constructing their narrative of the case, this is a little detail that could end up being one of the sort of bricks in that foundation. >> again, did you see stormy in the reception area? a vague recollection, but yes, she knew that he was. go ahead. >> it goes to show you, despite what you're hearing all the time, this is not only about michael cohen. it's not about his agenda. it's not about his anger. it's about a case, and you have a person here, a person here, evidence here, this is just part of that puzzle, and that's why the prosecution has to do this now. >> at the end of week one, the puzzle is coming together. pieces are in place. thank you. that's going to do it for us this hour. make sure to join us for "chris jansing reports" every weekday 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. eastern right here on msnbc. our coverage continues with "katy tur reports" right now.

♪♪ good to be with you. i'm katy tur, the state has called their next witness, rhona graff, senior vice president of the trump organization and donald trump's former long time executive assistant. described as the gate keeper, his right hand by his side since 1987. she just said she is testifying pursuant to a subpoena. and that her lawyers are being paid for by donald trump. she also confirmed she kept donald trump's calendar and contacts and most crucially, handled all of his e-mails. since he did not use e-mail himself. joining us now from outside of the courthouse in new york city is nbc news correspondent vaughn hillyard. i know she's testifying as we speak, vaughn, and she's talking about having contacts for karen mcdougal and stormy daniels. what else can you tell us? >> reporter: right. karen mcdougal not only physical

addresses but also phone numbers, and then a cell phone number for, quote, stormy. and this is the most significant here is that she said that she had, quote, vague recollection that stormy daniels who she knew was an adult film star, she has a, quote, vague recollection about her appearing at one point before the 2016 elections inside of the trump tower offices. what exactly does that mean? it is not clear. but she is currently answering questions here from the prosecution she is also confirming contacts that she was the assistant to donald trump, somebody who just almost always with him at trump tower was able to confirm the records that she was keeping on his behalf as well as documents. already they are having her verify e-mails between her and the executive assistant in 2017

to donald trump at the white house helping her essentially transition with somebody to serving in the formal capacity inside the white house. this is notable that she is confirming that she did keep documents and phone numbers as well as an address for karen mcdougal and phone number for stormy daniels as part of her records on behalf of donald trump. >> give us a reminder, who exactly is rhona graff. >> reporter: rhona graff worked for 34 years as executive assistant, close assistant as trump tower as part of the trump organization. up until she left the post in april of 2021. we can expect the prosecution to ask her the extent to which she maintained close relations with donald trump as well as white house staff through the course of his presidency. there could be revealing information, or it could be a matter of using her to confirm

the fact that some of the records and e-mails she's able to confirm the authenticity of because donald trump, as we know, is not somebody who was engaged in text messages or e-mailing himself during that time period. >> and the prosecution has admitted a ton of documents into exhibits, and they include documents, e-mails between rhona graff and one of donald trump's other assistants. this was his assistant, i believe, at the white house, madeline wester. >> the woman who took on the executive assistant role at the white house. she was a right hand to reince priebus, the rnc chair before becoming -- reince priebus becoming his chief of staff, and it was at bedminster that she became a notable face. she was the one in december of 2016 after he won the white

house and before he came on in his official capacity as president, and at bedminster club where he was interviewing a litany of individuals from mitt romney, rudy giuliani to be part of his cabinet. she would come and greet the individuals at the driveway before bringing them inside to meet with donald trump. so rhona graff is somebody who we believe to have engaged closely with after serving in such a high capacity as his assistant for literally decades. and her close association to westerhaut, also on the witness list for the prosecution. so. >> vaughn hillyard, thank you very much. and rhona graff's prosecution finished. joining us is criminal defense attorney and msnbc legal analyst, danny cevallos, and former new york assistant

attorney general adam pollock. the direct is over. cross-examination is happening. why was the direct so short? i'll start with you, danny. >> she's not that critical of a witness in terms of her story to tell. she's mostly establishing places, dates, times, especially necessary with a character like donald trump who never e-mails, which, by the way, as a defense attorney, i can tell you how often people are undone by their own e-mails or text messages or messaging apps or whatever the case may be. you don't have that with donald trump. you have to call someone like this witness to establish things like where he was on a certain day what communications he had. even who was in his contacts because it seems like someone else was in control of his contacts. a bit of a throwback to the way this would work in the 90s or the 80s. but this is a witness that won't be nearly as exciting as david pecker. probably why the people put her

