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CNN Live Event/Special

Defense Cross-Examining Gary Farro; Columbia Protesters Barricading Themselves; House Democrats Says They'll Save Speaker Johnson's Job. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired April 30, 2024 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST, "THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER": It's -- he's not easy to deal with if you're not firm with him. Eric Trump, by the way, the former president's second son of three is in the courtroom and continuously looking at the screen.

Go ahead, Jamie. I'm sorry.

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Do you know what the screen is?

TAPPER: I don't know. It's the evidence screen.

LAURA COATES, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: It's the evidence screen in front of a jury when they're able to look at the documents.

GANGEL: OK. I think much more than anything else in cross this notion that Cohen is aggressive, that everything was urgent is much more effective for playing the juror than that he spoke to prosecutors. That doesn't go anywhere for me. This speaks to, you know --

TAPPER: OK. Right inside court right now, jurors are taking notes as attorneys for the former president try to poke holes in the credibility of Michael Cohen's former banker, Gary Farro.

Much more CNN Special Live coverage next. We're going to squeeze in a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:35:00]

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN HOST: Welcome back to CNN's Special Live coverage. Donald Trump, we are told, has been slumped back in his chair, his eyes shut at times, as the jury has been listening closely to his attorney's testimonies cross-examining Gary Farro. That is the banker who facilitated the hush money payment, unwittingly, I should note, to Stormy Daniels, according to his testimony.

Paula Reid and Karen Agnifilo Friedman are back here with me. And Karen, as Todd Blanche is now cross-examining Gary Farro, I was told this is probably going to go about an hour or so. I mean, what do you make of the strategy of what he's doing? He's asking about how many times he's met with prosecutors. He's now turning the focus back to October 2016, where we know the key date that we heard from this banker was October 26th, that was when there was all of this kind of rush of movement from Michael Cohen.

KAREN FRIEDMAN AGNIFILO, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. Well, it's also right before the election, right? So, that's exactly, it seems, what was motivating this and why it was such a rush. I think it's very effective to use a witness like this who is about putting records into evidence to also try and discredit Michael Cohen, which is what Gary Farro is doing right now.

COLLINS: And (INAUDIBLE) as people are reading this, Farro is saying he has no idea why the other LLC, which was initially Resolution LLC before the one that paid Stormy Daniels, which we believe was going to be about Karen McDougal, why it was never opened essentially, no money was ever put into it. He said that it was not a red flag, that that didn't happen.

Clearly, they were trying to draw a distinction between an effort to get this one done, which the National Enquirer paid her, and then the Stormy Daniels one, which Michael Cohen did follow through on.

AGNIFILO: Yes, so what's happening now is after we had David Pecker set the stage of what was going on, now the prosecutors have to go through the painstaking task of proving their case beyond a reasonable doubt. And I think this week, we are going to see multiple witnesses like Gary Farro who are basically putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Some of them are going to be very boring and just custodians of records, people from the bank saying a check cleared that kind of thing who aren't going to be able to testify to things like an urgency of Michael Cohen or anything that could be helpful.

And it's interesting because in a white-collar case, defense attorneys and prosecutors normally stipulate to a lot of this evidence because it can be boring and it can take a long time and it just struck me this morning when Donald Trump was saying how he wants to be out on the campaign trail. Certainly, if they wanted to be out on the campaign trail, they could shorten this trial by at least a week if they were to stipulate to many of these record custodians.

COLLINS: That's a great point. They, they won't stipulate to anything. And so, we will see some witnesses likely that are there just to get that evidence in the record.

Paula, I'm kind of having a bit of trouble following where Todd Blanche is going with this cross-examination. What do you make of it?

PAULA REID, CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: I think you want to make three key points. The first is that Farro was assigned to Cohen because he's a pain in the neck. He's a really difficult client. He is shown to have been dishonest in terms of his need to open this LLC, and then that this had nothing to do with his client. There's no mention of then-Candidate Trump, now Former President Trump.

