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CNN Live Event/Special

Sixth Day Of Testimony In Trump Hus Money Trial; Digital Evidence Analyst Testifies In Trump Hush Money Trial. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired May 02, 2024 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: That's how they tend to use these small blocks of time they have, so they don't tip their hand to the defense.

MATTINGLY: But the why is also interesting here, which is, and Paula's talked about this a lot, which is they could stipulate all of this, technically, the defense could.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: They could have put all this stuff in evidence without having to tell someone to say, do you work for C-SPAN? Did this really happen?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT AND ANCHOR: Not the C-SPAN guy. I was always defend --

BURNETT: I know, I really (INAUDIBLE) you guys.

MATTINGLY: And what's been fascinating about it I for a president who everyday at 4:30 walks out of the courtroom and talks about how this trial and the fact that he's stuck in this courtroom is keeping him off the campaign trail and he's running for president. Elena was just kind of detailing how that's all working.

This is making the trial longer, that they have to have these witnesses come in. Maybe not substantially longer, but it's certainly adding some, at least an hour to this as this goes forward. And I've been fascinated as to why they've decided to actually do that.

REID: Yes, it's not clear what the strategy is. I've certainly asked them. I have not gotten a straight answer.

But there is something to be gained from the defense to dragging this out, making it boring. I mean, that is a defense strategy. I'm not saying it's the one that they are employing here, but yes, there's no love lost between the prosecution and the defense, right?

The prosecution could extend the courtesy of revealing who their witnesses are. They're not doing that. And they say that they're not doing that because they're worried Trump is going to tweet about them or attack them, try to intimidate them. So the defense is frustrated about that. BURNETT: Now, OK, as a lawyer, can you say how normal it is to not have -- to not be sharing that list ahead of time? And then the second part of that is if Trump continues to obey the gag order by only maligning the district attorney and the judge, but not witnesses or the jury, can they go back and say, hey, we now want to force this issue so that we do get a list of witnesses ahead?

REID: I think it's certainly something that Todd could try. Todd Blanche, the defense attorney, could try and be like, hey, I just want to show there's been 10 days or however many days without a violation of the gag order. We're trying to build some good will here. Would you do us the courtesy?

Now, they tried to do this before the trial started, and the judge did not make them. So they're not required to. And I'm not going to force them to share.

But this is an extraordinary circumstance because you have someone with this unbelievable bully pulpit who has used it at times to go after witnesses in this case and beyond just Michael Collins, also targeted Stormy Daniels, raised questions about the jury. So, again, there's a lot of ill will between the defense and the prosecution.

MATTINGLY: I was just going to say, while we're not totally zeroed in, as if it was Keith Davidson or David Pecker, Daus' walking through how the office, he's with the DA's office, as Paula was saying, processes devices that are obtained via search warrant. Again, if this is part and parcel to them getting evidence in or getting specific exhibits into this trial, keep in mind, one of the things that we don't have the best visibility into, as much has been reported about this, as much as Paula and Kara have broken about this from our team, is we don't know every recording they have necessarily. We don't know every email or text message they have.

And so what they have obtained, as Daus is kind of explaining right now, about the process and what role that will play as this trial continues to move forward, as prosecutors try and make their case, will remain kind of, I think, the big outstanding question, at least in my mind, given so much has been reported. I feel like you know so many different details about all this, so many that you've forgotten a lot of them, that when we hear about Teo Tequila or Charlie Sheen, you're like, oh wow, OK, that was a different angle.

BURNETT: Tequila was in there.

REID: Did not expect that today. Did not expect that.

BURNETT: You said Charlie Sheen, like Teo Tequila, hot coke, and OK, of course. So then, and when the jury eventually, right, they'll get a full transcript.

REID: If they want it, yes.

BURNETT: If they want it, so they don't have to have it, I guess, at the end.

REID: No, they can ask for portions of it if they need to clarify.

BURNETT: OK, and then they also get these audio clips, whether it be of a rally or the audio clip that was just played of the conversation between Davidson and Cohen. That's all just like separate that they can call upon to re-listen to at any point.