next. usually try to stagger, if you have a witness that isn't as interesting. you put the really interesting, and then the less interesting and back to something exciting. >> susan necheles is donald trump's only woman lawyer in this case. she's well respected in new york law. she's asking her about her daily life working for donald trump. she says every day was different. there was no typical day. 99% of the time their conversations were about business. occasionally donald trump would say go home to your family, which he interpreted as thoughtful. she was invited to the inauguration by donald trump. she and her husband sat on the platform. what is susan necheles trying to do with rhona graff here. >> susan is well respected in new york city. she represents many difficult clients. donald trump would fall into that category, and she needs to

humanize the kind. here's an opportunity, as danny said, there's a witness doing almost nothing for the prosecution. legally authenticating records, authenticating calendar, that has no substantiative testimony. an opportunity for the defense to humanize her client. >> donald trump the president, donald trump the person you read about in the press, that you see in the news conferences. that's part of donald trump. the donald trump i have had experiences with is a much different human being. why is it necessary, at case like this, it's about documents, to make him seem i guess more likable. >> i think it's exactly what you said, there has to be a counter narrative. here he did it. right? he falsified, directed the falsification of documents. they're going to try to paint a broader picture, paint a picture of a businessman, somebody going about his business with people who like him, who respect him.

she worked for him for apparently 34 years. she must have thought he was a good boss. >> it important for the jury to sympathize with him, and if so, is it kind of risky for the prosecution to call her as a witness if she's only authenticating things? >> not at all. they need to call her. she is his iphone for all purposes when it comes to things like contacts and messaging and administrative items like that. they need to call her, they need to authenticate things. they asked about specific days. we'll see those come up in the near future. i don't think the people are too worried on cross-examination witness is being asked about was he a nice boss. they probably could object but it's pretty much probably harmless in their view. they were going to call her anyway. if that's the best they can do on cross-examination, the people are thinking, okay, go ahead. the defense could have rested

without asking her any questions. this is an interesting avenue, why not humanize him. >> the prosecution got her to say she did stormy daniels in the waiting room, and they weren't able to get out of why stormy daniels was there. they're asking her part of your job duties were to work with the producers of "the apprentice." she says trump was relatively hands on, her words, with the show, which she says elevated him from being a businessman to a near rock star status. hoffinger objects. graff clarifies that "the apprentice" involved regular people. trump got involved once the celebrity apprentice began, which would be around 2007. he talked about who would make a

good contestant. according to our reporter in the room, some more than others. there's in a side war right now. what does it mean to get all of this "apprentice" stuff out of rhona graff. >> how is this relevant to the trial. it seems far afield. it's showing he's active, busy, running a company, maybe not involved in the day-to-day record keeping, but instead at a higher level. >> we're going to take a quick break. we're going to talk about wht else happened today. david pecker was on the stand, a lot of redirect. our coverage of donald trump's hush money trial continues in 90 seconds. don't go anywhere. seconds. don't go anywhere. something m. that gritty feeling can't be brushed away. even a little blurry vision can distort things.

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with just one pill a day. choose acid prevention. choose nexium. students... students of any age, from anywhere. using our technology to power different ways of learning. so when minds grow, opportunities follow. ♪ danny cevallos and adam pollock, let's talk about david pecker a little bit earlier today. he was on the stand for i guess a day and a half. more than that. >> if you count that first day. 20 minutes. so let's talk about what he was able to give the defense first. did you see anything that helped the defense from david pecker. >> not a lot. no surprises when it came to examination of david pecker. we realized or i realized the only avenues they would have is challenging memory, go after him, the way you would a cooperating witness.