Now, we're learning that Blanche is confirming that Cohen indicated on the paperwork for a central consultant's LLC that he was not acting as an agent of anyone when he opened the account. So, there you go. I mean, Blanche making it clear that this particular witness, what he has testified to, there is no connection to his client, the defendant.

COLLINS: But would you necessarily -- if you're Michael Cohen in this situation and you're opening up an LLC to pay a porn star hush money, I mean, would you necessarily say, oh yes, by the way, this is on behalf of the guy who's the Republican nominee for president that millions of Americans will be voting for potentially next Tuesday?

REID: I think we can all be very sympathetic for why they may have tried to obfuscate what they were doing here. But the problem is you're lying here to a bank. And as we will see going forward in the timeline, allegedly lying on more business documents, which is why there's now a criminal trial. So, I completely understand why he did what he did, but that's also why we're here in court.

COLLINS: And Paula, we've been talking about "The New York Times" reporting about the tension between Todd Blanche and Donald Trump. Obviously, you know, we've covered Trump and his attorneys for a long time. It is basically a known quantity that is going to happen.

REID: Yes.

COLLINS: Trump yells at everybody in his orbit, not just his attorneys, but I wonder what you've been hearing a, about that relationship and that dynamic.

REID: Yes. Tension on the Trump legal team, it's like sand at the beach. It's part of the environment. And for a lot of different reasons. I want us to take one break really quickly here to say, Farro says he would not have opened the account had he known essential consultants was a shell company and not an operating business.

[10:40:00]

But there's a lot of reasons that there is tension behind the scenes. First of all, being a criminal defendant is inherently stressful for everyone involved. We also know on the Trump legal team, there are a lot of cooks in that kitchen. There are the lawyers you see in the court. There are the lawyers behind the scenes. There are the lawyers calling Trump from, you know, universities. There's a lot of people.

COLLINS: Lawyers on TV.

REID: Exactly. Lawyers on TV that he's listening to. There are a lot of folks. And he is also a difficult, probably admittedly, client. So, there's always tension behind the scenes. I'm told right now though, things are fine. Our colleagues are in there observing them, interacting.

And look, the idea that he hasn't been aggressive for his client, I don't think that's accurate. If you look at his zealous advocacy, all the filings he did leading up to this trial, he has been an aggressive lawyer, just because he's not throwing a fit in court, throwing toys, you know, out of his pram doesn't mean that he's not aggressively representing his client.

COLLINS: Well, and we've seen in other instances where attorneys like Alina Habba have done that and Trump lost and had to pay a lot of money.

REID: Badly, badly.

COLLINS: Well, he's appealing it. We'll see what happens there.

And, Jake, I should note that this banker, Michael Cohen, is testifying, he is saying that if he had known it was a Shell corporation, that it would not have been open. He said it would have given him pause, basically, testifying about how he was misled about ultimately what this was going to do and saying that the only type of Shell Corporation he would open would be for a mortgage to remain anonymous. This was certainly not that, Jake. Though they did want to be anonymous, I would say.

TAPPER: Yes, absolutely. Kaitlan Collins thanks so much. And Bill Brennan, former attorney for Trump, it seems to me that what Trump attorney, Todd Blanche, is doing right now in his cross-examination of the witness, Gary Farro, who was Michael Cohen's banker, is getting Gary Farro to disparage with facts and his opinion that Michael Cohen set this up in a way that he did not think -- that he has come to learn was not honest. He would not have set up a Shell Corporation just to hide a payment other than to do so, to hide to hide a mortgage.

In other words, if somebody doesn't want their address public. But that almost -- well, maybe not almost, specifically that Michael Cohen was almost deceiving him, too.

BILL BRENNAN, FORMER TRUMP PAYROLL CORP. ATTORNEY AND CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, Jake, it goes back to that narrative that we discussed earlier that, you know, if Cohen is, going rogue and he's lying to the wife and lying to the banker, and he has convictions, we know, for lying to Congress, that's the witness, that's the time that you'll see aggression.

