the dark.

TAPPER: And I think there is one of these far right networks, like beyond Fox, far right, that had to apologize.

HUNT: OAN.

TAPPER: OAN was it, for some nonsensical speculation that it was Michael Cohen actually that had the rendezvous with Stormy Daniels. And I think they had to issue a full apology because there are these theories out there in the fever swamps MAGA land, and this one made its way onto whatever that channel is. And I suspect Michael Cohen's attorney had something to say about it if they were apologizing.

HUNT: Well, One American News, we are now in a world where there are all these channels to the right of Fox. We are also in a world where Fox has really had to pay for what they did with the Dominion. And that has everybody -- you know, you cannot make things up and broadcast them widely. You just can't. But --

TAPPER: Well, you can. You just have to be more clever about how you do it, which I think is their standard today.

Blanche is asking Farro, so Todd Blanche, Trump's attorney, is asking Gary Farro, who's on the witness stand, about his initial meeting with Michael Cohen at Trump Tower when he took on Cohen as a client and how Farro spoke to Cohen a few times a year, again, Todd Blanche trying to undermine the significance of Gary Farro's testimony.

HUNT: And we can note too that our team is reporting that the jurors have been taking notes as this cross-examination is going. They also are saying that Trump is sitting next to his lawyer apparently with his eyes closed.

TAPPER: Which doesn't necessarily mean that he's sleeping, but he has been known to fall asleep in this trial.

URBAN: I was going to ask, you know, we have federal prosecutors here who have done this for a living. This is a long trial. This is going to go on for how many more weeks?

TAPPER: Three or four?

URBAN: Three more, four more weeks. And so these jurors are hearing from, you know, Gary Farro, they're going to hear from all these different witnesses. I mean, at some point, does the prosecution kind of -- this is a question for you guys, do they kind of lose -- what are they going to present, like the fiery -- who's the, who's the big witness? If Michael Cohen is it, you know, is Trump winning?

TAPPER: Let me just interject for one second, because some of what Trump's attorney, Todd Blanche, is able to get from Gary Farro, the witness. First of all, when Michael Cohen says something is urgent, what does that mean? Well, Farro said of dealing with Cohen, 90 percent of the time it was an urgent matter, suggesting that just because Michael Cohen said something was urgent, it didn't mean that that was actually urgent. Just Michael Cohen always thought everything was urgent.

Farro also saying that he was assigned Cohen from his position at the bank because he's firm with clients, which suggests -- I'm intuiting here, suggests, has that Michael Cohen was something of a handful to deal with.

HUNT: I mean, have you spent time dealing with Michael Cohen? I think any of us who have might understand.

TAPPER: I have. And in any case, Gary Farro testifying, he's firm with clients and that's why he got the Cohen account, Jamie Gangel.

GANGEL: Right. The other day he also said he typically was assigned more challenging clients to deal with. This was part of his portfolio. But just go back to the quote about that Cohen was --

TAPPER: One moment, sorry. Todd Blanche saying, Cohen, you believe he's an aggressive guy, fast speaker, not easy if you're not firm with him. That's what Todd Blanche says. And Farro says, yes, that's correct. Aggressive guy, fast speaker, he's not easy to deal with if you're not firm with him.

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Eric Trump, by the way the former president's second son of three is in the courtroom.