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CNN Live Event/Special

Ex-Attorney For Stormy Daniels & Karen McDougal Resumes Testimony; Police & Protesters Confront Each Other At UNC Chapel Hill. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired April 30, 2024 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Marc Lotter is a former special assistant to President Trump, who also served as Trump's 2020 director of strategic communications. And he joins me now.

And, Marc, I'm glad to see you again. good to be with you this afternoon.

MARC LOTTER, FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: Good to be here.

BURNETT: So you know what -- what do you make of what we're seeing so far today? You know, just being in the courtroom with Trump, Marc, one thing that stood out to me, you know, we did, in Iraq. He said, how are you doing, you know when -- when I saw him this morning.

It's a small room. He's certainly -- there's times he appears maybe bored. But anytime anything is interesting, he perks up. He's paying attention, he's engaged. He's clearly aware of the seriousness of the moment, at least in terms of behavior I saw. He's taking it seriously.

Does anything stand out to you about how he is conducting himself and his comportment at this point?

LOTTER: No, I think he understands what this trial is really all about. It's keeping him off the campaign trail. And so he's going to make sure that he doesn't provide additional fodder.

And what is focused on is what he talks about during the breaks before and after the hearing, and not necessarily on every moment of every reaction during all the back-and-forth during these -- during the legal proceedings.

BURNETT: And, you know, Marc, right at the beginning, before the jury came in, you know, they take care of some business. And one of the things the judge, Judge Merchan -- and just to give a sense where -- there's Judge Merchan and then, you know, 10 or 15 feet away is Trump. I mean, it's a very intimate setting.

And so he rules on a few things and asks a few questions. They're making arguments on some upcoming issues.

The gag order, though, when that ruling came down and literally, it's very surgical and the sense, OK, I'm, you know, number three and four, I'm fining you $1,000 each, and four through $1,000 each. And not on one.

And it just was it just was very quick and very professional and not a reaction from Trump at all.

And now those Truth Social posts that were subject to the gag order have been already removed during the lunch break by Trump's team. So you know, you know how he feels about the gag order. We all know he's livid. He's angry.

But he did control himself in that room. I mean, there wasn't even a blink from anybody just happened. OK, $9,000, move on.

LOTTER: I think, to a certain extent, he realizes he's winning right now. I mean, when you look at all the poles that are coming out, despite the fact that we've done this now for three weeks, Donald Trump's lead is growing in the polls over Joe Biden, leading in the swing states.

And so if he can just obviously continue doing what he's doing, the legal side, they'll probably feel like they're winning that, too. And so they just continue just basically blocking and tackling, doing the basics, he comes out of this, even though it's not the ideal situation, he comes out of this winning.

BURNETT: So how do you think he sees another thing that happened today, is they're going to have a whole bunch of days off. Trump does get the day off. Remember he had said, oh, they're denying me a day off for my son's graduation, which was not true.

And today, the judge said, well, now it appears this case will be going through that time. So of course, you're going to have your son's graduation off and other attorneys need a day off.

Said, if the trial is still going on then, you'll get a day off. That's all the way out in June 3rd. A juror has to -- is going away on a trip on a Friday at 11:00. So the court gets put on recess.

It just extends all this out and makes the trial go longer. How -- how much of an impact does that have on him, Marc, in terms of campaigning, right, as this continues to drag further and further out?

LOTTER: Well, it obviously keeps him off the campaign trail at least three, four days a week, depending on the trial schedule.

But as we see, tomorrow, he's headed to Michigan and Wisconsin. He'll have a rally or events over the weekend. So he's making the best of this situation.

It doesn't surprise me that liberals and Democrats want to drag this thing out as long as humanly possible, because it does keep him under a gag order and keep him off the campaign trail.

But right now, the way the polls look, it's actually turning to be in favorable for Donald Trump. BURNETT: Yes.

LOTTER: I think he's maximizing it. And so let this thing continue on. But the sooner it ends, the better.

BURNETT: Well, and I'll say, in terms of dragging it out, just the logistics of that courtroom, the two dates requested were both all from the Trump team.

So in terms of the logistics of who's responsible for dragging it out, it is -- it is the defense, not the prosecution, at least in terms of the days that were approved today, that I saw.

I am curious though, Marc, as to your perception of his ability to campaign. It is a grueling experience to sit in that courtroom. And it is grueling for him. It's grueling for everybody in there.

So how does he manage to do that? He's got to sit there. He's got to be paying attention, which he is. Then all of a sudden, you have a day off and you're supposed to go out on the campaign trail.

I mean, there's only so long that anybody can withstand that. And that's the situation he's in.

LOTTER: Yes, I mean, I wouldn't say it -- put it this way, I mean, being president and then campaigning and sitting through all of those meetings in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, all of the various things you have to do when you're president and then turning around, heading out and turning it on to be in a campaign rally, that's got to be pretty taxing as well.

[14:35:08]

So I mean, I think he's probably more than capable of doing that. Again, not the ideal situation, but I think he's making the best of it.

