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Hope Hicks Cried While On The Stand In Hush Money Trial; Longtime Trump Aide Hope Hicks Resumes Testimony. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 03, 2024 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:02:15]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And welcome back as we are learning of some very dramatic testimony that just happened moments ago. This is our special coverage of former President Trump's unprecedented hush money criminal trial.

Right now, the jury has been hearing from perhaps the most significant witness so far, that is Hope Hicks. And it is their first insider account of the Trump 2016 campaign scramble to do damage control after the Access Hollywood tape was made public. And also after an initial story was published about affairs with Karen McDougal - alleged affairs with Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels.

Moments ago, Hicks was asked if Trump ever communicated directly about the payment. And she testified, quote, I only know about one instance sometime in the middle of February, Mr. Trump told me about it. A few minutes later, she said, "Sorry, President Trump."

The court is now taking a brief break after Hicks began crying. It was audibly sniffing, according to our observers there and our reporters who are there in the room.

We have CNN Chief Legal Affairs Correspondent, Paula Reid outside the Manhattan courthouse. Paula, this was pretty dramatic. Tell us what happened.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Probably the most dramatic moment we've seen so far in this trial. Hope Hicks facing questions from prosecutors specifically about whether she knew about that hush money payment, if Trump had ever talked to her about it. And she testified that she only knew of one instance sometime in the middle of February 2017 that Trump told her about it.

Now, she goes on to say that Trump told Hicks that Cohen did it "out of the kindness of his heart." And she goes on to explain how she didn't really believe that because Cohen wasn't necessarily known as a "selfless or charitable" person. So yet another witness on the stand attacking the witness at the heart of this case, Michael Cohen.

And then she becomes emotional. She apologizes. She then refers to him as President Trump. And that's when she begins to break down. Now, Brianna, throughout this testimony, she has clearly displayed signs that she is nervous when she took the stand. She said that she was nervous. And especially as the questions became more and more pointed about the allegations at the heart of this case. She has been wringing her hands, sort of giggling and laughing through answers. So not a surprise that this block of questioning ended in tears.

Now, she only has about 40 more minutes. It's unclear if prosecutors will have any more questions for her.

KEILAR: Okay, so unclear if they're going to have any more questions, Paula. Tell us about this break that they took and exactly what it's for.

[15:05:03]

REID: So usually they take a break in the morning, and a break in the afternoon, and a break in the middle of the day for lunch. Again, according to our reports from inside the courtroom, it does look like they decided to take a break as soon as she started crying. It's unclear if the judge just wanted to give her a little space or if they're just taking their usual afternoon break and it happened to be well-timed.

Now, today is an early day. Usually court goes until 4:30, but they're getting out early today. And it was expected that prosecutors probably wouldn't want to allow defense attorneys to have a crack at Hope Hicks. They don't want anything from the defense, any of their questions, any of their narrative to be in the minds and the hearts of jurors as they go home.

So at this point, it's unclear. There is some suggestion from our colleagues in the courtroom that that is the last line of question from prosecutors. But at this point, we're just looking to see if they have any more questions for her. But clearly, this is an incredibly stressful situation. She is estranged from former President Trump. She hasn't even looked at him, Brianna, throughout this entire proceeding. Remember, she used to be one of his closest advisors. She's not even looking at him. She's at the center now of the biggest case in the world. A very difficult situation for anyone, sort of surprising as the first person we've seen cry on the stand.

KEILAR: Yes, and the descriptions that we're getting, of course, from our colleagues. Even as she walked in with her hands sort of balled into a fist. This is not a comfortable situation, to say the least, for her.

And Paula, we just learned of a key moment when, just before the break, Hicks said of Trump's assessment of the hush money story, that it was Mr. Trump's opinion is that it was better to be dealing with it now and that it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election. What did you make of this moment?

REID: So that's important because, remember, at the heart of this case, it's allegations that Trump falsified 34 business records to cover up that he paid back Michael Cohen for hush money and not just for the usual legal services. And the reason this is being charged as a felony is because prosecutors allege that this was all done, this entire conspiracy was done in an effort to help Trump win the White House.