he's a classic cooperating witness. you take the agreement he signed with the government and you say you're here to perform your end of the deal, aren't you. and you know, that's what you do with every witness who cooperating. a nonprosecution agreement is a fantastic deal. you want to exploit that. and then you hit him on the fact that this arrangement, this relationship far pre-dated the election. it went back to the early 2000s. so that tends to show that the purpose behind these catch and kill schemes were really related to just generally personally wanting to keep these stories out of the news, as opposed to directly benefitting the campaign. they made some end roads. >> it seemed like the defense was trying to figure out or cut away at david pecker's memory, the conversation he was recalling with the prosecution, maybe you have to suspect his memory there. look at these other scenarios, he can't quite remember details. >> this is standard defense

tactic, right? you start to chop away here and chop away there and say he's not remembering this and maybe he's not remembering the key facts, but i think he was very clear, and they came back to it on redirect about the key facts of the mcdougal agreement. >> there was also this exchange, which i think it's important to get to on the redirect with the prosecution, and this is steinglass trying to get out of david pecker that the relationship that ami and the "national enquirer" had with donald trump was unique. here's what steinglass said, during your tenure at ami, there were hundreds of thousands of ndas, right? david pecker says hi. how many did you coordinate for the benefit of the campaign. pecker says it's the only one. prosecutor, did you suppress these stories to help a presidential candidate. pecker says yes. prosecutor, at the time you entered into the agreement you had zero intention of publication, even if it would have helped the bottom line.

you killed it because it would have hurt president trump. pecker said yes. during the defense cross-examination, they're trying to get out of pecker that this was standard practice, buying these stories, catching and killing, was something they did all the time, and here's the prosecution trying to say no. this was special. were they able to achieve that. >> the defense's argument was you did this for all kinds of celebrities not just donald trump. on redirect, they're saying, was there anything like this relationship with donald trump. the answer, no. and i have to say as soon as david pecker's testimony concluded, celebrity everywhere must have been breathing a sigh of relief. a lot of them got hit with shrapnel. he name dropped a lot of people who probably would have preferred they weren't being named in this testimony. that was part of the excitement of seeing this underbelly of checkbook journalism, something most of us knew nothing about.

if we were riveted, certainly the jury was riveted. we're only two witnesses in, but david pecker may end up being the most compelling witness. realize the irony -- >> do you want to start with the most compelling or end with the most compelling? >> you start with a bang and end with a bang. put the boring stuff in the middle. authenticate the 911 calls, you start with a bang, end with a bang, and maybe that means their last witness is michael cohen. i don't know. >> let me ask you now, going back to rhona because she has testified to something interesting. she was not involved in sending checking down to the white house. she recalls trump signing checks in the office and occasionally multitasking while he was signing them. why was that significant? why would the defense want to get that out of her. >> he's presumably a busy guy. people bring a check into the

office. he signs it. he would come back to say, he wasn't really watching, wasn't really paying close attention. he had a whole accounting staff. >> they were saying, he was signing things, sending them out. but there's been a lot of testimony and reporting suggesting that donald trump was aware of the money that was leaving the office, the money that was going out from his checkbook. he was extremely diligent about that. extremely interested in that. if you're the approximation and you're going to come back and do a redirect on rhona graff, is there anything you might question? >> you might go back to the hey, did he question a check before he signed it? who's so and so and why am i writing him a check for $50. if you can establish that testimony, you'll combat the defense's theory, which is, and we always knew this was going to be the case, this is a very busy man, his minions handle everything. one of those minions is michael

cohen, and this was all michael cohen's show, not donald trump who was mostly in the dark. the people know they're going to explore that as a defense t. they are prebutting it, rebutting it in advance. >> graff is off the stand. no redirect. everything you said, danny, is now moot. >> you didn't have to point it out. >> once again. she's off the stand, they're going to get a third witness today. we're waiting to see who that witness is. we're going to take a quick break. once again, our coverage of donald trump's criminal hush money trial continues in just a moment. inues in just a moment