REID: I believe they can ask the judge, send a note, when they're in deliberations to listen to something again or to view something again if they need to, yes, to refresh their recollection during deliberations. Because it's going to take a long time, right?

BURNETT: Oh, it certainly is. You know, what's in the moment so important now, two days later, something else happens, no one even remembers it, right? So you are going to want that and need that.

All right, thanks to both, and we will keep following what's happening in the courtroom right now. As I said, Mr. Daus is still on the stand as we speak now, and our special coverage will continue after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:35:00]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Welcome back to CNN's special live coverage. A new witness has just emerged on the stand in New York. His name is Douglas Daus and he works for the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

Let's discuss with our panel. We don't know much about him. What do we do know?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, what we know is that he is a custodian of records who works on digital information in the Manhattan DA's office. Now, you might be asking, why would the DA's office call someone from the DA's office? There's a few reasons.

So, evidence, in order to get into court, it's got to be admitted. Now, the parties can agree, they can stipulate to let something in, whether it's even that sheet of paper or whatever else it might be. They can agree.

If the defense or the other side does not, then prosecution has to get it in through a witness. So, number one, he may be just admitting evidence. Also, authenticating some of the evidence they have.

When you're dealing with things like he's talking about how he analyzed Michael Cohen's cell phone and so on, you actually have to establish that this is Michael Cohen's cell phone, that we know who reviewed it, who took a look at it, and so on. And what he's doing here with some of this evidence is establishing that it is what he says it is. It's sort of called authenticating it.

And I think the last thing is chain of custody. This concept of when there is a piece of evidence, usually a witness has to come in and say, authenticating it. And I think the last thing is chain of custody. This concept of when

there is a piece of evidence, usually a witness has to come in and say, I know what the chain of custody was from the time it got out of the hands of the defendant or somebody else. It came to me, I put a sticker on it, then I put it in a locker, then the day before we came to trial, I brought it here to court. That's pretty much establishing that this thing that we've talked about, each of the steps it's taken, and that no one's had a chance to tamper with it.

So these little people that will testify for 30 minutes or an hour can actually be quite valuable for the purpose of getting evidence.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: We know that Michael Cohen had a bunch of cell phones, and we know that they were taken from his office in a raid, and we know that he had a proclivity to tape conversations on it. We don't know which conversations necessarily, but I would think that this would be a trove of information for the prosecution.

WILLIAMS: And there's a huge risk when you're dealing with audio recordings and maybe even ones taken surreptitiously that someone doesn't know about. There's a huge risk, particularly in the age of AI and all that business. Where did this video come from?

Well you get a guy like this to be able to authenticate this video is what we say it is.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: I also love that it is an iPhone 6s and an iPhone 7. Just to remind us, we're dealing with something from six or seven years ago, and those were the models at the time. I thought that jumped out at me.

Just a reminder, and as so much of this testimony throughout the day has been looking back at 2016, 2017, 2018, it's been quite some distance of time since these events happened that are being presented to the jury.

WILLIAMS: You will hear that from the defense. Why are we even prosecuting this case that is stale, that is years old? You're talking about tampering with an election that was years ago.

This individual lost the presidency years later. Why does it even matter? Defense attorneys do that.

BLITZER: It's interesting. What we do know about this Douglas Daus, this new witness who was just called to testify, that he works, as you point out, in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office in a unit called the High Technology Analysis Unit.

WILLIAMS: I mean, he's analyzing high technology from seven or eight years ago. It is still important technology, but for all the reasons we've talked about, and particularly the risks to how electronic recordings might be degraded over time or tampered with, you really need a good witness like this to come in and establish.

BLITZER: Are you surprised, David, that they've called this witness as opposed to someone perhaps a little bit more high profile?

CHALIAN: Well, I don't think at the end of the day they're going to call a high profile witness when they've been keeping their cards so close to the vest on who their witnesses are. So if you were to call someone at the end of the day and not get much in and provide the entire overnight hours to the defense to prepare in a way that perhaps they see it as an advantage not to give that much time to prepare, that's one thing.