So this suggestion that it's better to deal with the story now because if it had come out before the election, could have hurt my chances of taking the White House, that is significant as the prosecutors try to build this case and proved to the jury that everything they did in and around the Stormy Daniels hush money payment after the Access Hollywood tape and before the election, all of that was done not to protect Trump's family, but to enhance his chances of becoming president.

KEILAR: All right. Paula Reid, thank you for that. Obviously, very dramatic moments in Hope Hicks' testimony, they're in court just moments ago as they are in a break, but we expect will convene again shortly and we'll bring all updates to you when they do.

Back with our panel now, is this a bit of a slam dunk, this comment from Hope Hicks?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I wouldn't say slam dunk, but this is good evidence for the prosecution. And preceding that comment that you made that it would have been bad if this came out before the election. What preceded it was a couple times the prosecutors tried to ask, would it have been out of character for Michael Cohen to have gone rogue and done this by himself, and twice the defense objected to it.

I think what was happening there was that they thought it was speculating about what Donald Trump, what would have been normal in a way that wasn't okay to put in front of the jury. The judge let that question in, and it was clear that the defense was pretty sensitive about it.

Now they said, her - the answer that she gave was that, no, this actually would have been out of the ordinary. And in all likelihood this would have been something that would have been available to Donald Trump or something that Donald Trump would have done.

So it was an interesting back and forth, and you can see what a defense team is concerned about when they're repeatedly objecting about something that ultimately ended up getting in.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: If we assume Hope Hicks is being taken as a credible, believable witness, which I think she clearly is being treated as such by both sides, there's good news and bad news for the prosecutors. The good news is exactly what Elliot just said.

KEILAR: And she's returned to the stand, we'll be waiting to see what she says there in a moment.

HONIG: Okay. Yes, we'll see if she's on cross-exam or finishing up her direct exam. The good news for prosecutors is she has made it as clear as really anyone could inside the Trump campaign. And later inside the White House, they were very concerned about these stories getting out for political reasons. Yes, there was also a concern about Melania, but primarily for political reasons.

The bad news is, this now keeps up the prosecution's perfect or imperfect record. Every single prosecution witness who had anything to do with Michael Cohen said essentially, he's a terrible person, I don't so much care about that, that's more atmospherics and he lied. And in this case, he lied publicly. He said there was no payment ever made to Stormy Daniels, originally, that was his story back then.

And so, defense lawyers are going to have a field day with that. They're going to stand up at cross and say, this guy's a liar, you know how you know it? All of their witnesses told you that, from David Pecker, to the banker Gary Farro, to Keith Davidson, to Hope Hicks and maybe further.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And can you guys help me reconcile your two points?

[15:10:02]

Because you're essentially saying, wait, why are they so worried about her characterization, Hope Hicks of Michael Cohen and we're seeing in some of the notes that she's talking about things he would not do out of the goodness of his heart.

HONIG: Yes.

CORNISH: It's the rare insult that seems to be helpful. So, I don't know if I'm misreading.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, no, I think they're both right.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have this really good evidence here for the prosecution that Trump was doing this for campaign purposes, that it was executed for campaign purposes. The - and that's really bad evidence for the defense in that case, right? Good evidence for prosecution. But also, their star witness at the end of the day is still Michael Cohen. And they - every witness that come up has basically said he's a liar. So it cuts both ways, like both guys have said it.

KEILAR: And as they've taken this break, which it does appear now it - that it seemed to have been timed because she was having a little bit of - a sort of emotion on the stand. She'd said sorry about that.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

KEILAR: Hicks said. She had cried on the stand, was audibly sniffing and they'd taken just a really quick few minutes.

WILLIAMS: So, a couple things. Judges will do that. You don't want someone to be on the stand distraught. It's bad for that person. It's bad for the trial and so on. Also, on this - moving back to the Michael Cohen not being a charitable person, what's interesting is that that's not really credibility evidence that doesn't really speak to did he lie, is he truthful or not. It's just sort of piling on the fact that nobody seems to like this guy as a witness.

But credibility would have been he has a conviction for lying, which is the kind of thing you could use against him.

KEILAR: But it speaks to the issue on the Michael Cohen and the charitability ...

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.

KEILAR: ... speaks to the issue that at least from Hope Hicks' perspective, because ...

WILLIAMS: Yes.

KEILAR: Trump did mention, the payments to her, she testified to that, that there would be an expectation that Trump would be paying ...