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how is it playing? >> i don't know that it's having a material impact on the presidential race at the present time, and i think that's what's so interesting, katy. there are so many real world implications for the outcome of the trial. it's consequential, from a political standpoint we see joe biden and donald trump locked in a dog fight. trump is up in most polls, though not all polls. there's one school of thought that says, while he's on trial, he's doing less rallies, and he's less active on social media, and therefore not reminding voters who were exhausted by his first term of all the reasons they don't like him. on the other hand, depending on the outcome trial could have political implications that damage him. so, i'm supposed to be able to tell you it's this or that, really we're in a wait-and-see mode here. >> i'll put up a little bit of polling we have in terms of the hush money trial. here's what people, according to

ipsos believe, reuters ipsos, 64% believe it's very or somewhat serious, these charges against donald trump. 34% say it's not at all serious. it is hard to determine what's going to land, of course, we are so many months away from the election, and this would have been kind of a dead zone in terms of campaigning anyway because usually in the lead up to the conventions, once the nomination is secured, presidential candidates take a bit of a break. i wonder, is this reaching or could this reach -- if it were to reach anybody outside of donald trump's base, how would it do that? >> well, i think it needs enough media coverage. it's getting that. i think it needs to penetrate with these voters that this is somehow more egregious than they're used to with donald trump. in a normal trump era circumstance, this is a big deal politically that is basically all bad for trump. but we're in an era where number

one, the price of admission with donald trump is already built into how voters are looking at this, and number two, if you look at joe biden's approval ratings and their country about his age for the next four years, they're not thrilled with him. and so voters are looking at this like an imperfect choice. outside of trump's base, there's room for joe biden to grow and succeed, and he definitely can and may be extremely strong. his organization is better, his ground game is more robust, he's raising more money. he's got so much going for him, and he's got a record to run on. when you look at the numbers, at least for now, what you find is that voters aren't necessarily focused on donald trump's foibles. it's not like it's something new that's disappointing them. what they're focused on is the economy and the issues that voters are always focused on. again, it could be very damaging. could not. we just really don't know.

>> by the way, donald trump and joe biden have, i guess, agreed to debate each other. joe biden said he would debate donald trump on the howard stern show earlier today. donald trump has put out on social media that he doesn't believe it but in case he does, anywhere, anytime, any place. david drucker, really good to have you, thank you very much. criticized for failing to restore order and under fire for allowing the nypd due to unrest. one of the organizers of the columbia protest, we're going live to columbia university to get the details on that. don't go anywhere. don't go anywhere. staff, arizon. i'm an older student. i'm getting my doctorate in clinical psychology. i do a lot of hiking and kayaking. i needed something to help me gain clarity. so i was in the pharmacy and i saw a display of prevagen and i asked the pharmacist about it. i started taking prevagen and i noticed that i had more cognitive clarity.

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palestinian infant who was rescued from her dead mother's womb has died, according to the baby's uncle. being treated in an icu since an israeli strike killed her mother, father and 3-year-old sister. doctors were ultimately unable to save her. there's still near daily operations in rafah. israeli officials say there is one last chance to avoid it, telling egyptian negotiators today they are ready to give hostage negotiations another go, according to two senior israeli officials who spoke with "axios."

how many hostages are still alive remains unclear. yesterday, hamas released a video of one of them. injured israeli american, her hersh goldberg polin. his parents view it as proof of life. protests are spreading to more college campuses, usc has canceled the commencement entirely, citing safety concerns, and at columbia university, protest organizers are under fire after newly surfaced video shows one of them saying anyone who supports israel should die. >> zionists, they don't deserve to live comfortably, let alone, zionists don't deserve to live. the same way we're very comfortable accepting that nazis don't deserve to live, fascists

don't deserve to live, racists don't deserve to live, zionists, they shouldn't live in this world. >> a zionist is generally understood as anyone who supports the existence of israel as a jewish state. joining us now from columbia university's campus, nbc news correspondent, antonia hylton. give us the context around that video. >> reporter: hey, katy. this is one of the organizers of the encampment which has a decentralized power structure. he's one of the people who has spoken at times at pressers. our team has seen him here on campus. i went in today during the window that the campus allows reporters to enter, and could not talk to james. he was not present there. what we know is that he released an apology statement last night saying that he regrets his words, that he affirms the sanctity of life but repeated statements, saying zionist is an