I do wonder, though, Elliot, maybe you know, so much we've been saying is that this case is moving apace. And I'm not suggesting this guy is going to be on the stand for very long here, but how do we determine whether it is still keeping apace? Because if it is, before too long, those high profile witnesses are going to need to be called.

WILLIAMS: We don't know. The judge certainly knows. At the start of trial, the judge would have -- the prosecutors would have signified how long they thought the proceedings would take and saying, well, we think we need eight or nine days for our primary case-in-chief or whatever else.

They're checking in in these meetings that we're not seeing, these sidebars. They're probably checking in as to where, you know, how much longer the testimony will go for. So I think the judge and probably both sides have a sense of where they are and how much more time they need.

BORGER: And I think the question is whether he'll finish today. And, you know, so you have big testimony, dramatic testimony from Davidson, followed by technical testimony just to stipulate it and get it in the record of somebody who analyzes metadata. And by the way, he also pointed out that one of the cell phones had a gold case. And then --

CHALIAN: When you work for Donald Trump, it might be a requirement.

BORGER: Well, maybe Michael Cohen. But it wasn't Trump's phone, right?

CHALIAN: I said when you work for him.

BORGER: Yes, yes. And then, so tomorrow, you could have another substantial witness.

WILLIAMS: Maybe. So look, 3:43 p.m. Eastern right now, maybe they go to 4:30. Perhaps they could wrap this witness up, have a short cross- examination, and maybe, and this would be moving quickly, another very small custodian of records from within the Trump organization to talk about some of the documents. Or maybe the judge would let them wrap early.

It really just depends on, one, how long this takes and what kind of mood the judge is in at the end of the day. And to David's question, are we moving along quickly enough and can we just try to squeeze one more witness it.

BORGER: Why wouldn't the other side stipulate to these records?

WILLIAMS: You don't have to. You're not obligated to.

BORGER: But what's the reason not to?

WILLIAMS: You make the prosecution put every piece of evidence that they have on the record themselves.

[15:45:00]

If they care about this case so much, make them argue their case.

BLITZER: Just button up for us why the defense lawyers keep trying to portray Michael Cohen as the driving force behind all of this hush money deal and not necessarily Trump.

WILLIAMS: If that point is made successfully, it's the whole ballgame. Because it suggests that the defendant, the person who's on trial here, was not the driving force behind the criminal scheme. It might have just been a detached boss who had all these underlings beneath him who were engaging all these shady and criminal dealings. If they can successfully do that, Trump could probably get acquitted.

BORGER: No, I think we should point out that there's those text messages and one batch of them involved messages between Michael Cohen and Hope Hicks. And we know that Hope Hicks had a conversation about this with Davidson, right, about the hush money. So maybe Hope Hicks will be the next.

BLITZER: Hope Hicks was a top aide to Trump in the White House.

WILLIAMS: That's one. And two, Hope Hicks was in and out of the room during a meeting between Michael Cohen, David Pecker from AMI. She was in and out.

BORGER: Was the conversation with Michael Cohen?

WILLIAMS: It was David Pecker and Michael Cohen was the only other person in the room.

BORGER: Sorry, I misspoke.

WILLIAMS: No, that's OK. August 2015. And so she might have been texting about that or lunch plans. Who knows what it might have been.

BLITZER: Everybody stick around. There's a lot more we need to watch and listen to as today's testimony in Donald Trump's hush money criminal trial continues. We'll be right back.

[15:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BURNETT: And we are back now with CNN special coverage of Donald Trump's New York criminal trial here in Manhattan. In the building behind me. A lot of new details are coming in as Douglas Daus testifies. That's a new name pretty much for all of us. He works in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office in a unit that processes digital evidence. And he's talking in part about the process by which they acquired, verified, and got the information off of Michael Cohen's phone, which is now so crucial.

They're now taking into evidence text messages sent from that phone between Michael Cohen and Hope Hicks, who we also anticipate may testify in this trial.

John Dean is a senior CNN contributor and former Nixon White House counsel. He also co-wrote the book "Authoritarian Nightmare, Trump and His Followers."

