'Biggest failure': Expert reveals how Trump's lawyers are ignoring an obvious defense

Michael Cohen endured a new barrage of questioning under cross-examination at former President Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial in Manhattan on Thursday — and Trump defense counsel Todd Blanche manage to land one hit by establishing one of Cohen's recalled calls to Trump in 2016 wasn't actually to Trump, and wasn't necessarily about adult film star Stormy Daniels.

But for all of that, former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti told MSNBC's Ari Melber that evening, the defense has actually dropped the ball in a big way, by failing to bring up one of the most important lines of questioning that could put doubt in the minds of the jurors.

"Renato, you have done a mock trial with us before," said Melber, himself an attorney. "Old school MSNBC beatniks may remember, you and Alan Dershowitz went to a New York courtroom and did a trial. Do you have examples of questions you would like to see Cohen asked next week to deal with what we discussed? On the one hand, real doubts raised. On the other hand, a lot of receipts back him up."

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"They need to focus on the pieces of his testimony that don't have receipts, that don't have corroboration," said Mariotti. "And they haven't done that. That's really the biggest failure thus far."

"What would you ask?" Melber pressed him.

"Well, I would ask, for example, Mr. Cohen, there is no email whatsoever from Donald Trump to you regarding the falsification of business records, is there?" said Mariotti. "There's no text message, there's no — you don't have a recording of Donald Trump talking to you about falsifying business records, do you? Walk through all of the ways in which you can isolate pieces of his testimony that aren't corroborated. That's what the defense should be focused on but they're all over the place. That's the biggest failure of the defense thus far."

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