And I have a feeling you're going to see a lot more campaign events around New York, where even on the days when he is in trial, gets him out there amongst the people, among the adoring folks out there. And it gives him a shot to possibly put New York in play.

BURNETT: Well, that, I think, would be that would be a true seismic event, much bigger than the earthquake we all experienced recently.

All right. Marc, thank you very much.

And still ahead, we are watching multiple protests right now at college campuses across the country. Demonstrations growing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill right now. And at U.T. Austin, continuing after such a major day yesterday. Our teams are on the ground at these crucial spots.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [14:40:37]

BURNETT: All right, we are watching dramatic developments unfold at college campus protests nationwide right now -- Wolf?

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: I want to get right to CNN's Dianne Gallagher. She's on the scene for us at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

These are live pictures we're showing our viewers right now.

Dianne, update our viewers.

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: All right. I cannot hear on IFB anymore, but I'm assuming that you are on our pictures right now.

What I can tell you is that this is a very intense escalation from how it has been for the past several hours.

There was a rally and silent vigil for Palestine that occurred for several -- after they -- I don't know if you can see right now, they're taking the Palestinian flag down off the flagpole, which was put up there about 30 minutes or so ago by protesters.

They took the American flag down, raised the Palestinian flag. About five minutes or so ago, we saw a large group of police officers come down Polk Place and just sort of come for the students who had interlocking arms around this flagpole.

It appears they're trying to remove the Palestinian flag and re-raise an American flag up on this flagpole here. But with the force that this was done, pushing down students, some into these barricades that were placed up this morning after police cleared an encampment that had been here on Polk Place for about 90 hours.

The University of North Carolina sent an email and they sent out a paper statement basically warning the students at 5:37 this morning, they had to clear the encampment by 6:00 a.m.

Many of the students we spoke with said that they were sleeping and did not know until some faculty came down about 10 minutes before 6:00 to get out.

According to the university, about 30 people were detained. I spoke with the district attorney. He said that is a mix of arrests and citations.

Talking to students, they say that, again, they were very surprised by this. They felt that it had been a very peaceful encampment up to that point.

The University of North Carolina says that they were violation of negotiations that have been ongoing by putting tents back up on Sunday afternoon. The university students who were at the encampment told me today that

they felt like there was no real negotiation with the university. They felt like this was more of a one-sided conversation.

They had taken the tent down twice already. But there had been no real discussion with the university, those students say, about their demands of divestment and disclosure of finances.

Now, they say that that is why they put those tents back up on Sunday afternoon, what the university deemed as a violation, for them to go and clear the encampment this morning.

The students, again, saying there was no real honest negotiation, they felt, with the school and that was why they kept those up.

Now, again, this is an intense escalation from what we saw just 20 minutes ago or so. There were students dancing and chanting. You can now hear other students coming and saying, "USA, USA."

We're seeing more students now come to Polk Place, this sort of green area where -- we'd actually been seeing a decrease in people out here. They were finishing for the day.

We had lots of speakers out here earlier that we were listening to roughly five or six hours after many of those people who were either arrested or cited were released.

Now they put barricades up after the encampment was cleared this morning. And we did see these protesters -- you can see there's a couple of skirmishes over here.

We did see those protesters sort of remove those barricades after several hours of that protests and silent vigil to come and take down the American flag, put up the Palestinian flag, and continue their chants.

Everything that we have observed today, from about noon on, has been incredibly peaceful and very low key for the most part. Up until we saw the officers run across this lawn here. That is really the most intense energy that we have felt.

[14:45:00]

I'm -- I'm going to let you kind of look at what is going on again here, but it does appear they're just trying to raise this American flag up.

I'm going to get my photographer, Wesley (ph), to just sort of show the growing number of students that is starting to come here to Polk Place.

Now, again, this is not what the situation necessarily looked like just a few moments ago here at the University of North Carolina.

BURNETT: All right. Dianne Gallagher showing us these images. Of course, at the beginning, when we were seeing those police had come in to try to rehoist that American flags, some of those images Dianne had were really dramatic.

Kids sort of being if thrown out from that cordon of police officers from what we could see, a few of them. And now chanting. And it looks like the police are re-raising that American flag.

A very dynamic situation at UNC Chapel Hill. Our Dianne Gallagher is there. We're going to be checking back in back here over these next few moments.

And we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:50:19]

BLITZER: Welcome back to CNN special coverage of the Donald Trump hush money criminal trial. Court is in session right now. Prosecution witness, Keith Davidson, is on the stand. He's the fourth witness of the day to testify.

Our panel is back for us.

Keith Davidson said, in the course of the testimony today, that he actually received 45 percent in his pocket, 45 percent of the $150,000 deal with Karen McDougal.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: That's a healthy cut.

(LAUGHTER)

HONIG: I mean, that's more than plaintiff's lawyers usually take, right? It's usually one-third. It has sort of inched up to 35 percent in some areas.

And the point of that is that he had his own self-interest in this. And I think that plays into what the cross is going to be of him, which ultimately is going to establish, the people who were pulling off these deals, whether it was Michael Cohen, David Pecker, Keith Davidson, were all self-interested, were all duplicitous to an extent.