So, John, I'm glad to see you. So a couple of things today, and I've been curious everyone's interpretation of this. Alvin Bragg has been quiet. He has not talked about the case. He has not been in the courtroom until this afternoon after Keith Davidson's testimony. He is in the room.

What do you read into that? Do you think he had already planned to do that, or did it have anything to do with Keith Davidson's testimony?

JOHN DEAN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I don't think it had to do directly with Davidson's testimony, which actually went in very well. Overall, there were a couple of bumps, but there always are. And that makes it humanizes the proceeding.

So, you know, Letitia James, for example, the New York attorney general, she was in court every day and went to the microphones afterwards. Bragg appears to have taken a very different posture, where he's not going to offer daily commentary of any kind, nor appear in court every day. He feels it's in good hands with his prosecution team.

So I don't know specifically why he has showed up today, but he's certainly making his presence known.

BURNETT: All right. I want to ask you about something else you just mentioned there, because you said you thought Keith Davidson had some tough moments, but overall was a good witness. I presume you're saying for the prosecution.

I know there's been others who have said this was not a good witness for the prosecution, that the defense managed under cross to successfully make it look like Davidson was possibly extorting, seizing the moment of the election and the max moment of leverage before it's over to extort and get this money for his client. And that he never interacted with Trump himself. And that he never thought that Cohen was doing this specifically under Trump's direction.

So that's the people who are saying that maybe this witness wasn't so good. But you see it a little bit differently. Tell me why.

DEAN: Well, I think he got in some key points and explains a lot that Michael Cohen will not be able to, plus corroborates Cohen. Yes, it was something of a mud wrestling match at points, but everybody gets muddy when those kind of brawls. So I don't think that the necessarily the defense scored a lot of points where they came looking good as a result of what they had to do to try to mess up this witness.

But, you know, we're not seeing the jury, unfortunately, and we don't know exactly how they're taking it. And there'll be 12 different personalities taking it differently. So the collective judgment, I think, though, will be that this witness had good information.

BURNETT: Yes, you know, and it's interesting you talk about we can't see the jury, and certainly we can't. I was in the courtroom, not today, but the last day they were in session. And I was fascinated, John, by their paying attention.

They were uniformly, and there were some data experts, shall we say, that testified then, right, that were there for the, you know, answering very mundane questions of what is your title? What is your, you know, and you could see how somebody could sort of lose concentration. The jury hasn't.

So when I see on the screen now, the jury is paying attention to the interaction between a metadata analyst for the DA's office and the prosecutor asking the questions. It seems pretty impressive to me. Do you see it that way?

DEAN: Yes, I do. It's a highly intelligent jury.

[15:55:00]

They know the importance of the case they're sitting on. And they're going to give it their all. This is probably a moment in their life that will be unmatched in its notoriety. If you will. So I think this is a well-intentioned jury and we'll get a good result from it.

BURNETT: Yes, they certainly seemed, I will say, well-intentioned and engaged, and none of them were making faces or anything that would indicate what they thought about it. Certainly taking it with great seriousness. John Dean, thank you very much.

And please stay with us. More on the trial as they are still in the courtroom, still on the stand right now. Wolf and I will be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BURNETT: And welcome back to our special coverage of Donald Trump's criminal trial. It is the first ever of a former president that we are watching. History, Wolf, together. And we've been following these updates through the afternoon.

Right now, jurors are being shown a batch of text messages, including some between Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, and Trump's campaign aide at the time, Hope Hicks -- Wolf.

[16:00:00]

BLITZER: Erin, earlier today, both sides took turns questioning a former attorney for the adult film Star Stormy Daniels named Keith Davidson. Davidson helped facilitate the deal to sell Daniels' story of an affair with Trump and said he understood that suppressing it would, quote, help Trump's campaign.

Trump's defense team, however, tried to paint Davidson as an unethical lawyer who works with unsavory characters and portrayed the deal as more of a shakedown.

Today's testimony isn't just over yet. You can catch me later today, two hours, in "THE SITUATION ROOM," 6 p.m. Eastern. Don't forget to watch "ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT," 7 p.m. Eastern. Until then, thanks very much for watching.

Our special coverage continues right now on "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper.