Jim Trusty, a former attorney for Donald Trump said the testimony of Hope Hicks in the ex-president’s New York criminal trial “certainly hurts” his case.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to cover up extramarital affairs he had before the 2016 election. Prosecutors say Trump arranged the payments so as to not hurt his chances of winning the election.
One of those payments was made in Oct. 2016, when then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid adult film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000.
The prosecution asked Hicks, who worked for the Trump Organization at the time, about the payment, which Trump told Hicks that Cohen made “out of the kindness of his own heart.”
Hicks cast serious doubt on that claim.
“I didn’t know Michael to be an especially charitable person or selfless person,” she told the court on Friday. “The kind of person who seeks credit.”
During CNN’s coverage of the trial, network legal analyst Norm Eisen theorized that Hicks cried on the stand “because she was throwing her former boss under the bus.”
Wolf Blitzer then turned to Trusty for his take on Hicks’ testimony.
“So how difficult, Jim Trusty, does this make it to argue that Trump was not even involved in all of this?” the host asked.
Trusty replied:
Well, it certainly hurts. I mean,
look, there’s a couple of tactical things I would just point out to start with. First is, when you’re at the end of a week of multi-week trial and you’re a prosecutor, – and I did this for years, 27 years – you like to end strong. You like to end with something where the jury goes home thinking that was pretty important stuff. So they certainly began to cross over from just kind of tawdry to President Trump’s intent, which will drive whether they can make the felony charge.The other thing I would say on kind of a pure advocacy level. Sometimes, really, really reluctant witnesses become the most powerful ones. And you can just read it. It’s just human psychology. You see a person that is clearly uncomfortable with being there, doesn’t want to hurt anybody, doesn’t want to be a part of it, but they end up giving devastating, very entertaining, and interesting information.
Trusty added that the case is not over and said it remains to be seen whether the jury will find Cohen – a convicted felon – to be a credible witness for the prosecution.
Watch above via CNN.