The Manhattan criminal hush money trial is wrapping up, and many legal experts think the prosecution is on solid footing — but there's one single word in the law that they potentially have to worry about, former prosecutor Charles Coleman told MSNBC's Alex Wagner.
Trump is charged with felony falsification of business records, upgraded from a misdemeanor, for his alleged hush payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors argue this was effectively interference with the 2016 election, by using illegal means to keep this information hidden from voters.
"Let me just start first with the strength of the case as it stands right now," said Wagner. "I mean, the misdemeanor charge, falsification of business records, seems pretty provable based on what's been presented. I feel like there's a lot of concern about the felony charge and how tight you think the prosecution's case is."
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"So there is one very key element to the misdemeanor charge that I think prosecutors should be slightly concerned about, and that is the word 'cause,'" said Coleman.
"When you are talking about — to cause someone to falsify business records, we know that Donald Trump himself was not going to the computer and making the records that ultimately appeared, that were falsified," Coleman explained. "The notion is, where the question becomes, did he instruct? Did he direct? Did he advise someone to do that, whether it was [CFO Allen] Weisselberg or not? We know Weisselberg's handwriting is all over different things and pieces of evidence. That's what they should be concerned about with respect to the misdemeanor, is the issue of intent."
Ultimately, he added, "I think that you get there because ... it's all on Donald Trump's mind in relation to the election. You get to establish the intent there, however, with respect to the misdemeanor, it's one of the things I think the prosecutors should be concerned about. The other thing is, this is somewhat of a novel and convoluted legal hearing, and I think that the jury instructions are going to be pivotal in terms of how straightforward this becomes, laid out for all the jurors, so that no one gets confused."
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