You can't just be a rabid dog with every witness. There certainly was no reason to attack Ms. Graff. She spoke glowingly of her 34 years working for Mr. Trump. Pecker was kind of middle of the road. When Ms. Clifford testifies, I think it would be very foolish.

TAPPER: That's Stormy Daniels for that.

BRENNAN: But I think when Cohen gets on that stand, it will be a bloodbath. And I heard, somebody say tension in the Trump legal team is like sands on the beach. I represented, Mr. Trump as one of a team of lawyers that represented him in his second impeachment. We represented his corporation for seven weeks in front of Judge Merchan, I found him an easy client to deal with, and I have no political agenda.

I found Judge Merchan, to be an easy judge to appear in front of. I thought the prosecutors were professional. So, you know, the clients only make a couple of decisions. They decide whether to take a jury or waive that right and try before a judge. They decide whether to plead guilty and they decide whether to testify.

After that, it's like ground. Leave the driving dust. I mean, I don't engage clients in any other decision, but those three. It's -- you know, it's I work alone basically.

TAPPER: So, Gary Farro, just testifying that Michael Cohen never told him that this account he was setting up was being opened for political activity.

And so, Ellie Honig and Laura Coates, here we have, again, somebody who is a prosecution witness being used for the purpose, of defense, in other words, testifying pejoratively, saying negative things about the key witness, at least in many people's view, Michael Cohen.

COATES: Which is probably the effective strategy. You want to plant a number of seeds here. They want Michael Cohen to be on trial because if this is the witness that is going to be the best and strongest one to connect the dots between Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels payment and of course, with activity, they want to set up to suggest, so, in front of the jury, so you're telling me Michael Cohen can be believed today, but he's lied to Congress, he's lied to really every branch of government, and he's also lied to his wife and the bank, but today, sitting here, he's telling me the truth.

TAPPER: So, Farro -- yes, Gary Farro is saying, if any account was associated with an entity flagged on an office of foreign assets control list, the bank would automatically deny the request. Well, what does that mean? I don't understand. Why?

COATES: Well, he's continuing along with what would be the red flags. One question was asked earlier today was, remember that account that he was supposed to open up in terms of David Pecker to then pay out Stormy Daniels, if that was agreed upon by Pecker who rejected it, he didn't ultimately end up doing that.

[10:45:00]

?He's trying to suggest were there are a number of other red flags that through your due diligence could have shown you even without him telling you, he was not being honest, you would have found these things. And so, he's looking, identifying essentially saying, look, I had nothing to do that. I had no idea, but there were no red flags to make me reluctant or in any way apprehensive.

TAPPER: Ongoing right now, cross-examination inside 100 Center Street. Gary Farro, Michael Cohen's former banker, telling the lead attorney for Donald Trump, Todd Blanche, that he never would have opened a Shell account if Michael Cohen had not misled him about its purpose in October 2016. Farro just said that he learned Cohen left the Trump organization in March 2017 when he received an e-mail bounce back.

We're going to have much more CNN Special Live coverage after this quick break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:00]

TAPPER: Welcome back to CNN's Special Live coverage of Donald Trump's hush money coverup trial. We're going to bring you the latest from court in just a moment.

But first, we have other news and this breaking story. Protestors have barricaded themselves inside a historic building at Columbia University, breaking windows with hammers, using furniture to block the doors. Hundreds of other protestors are now outside the building.

As of now, the NYPD says Columbia University administrators have not asked them to intervene. Julia Vargas Jones is on Columbia's campus for us. Julia, what's happening right now and what are you hearing from students?

JULIA VARGAS JONES, REPORTER: Yes, Jake. I'm right outside this building, Hamilton Hall. That's the building you're talking about. Students are still barricading inside. We're hearing a few dozen students are still in there.

