CNN Legal Analyst Argues Defense’s ‘Devastating’ Cross of Michael Cohen Could Get Trump Acquitted

BURNETT: “On this, you’ve got Todd Blanche, who has said that he is going to take us through today. And he did, and he’s going to start again on Monday, and then the prosecution is going to the chance for the redirect, which is going to be crucial because they got to take this moment and they got — they got to turn it from something that can be terrible to something that does not terrible, right? OK. But she said she will have under an hour of redirect. Is that enough time to do it?”
GOODMAN: “It’s surprising to me. I think that the defense counsel made so much headway today to then only try to recover for an hour and rehabilitate Michael Cohen within an hour, seems incongruous with the task at hand. I do want to also say though there is a lot of other evidence in the case that the jury’s looking at and saying what happened, like what happened in 2016. A lot of it is corroborated by David Pecker. There’s the 2015 meeting with Michael Cohen. It is explicitly about trying to influence the outcome of the campaign. There are other pieces that are also explicit, including —“
BURNETT: “So can this get to the level it needs to without say this phone call?”
GOODMAN: “That’s right, because we do have David Peckers saying that in November, December, Michael Cohen says to him, please tell Trump to reimburse me. That is not Michael Cohen hiding things from Trump. That is Trump being in the loop, informed about the scheme. So there’s other things there, but I think what happened today still is so devastating. They have to do something right now. If the case ended today and they were final statements, I think there will not be a conviction.”