ideology that necessitates the genocide of the palestinian people, and so as you can understand there is a community here at columbia that feels that this isn't really much of an apology at all. and it's coming at an incredibly difficult time. tensions between students, faculty and administration, immense pressure on the president, ma, this doesn't represent their views, but they can't speak for james. it's hard to ask those additional questions right now, you can tell people here in the community are feeling it, katy. >> let's be clear that zionism does not necessitate the genocide of anybody. those two statements are in conflict with each other. that's not what it is. let me ask you more generally about the protests. is it easy to decipher whether

students are all on the same page about what they're protesting? >> reporter: well, you can tell that they're on the same page on a few issues. cease fire, for example, divestment, asking their university to cut ties, those things are clear when you talk to students. when you actually talk to individual students, many of them have different political beliefs. they come from different studies. they have different world views, and they come from very different cultural backgrounds. there are international students there. americans, of course, there are muslim students. there are jewish students who hosted a seter, for example, in the encampment. many will talk about why they're in the encampment from completely different places. the other thing that unites them is this is a generation, katy, that's watching a war on their cell phone in a way that the rest of us might not have grown up in. you know, we have talked about

these forever wars, and many of us have experience knowing about these stories as reporters and then as children ourselves. but we didn't have tiktok showing us those images up close. that's something that keeps coming up in my conversations, for kids, seeing the images that you showed of the baby moments ago, these are things that have changed them and led them to join movements like this, even if they do not agree with the remarks you just heard from the student i repeated there. they see themselves as part of a larger movement. that's why it can be confusing and it's decentralized and you have to come and talk to students of all backgrounds here on all sides of this issue to parse the complexities apart, katy. >> it's complicated. antonia hylton, thank you very much. i appreciate it. and the courtroom is back in session in the hush money trial. there's a new witness on stand. we're going to get back to that in just a moment. don't go anywhere. using our technology to power different ways of learning.

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representing stormy daniels at the time, and there was an e-mail correspondence that at the time there on october 26th, 2016, in which it was gary farro who is the individual, the next witness now testifying that was a confirmation to michael cohen that money had been transferred to his account. again, there were questions at the time, michael cohen in 2018 when this story first broke purported that this arrangement was made with stormy daniels outside of the trump organization or the trump campaign, and the e-mail that was linked to michael cohen was using his trump organization e-mail. this goes to potentially the prosecution's efforts to directly tie the transfer of money at the time, in october of 2016 just two weeks before the 2016 election to the fact that michael cohen was representing donald trump, not only through the trump campaign but also the trump organization. and gary farro may be able to

authenticate some of those e-mail conversations and his understanding of the transfer of money from bank accounts that ultimately made its way to stormy daniels attorney there at the close of october of 2016, katy. >> october 26th, 2016, is when this e-mail was dated. that also happens to be my birthday. let's get back to the panel at the table, danny and adam. gary farro, why is he important? >> in 2018, michael cohen said neither the trump organization or the trump campaign had anything to do with the transaction between stormy daniels and me, but this is that e-mail that was uncovered around that time from october 26th, 2016, that shows that that was probably not the case, at least because the e-mail was not through cohen's gmail account, it was through his trump organization e-mail account, which doesn't really coincide with his statement that the trump organization had nothing to do with it. >> he had his e-mail on his phone, and you know, his

personal e-mail and work e-mail, and you know, sometimes they send from one or the other, you can get confused. >> sure. you can get confused and that's for the jury to figure out. i'm sure they're going to bring that up on cross-examination. that's a significant point. he's going to lay the foundation, he's an objective witness. he's going to put parks in the stand, what happened when in 2016. that's going to match up when they introduce the documents and the other testimony of michael cohen, who, by the way, calling someone like gary farro, you minimize the credibility issues of michael cohen because his testimony will match that of a credible witness who has no credibility problems like farro. >> how long do you expect him to be on stand? >> i think this is a relatively short, friday afternoon, no one wants to be there for too long. good time to put on the not so exciting witness, talk about the facts, the transfers of money, what actually happened, authenticate the e-mails and off. >> cross, how do they handle

