Rachel Maddow devoted the entirety of her MSNBC show Monday night to former Trump Organization “fixer” Michael Cohen’s “smoking gun” testimony in Donald Trump’s hush money trial.
Comparing Cohen’s appearance in the Manhattan courtroom to the “Aha!” moment of an Agatha Christie mystery, where a character connects all of the dots for the reader, Maddow explained why Monday was so damning for Trump’s defense in the criminal case.
"It's okay you haven't been paying close attention all along,” Maddow said. “They, in this conversation, are going to recap the whole story. And not only will they get to the big answer, the big ‘whodunit,’ they will also give you the solutions to all the other little mysteries and red herrings that popped up over the course of the story. That was Michael ‘Agatha Christie’ Cohen today."
Besides casting light on the murky logistics of the fraudulent activity surrounding hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, "Michael Cohen gave testimony today that Donald Trump was in the room where it happened in the worst possible way," Maddow said.
She explained that Cohen was able to connect the “smoking gun document” of People's Exhibit 35 directly to Trump. The bank statement shows the math of the payoff scheme in both Cohen and former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg’s handwriting.
"After the two of them marked up that piece of paper the way I just described, they then took that piece of paper and marched it down to Donald Trump's office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower,” Maddow said. “And with that paper in hand, the three of them had a discussion about what exactly they were doing. And why they were doing it. And he said, 'Do it.'"
Maddow finished by playing Cohen's secret recording of Trump where the two men discussed buying out former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker's secret stash of stories that could damage Trump.
Cohen’s testimony continued on Tuesday.
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