This is the door that you saw in that video that was damaged. This is, I believe, where they went in. You see all the. Furniture pushed out to keep those students inside. Patio furniture taken from other parts of the school being this way. I think what was happening just now is that some of the supporters -- there's just a couple dozen supporters outside of this building now, were trying to get food to the people who are inside.

A reminder that this encampment just across the campus here on the South Lawn has been going on for almost two weeks. They were given a deadline by the university yesterday of 2:00 p.m., that deadline has come and gone. They were given the opportunity to sign a piece of paper to commit to not break any more of the university's rules of conduct. Most of them did not sign that. There were protests instead. And then they moved to this building.

Just to give you a little bit of a sense. There are banners. They have tried to rename this hall, reference to a Palestinian girl who was killed in the conflict in Gaza. And this is the atmosphere.

Now, the big question, Jake, is will Columbia University call in the NYPD like they did a couple weeks ago?

TAPPER: All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Let's turn to some other big news on Capitol Hill. Democrats are coming to the rescue of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson. CNN's Manu Raju has the breaking details.

Manu, tell us more about this. Has there actually been a motion to vacate filed by Republicans to remove Speaker Johnson?

MANU RAJU, CNN HOST: Yes, this is very significant news. Essentially, Democrats announcing that they will save Mike Johnson's speakership from the threat of Marjorie Taylor Greene to oust him from the job.

Remember, Marjorie Taylor Greene moved to try to push him out after he cut several deals with Democrats. One, to keep the government open, and then the latest one to provide roughly $61 billion in aid to Ukraine. She's still threatening to move ahead as any one member can do, as we saw last fall when Democrats voted with eight Republicans to oust Kevin McCarthy, the first time that ever happened in American history.

This time it will be different because of what Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, just said in a statement saying that they would move ahead and effectively kill any effort by Marjorie Taylor Greene to oust Johnson from the speakership, citing some of the efforts, including on issues about Ukraine, saying they want to move past as what Jeffries calls a "pro-Putin Republican obstruction of Congress."

Now, the question is, how long could Johnson sustain that job with the support of Democrats? That's the question I just put to him in a press conference in the wake of this news by the Democratic leaders, whether he's comfortable having his job with the support also of Democrats.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): The speaker of the house serves the whole body. I am a conservative Republican, a lifelong conservative Republican. That's what my philosophy is. That's what my record is. And we'll continue to govern on those principles. I mean, you know, you hope you have the support of everyone, the entire country.

We need to be doing the job that the framers intended for Congress to play. And that's what I'm about. I'll continue to pursue that every day. And, you know, we'll keep the wheels of government functioning.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Now, this should ensure some stability in the House, Jake, after we've seen this tumultuous GOP led House really take shape over the last several months in the aftermath of that ouster of Kevin McCarthy. Remember, that time, there were 22 days or so of no speaker. The House was essentially paralyzed with no leader of this institution. But now that Democrats are saying that they will essentially keep Johnson, then that threat is essentially moot.

Marjorie Taylor Greene could still call for that vote. But it will fail if she moves ahead. The question is if anything changes in the weeks ahead. But Democrats are saying they'll save him. Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Manu Raju on Capitol Hill with all the latest, thanks so much. And let us -- we should -- just note, back in the courtroom, the prosecutor, Mangold is back on -- up for redirect, trying to clean up any of -- anything damaging that Gary Farro may have said.

We're going to squeeze in a quick break, as redirect starts inside court at Donald Trump's hush money cover up trial.

[10:55:00]

We're going to bring you up to speed with everything that happened in a dramatic morning there. Much more CNN Special Coverage ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Any minute now, the jury will return to a Manhattan courtroom following a quick recess. Red flag by red flag. Donald Trump's attorneys tried to pin the blame for an alleged hush money cover-up scheme on Michael Cohen and Michael Cohen alone.

We've been tracking this important testimony this morning from inside the former president's hush money trial.

[11:00:00]