WILLIAMS: Absolutely.

KEILAR: ... Michael Cohen back.

WILLIAMS: Yes, absolutely.

BORGER: And Trump said that Michael Cohen did it out of the goodness of his heart, which was not true. And Donald Trump knew that that wasn't true.

KEILAR: And Hope Hicks did not find it believable ...

BORGER: Right.

KEILAR: ... seemed to be what she was clearly communicating.

BORGER: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And likewise, earlier in her testimony, she said that Michael Cohen said, I don't know anything about this culpecker (ph), right?

BORGER: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, you have this kind of back and forth between the defendant in this case and the star witness, who's telling the truth.

BORGER: And why would Michael Cohen not tell the truth to Hope Hicks? I mean, she was close to Donald Trump. She was an important person and he's going to equivocate with her.

KEILAR: You - and then let's just mention here earlier that just a moment ago, Trump's attorney, Emil Bove, had said to Hicks that if you need a minute, just let me know. And then Bove asks, you felt that you had his trust and respect. And Hicks says his trust and respect, yes. Her voice is still quivering. It's a very emotional moment, continues to be as we see an update coming in here, which I'll read as soon as we get that. HONIG: So this is now cross-examination by Donald Trump's lawyers. I assume that he, whose trust and respect they're talking about here is Donald Trump.

KEILAR: That's right.

HONIG: It's not great for the prosecutors when your own witness breaks down at the end of the direct examination. They haven't even gotten into the cross-examination yet. They're going to want to push on that. They're going to want to use, listen, it's way more persuasive for the jury to hear from Hope Hicks how dishonest Michael Cohen was than to hear from the lawyers for Donald Trump.

KEILAR: And here they're just establishing, Trump's attorney is, that Rhona Graff, a long time former assistant had a similar relationship of mutual respect with Trump. I really looked up to Rhona, Hicks said, again, holding back tears.

WILLIAMS: I would make a slight counterpoint to Elie, which is that cross-examining a crying witness is something that can very quickly turn a jury off of an attorney. And Emil Bove has a very delicate needle to thread here. They want to hit her hard and they want to push the points that she's made. But on a stylistic level, it's something that front and (INAUDIBLE) ...

KEILAR: Let's talk a little bit about - this is someone who's clearly torn.

BORGER: Yes, totally.

KEILAR: And she's testifying here. Let's talk about why she may be crying Donald Trump.

BORGER: She doesn't want to hurt Donald Trump. I think it's very clear that she doesn't want anything she says to damage him. And she apologized at one point and said, I'm sorry because she knows that some of the things she might be saying about what Trump was aware of at what time could be damaging to somebody she still admires.

KEILAR: Let's go back to Paula Reid.

Paula, I know that you have some more details about this moment that we're trying to understand.

REID: Yes. So just a reminder, we don't have cameras in the courtroom, so we're relying on our, our colleagues who are inside, giving us updates. And there was that really hectic moment where she started crying. But now I'm getting some more clarity from one of our colleagues inside about exactly what happened. And it is definitely the most significant moment in this trial so far.

I'm told that when - she was on the stand, she testified that Trump told her that Michael Cohen made the payment.

[15:15:02] He thought it was a generous thing to do and that Trump said he was appreciative of the loyalty. And Trump thought it was better to deal with the story now because it would have been bad if the story had come out before the election.

And this person who's inside the court said she realized - Hope Hicks realized after she said all that that she had just likely sunk him, right, made this case stronger for the prosecution. And that is when she broke down crying.

Now, this source inside one of our colleagues says it's the closest thing to a Perry Mason moment there is in a white collar case.

So as it was happening live, I think it was a little hard to follow exactly what triggered her to break down. But this is the more coherent narration of exactly what transpired, again, an incredibly powerful moment in this trial and one of the rare moments where the prosecution may have been able to get their point across to the jury. Now, of course she is on cross examination by defense attorneys who are going to try to undo this in the about 30 minutes that they have.

KEILAR: Yes. Which may be tough considering her emotional state. And she, so she appeared to, Paula, apologize to the former president?