him? >> i think there's not much that they can do on cross here. they maybe touch on this distinction you were just talking about, business e-mail, personal e-mail, it overlaps, done. send the jury home. >> to get into the timing here, october 26th was two weeks before the election. michael cohen agreed to pay stormy daniels, made the agreement verbally at least the day after the access hollywood tape comes out. the dating of this, is that going to come into play later? >> the timing is everything. i mean, that's the whole thing. without the timing, there really isn't a case that this was to affect the campaign. if you take this and it happened in 2015, 2014, the campaign has nothing to do with it. they need to show that all of this happened just before the campaign. and the jury can draw inferences from that, which is really circumstantial evidence. you show all of this activity leading right up into the election and the jury can draw inferences about people's intent, why they did what they

did. i keep coming back to this, even if the defense's central theme is michael cohen is a cooperator who will say and do anything to benefit himself, it won't stand up if all of the transactions, the communications, the documents and funds transfers all happens at that time. and that's key for the people because that's what they need to aggravate this to a felony. take it out of misdemeanor land, into class e felony land. >> let's bring in cofounder and former associate white house counsel to president obama, ian basset. what's interesting is we got testimony from david pecker describing visits to the white house. can you just give us your thoughts on having the head of the "national enquirer" who is allegedly involved in this hush money scheme come to the white house after donald trump wins the election? >> i mean, i think one thing that's strange is that it just wouldn't have happened in the

white house in which i served or any prior white house. one thing that white house's have done is they vet extensively, as you know, anyone who's going to be at the white house with the president. not just for legal liabilities but they want to make sure that the character of people who are appearing with the head of state is sufficient to send proper signals about appropriate behavior from the white house. it's one of the roles that i think a head of state plays. the president is not just the chief executive. they set certain cultural norms. prior white houses would make sure someone in a salacious headline, wouldn't appear with the president. the trump white house, the president himself represents the characteristics you wouldn't want to see in your children. >> let me read a little bit from what's happening right now on the stand. the prosecution is saying so there would be multiple debts checking to make accounts, transactions comply with law. gary farro said a wire and

account opening requires multiple layers of review. if i could pose reputational risk, that would be above my pay grade. any transaction that would go to a sanctioned country or a person of interest list, we would not process that transaction. farro also says there's also lines of business we decided we won't do business with, gambling, adult entertainment, check cashing. prosecution asks, adult entertainment. farro says there are strict clauses. >> the prosecution says what happens if there are red flags. >> farro says it would delay an account opening or a wire. prosecution asks, could a bank shut down an entire account if they found something that violated their rules? farro says yes, but we can't just close out a mortgage once it's agreed to. explain the significance. >> okay. so i have some experience with this with money laundering case. the bank secrecy act requires

banks to have a whole unit, an antimoney laundering or aml unit, and to check all of this stuff. you can't just go into banks and open accounts willy nilly, and banks have to have oversight. they're required to by federal law, and they're required to film out forms and check where money is coming from or where it's going. for that reason, i think this is a witness that's going to do just a little more than maybe set up e-mails. he's also going to talk about, and i think one of the big questions the jury has this witness may answer is how is michael cohen able to get this much money in order to pay off an adult film actress? how did he disguise it, i think the jury needs to be educated on that. i think this witness may give this witness may give them that. >> he's also talking about the bank secrecy act. >> the bank secrecy act is a federal law that regulates how banks do business, what they know about their customers, what they know about why the

customers are using the banks. here you have this story, a conspiracy really, where michael cohen is using a home equity line to make a payment to an llc account to funnel money to stormy daniels. this is a money laundering scheme. >> a shell company. >> exactly the kind of thing under the bsa banks should be alert to. >> part of it is michael cohen can't just put in the note section this is for a hush money payment. >> right exactly. i think that's what they need to educate the jury on. there are tons of regulations under the bank secrecy act. forms, i can't tell you how many. there are structuring laws, there are all kinds of different regulations that banks have to follow. if you're a juror, you may be wondering why did a bank give michael cohen a loan to pay off an adult film star. the answer is going to be they didn't. not specifically. they wouldn't have given a loan for that kind of thing.