And I think what the defense is going to want is the jury to say, who can trust any of these people?

Now the prosecution, though, is saying, look, these people are the most lovely folks, but they're telling you what they did. Their stories are backing one another up and there are documents. There's payoffs, payments, here's invoices, here's contracts that back this all up.

So I think that's the fundamental conflict we're seeing here.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: And something prosecutors will be certain to say, or at least imply is that the mere fact that big dollar amounts get involved doesn't necessarily mean that the behavior is more shady.

You're judging conduct under New York State law. And if there were payments made and misrepresented in records for the purpose of concealing them from -- from voters, that's the crime.

Set aside what you think about the money and the porn stars and all that business.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: My question is, this is, as we discussed during jury selection, a well-educated Manhattan jury, sort of media savvy, a couple lawyers.

Are they -- do they really -- is this jury going to be impacted the way other juries might by unseemly characters or are they a little jaded to this and just understand that some unseemly characters are part of the equation.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: You know the answer to that.

HONIG: Well, I can -- I practice in front of Manhattan juries. It's the latter. It's a great point that David makes.

Manhattan juries are pretty sophisticated and they're -- you know, they're not pearl clutchers. They're not going to be, like, horribly offended by the notion of payoffs. I mean, they get -- you know, they read the tabloids.

So I actually think that's an important nuance here. I think that could help the prosecution that they're not going to be, oh, my I'm so offended by this.

BORGER: This is so sleazy.

HONIG: Yes, yes.

BORGER: I can't deal with it.

WILLIAMS: They're New Yorkers. They're fine.

BORGER: The thing that Davidson does is he corroborates David Pecker.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

BORGER: And that's important because Pecker corroborates Michael Cohen. And what he also does, and he did on the stand, is make the case that he knew that this story was not going to be published, and that he knew -- and he gave two explanations for it.

One was to build her brand, so she wouldn't get tarnished by it. And the other reason, he said, is that there was a close affiliation between David Pecker and Donald Trump, that AMI would not run this story.

So he also knew or is saying that Donald Trump somehow was involved and knew about the deal to silence this case, to quash it, right, to not tell the story.

And so that's more corroboration in a way that Donald Trump was involved in all of this and knew about it and was aware of it.

BLITZER: Is Keith Davidson's testimony setting the stage for Stormy Daniels' testimony?

WILLIAMS: I think that's a good way to think about it. And it's almost as if crafting a narrative. It makes sense for prosecutors to have the broader witness, a witness, I think, one step further removed from the defendant, who can sort of lay the stage for Stormy Daniels' testimony.

Then once jurors have somewhat of an understanding of how the transaction worked and how things played out, then you could go to the more specific witness and get her testimony. So I think it is sort of laying the groundwork.

BLITZER: His testimony also is making Michael Cohen unlikeable.

(LAUGHTER)

BORGER: Yes.

WILLIAMS: It is. And some of that might be a deliberate attempt on the part of the prosecutors to acknowledge that they have a witness that has some credibility issues.

Now again, this is a witness whose testimony is likely to be supported by other witnesses' testimony and documents, and so on. But something they have to confront is the fact that that cross-examination of Michael Cohens is going to be pretty whithering.

And so it is in their interest to be the ones to put that on the record and not give that ground to the defense.

HONIG: If I can, just because I'm seeing the updates here, there's testimony now that Stormy Daniels' manager called him and was some, quote, "some jerk" called me, some jerk, and was very, very aggressive and threatened to sue me.

And then Davidson confirmed that the jerk in question was Michael Cohen, to Elliot's point --

(CROSSTALK)

[14:55:00]

CHALIAN: -- in relation to that 2011 blog post that appeared about Stormy Daniels and potentially having a relationship with Donald Trump.

And Michael Cohen is lighting up the world on fire of anyone belated Stormy Daniels to try and get this blog post taken care of. And obviously, he was not at all pleasant to deal with. He was screaming. I don't think he was accusing us of anything. He was just screaming, Davidson said.

And then, according to our reporters inside the overflow room who were watching this, there was laughter in the overflow room when this testimony came up.

BORGER: Yes --

(CROSSTALK)

CHALIAN: -- because everybody recognizes that's Michael Cohen behavior.

BORGER: Anybody who knows Michael, recognizes the behavior.

And by the way, that's behavior that Donald Trump might say is OK because he likes aggressive lawyers. And Michael Cohen was aggressive to the extreme, right?

WILLIAMS: Michael Cohen has said that -- as much that that is the kind of behavior that the former president valued.

Now, but just a little bit of trial psychology here. Imagine if all of this information first came out on the cross-examination of Michael Cohen. If someone put them on the stand and said, I'm going to read you messages and text messages that say you're a jerk. Do you know this?

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: It's psychologically --

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: Its very different than having the prosecutor's control how the information comes out so that it feels were not as bad later on down the road.

BLITZER: Everybody stand by.

We're going to take a quick break. Much more of our special coverage continuing right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)