REID: So she appears at the time at this, in this particular instance, she appears to have explained what Trump told her about how Michael made the payment. He thought it would be generous. He was appreciative of the loyalty and then tie it directly to the election. And that's when this person said she - you could tell Hope just recognized what she had just done to her former boss.

Now, at one point she did apologize to the former president for not calling him President Trump. But here it appears that what prompted this emotional response, according to one of our colleagues inside, is that Hope realized that that piece of testimony that she had just given was really going to help make the prosecution's case.

KEILAR: Yes, very important details there. Paula, thank you so much for that. Thank you everyone. If you can just stand by for me, how is the jury reacting to all of this? We're going to speak to a jury consultant next.

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[15:21:29]

KEILAR: We're following all of the drama and there is a lot playing out in the New York courtroom where former president Trump is on trial. Former aide, Hope Hicks, is on the stand right now. She has told the jury - she began by telling the jury she's nervous. At one point here, just moments ago, she actually cried and the judge took a break.

Moments ago she came back onto the stand after a few minutes away and she said this while describing former Trump attorney Michael Cohen: "He liked to call himself a fixer or Mr. Fix it and it was only because he first broke it that he was able to then fix it." She laughed after saying that.

Joining me now is jury consultant Alec - Alan Tuerkheimer.

Alan, I'm curious what you think - I just described that moment to you where Hope Hicks is being extremely critical of Michael Cohen. On the flip side, moments before she had described former President Trump telling her that Cohen had made these payments basically out of the goodness of his heart, but that she didn't find Cohen to be very charitable so she seemed to be casting doubt on whether that would be true that this was just Michael Cohen entirely acting independently on this and she seemed to cry on the stand after saying that.

How does a jury look at these kind of mixed messages that they're getting from someone who, on one hand has been very critical of Michael Cohen and then on the other hand appears to be saying things that aren't helpful to Trump.

ALAN TUERKHEIMER, JURY CONSULTANT: Immediately, this is a poignant moment. And I think jurors are going to appreciate her sincerity that she was genuine. They like that she said that she gets nervous, that she is nervous. Jurors can appreciate when a witness levels with them to that extent. And so I think that they're going to remember that and maybe even on a break, they might have looked at each other.

They're not allowed to talk about the case, but they probably thought, wow, that was kind of a key moment. But at the end of the day, this is a witness in the middle of the trial, the middle of the prosecution's case, the jurors remember the opening statements. The prosecution used some pretty charged words orchestrated, schemed, tried to corrupt the election. And the defense got up there and said, there's nothing to see here. This shouldn't have been charged. It's not against the law to try to influence the election.

So their job is to take away what the key pieces of the testimony are. And then when closing arguments happen, the lawyers are going to connect the dots for them. So I think she was a good witness for the prosecution. I think the jurors - it sounds like they're pretty riveted by her testimony, but it's certainly a much bigger, piece of the puzzle. And it'll be very interesting since the stage is being set for how credible the jury is going to think Michael Cohen is when he takes a stand.

KEILAR: Yes, that was really my next question for you because she's not alone in saying very unfavorable things about Michael Cohen. That has come up time and again. How does that affect how the jury may see what Michael Cohen says? And how does that normally happen where you have someone who appears to be unliked and unsavory and yet, can a jury still find them credible?

TUERKHEIMER: They certainly can. If I - the prosecution is going to remind the jury that he's under oath and probably remind him what would happen if he wasn't telling the truth. He'll say he's telling the truth. So I think if he's a smooth talker, not smooth in the disingenuine glib sense.

[15:25:02] But if he speaks plain English, if he tells everything that he knows, I think there's still a good chance that they're going to believe testimony. They might not like him. They might think that he's kind of a dirt bag and that when he was involved in the underworld of Trump, he got sucked into it and maybe initiated a lot of the schemes and plans that were a little unsavory.

But at the end of the day, I don't think they're going to go into it very skeptical. Now, they're going to be wanting him to earn their trust in a sense, but I still think he has a chance to tell the truth and that his testimony might end up being embraced by the panelists.

KEILAR: Yes, it will be very interesting to see. Alan, so helpful to get your insights. Thank you.

TUERKHEIMER: Thanks, Brianna.

KEILAR: Hope Hicks is capping off this week with really emotional testimony about both former president Trump and former fixer, Michael Cohen. We'll have more just ahead.

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