this is something the jury needs to learn about because they need to know how every transaction wept down. that's why this witness is an important witness. he may not be the most exciting witness the list, but he creates some important anchors for the people. dates and times and how this transaction went down. >> so we have a lot of people that could be called to testify. we now have a manager from first republic. we have donald trump'sen assistant during his time at the trump organization. david pecker and the national inquirerer. it seems like at some point we're going to get hope hicks whos was a member of the campaign and then the white house. and somebody who worked as a lawyer in the white house. what are you thinking? >> i think one thing i'm thinking is this is something we should actually celebrate in a way because it's our system working. what we're witnessing here is a court, which is the place that we go in our society to

determine what is true, when it's contested, hearing evidence and weighing it under rules that are designed to protect everybody's rights. one of the things that has happened a lot in recent years in american politics is we have had a bit of anything goes in the truth in the court of public opinion. that's hard to pull off in the court of law. so to have this week a split screen in which in mand a former president is being treated like any other citizen in our society with all the protections afforded to them, having facts put out and a jury will decide his fate, at the same time while in d.c. the supreme court is suggesting that something like that could never happen or the sky would fall. what we should celebrate is it is happening. it's friday. the sky hasn't fallen yet. that's a good test the to our system. >> let me also add this. farro said cohen was assigned to him after a colleague left first

republic. he had been a client of the bank for a couple years. farro was selected for his knowledge and his, quote, ability to handle individuals who might be on the challenging. he said michael did a lot of his own business and frankly he did not find cohen all that different, but when something was urgent, cohen would call him. otherwise, cohen went to first republic branch at 56th and madison, which was close to the trump tower office. what is the significant about getting into why gary farro was chosen and who michael cohen was as a client of the bank. >> it's the basis of his knowledge. they are explaining this wasn't a relationship like the rest of us have the at the bank, which is you walk in, you fill out a form and never learn the name of the teller or anyone who helps you. this was the world of high network banking where you get assigned a gary farro who knows

you personally and deals with you and maybe gives you that extra special treatment. the people need to explain this to the jury so they understand. they may not recognize this relationship because it's not the one us mere mortals with our bank. our bank relationship is our cards, our online accounts that we look up, but we don't normally have someone like a gary farroing giving us that personal attention. when you're donald trump, maybe those are the people that get assigned to you. they need to lay this foundation. >> farro testified that he was excited to be working with donald trump. anybody who knew michael cohen during those years know that michael cohens was extremely proud to be art part of donald trump's team. he felt very loyal to him and behaved as donald trump's attack dog. he was viciously protective. i do mean that, viciously protective of donald trump while he was in donald trump's good graces. since then, obviously, he's been a whole lot different. he's been very vocally against

donald trump. he thinks donald trump should be held responsible. had felt like he took the fall firefighter the guy and wasn't repaid for it. getting into the relationship and how he view donald trump, does the defense have an opening to talk about michael cohen and his character? >> perhaps a little bit. because the defense can can now cross examine this witness and talk about the relationship, talk about how the bank didn't know, the banker on the stand will be quick to say i had no idea what the money was being used for. i was being duped by cohen. cohens was using me to make these transactions that i didn't know about the purpose. he was lying to me. they can start to paint him as a bad guy. >> we're going to take a quick break as this testimony continues. we'll bring you back on the other side of a short break with a little more from gary farro and our guests here. don't go anywhere. r guestser he. don't go anywhere.

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we are back with the hush money trial ongoing gary is still on the stand. this is the bank manager at first republic bank who took the wire payment from michael cohen to stormy daniels. what's interesting is i was handed a "wall street journal" article from 2018 that flagged that donald trump's lawyers payment to stormy daniels, this $130,000 wire transfer, was reported as suspicious by first republic. so it feels like they are building toward this. why did you think this was a suspicious payment? >> if there was a suspicious activity report, that will be

important. they go back to the antimoney laundering unit in the back office, but it's something that goes on a lot of times and customers don't even know it. they find out later on when they get indicted. they don't always. it literally means suspicious activity. activity the bank finds suspicious. so that's an interesting piece of information to me. but it's not something that michael cohen would have even known about if there ever was a sar filed against him. >> the color are from inside the courtroom is this is necessary, but dull testimony to authenticate the documents mangle this prosecution wants to admit as business records. and yet she says the jurors are surprisingly attentive. that's going to do it for me today. thank you very much for sticking around for the hour. "deadline: white house" starts right now.