Former U.S. Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner pointed to a “breathtaking” piece of testimony in Donald Trump’s hush money trial that he believes “actually undercuts” one of the former president’s lines of defense.
On Thursday, the trial of the presumptive GOP nominee heard how attorney Keith Davidson, on election night 2016 as it became increasingly apparent that Trump would win, texted then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard to ask: “What have we done?”
Trump allegedly falsified business documents to conceal making a hush money payment, before that election, to porn actor Stormy Daniels to prevent her from talking about their alleged earlier affair. Davidson represented Daniels at the time. The Enquirer, meanwhile, deployed a “catch and kill” initiative to bury potentially damaging stories about Trump.
Davidson all but acknowledged that his actions may have impacted the result of the 2016 election, Kirschner said on a new episode of “The Legal Breakdown” podcast with MSNBC contributor Brian Tyler Cohen.
“That was a bit of testimony that was pretty breathtaking and it actually undercuts one of the defense assertions that they’re trying to use to wiggle out of Trump’s criminal responsibility for this,” he explained.
Davidson testified to engaging “in this hush money payment and covering these things up and then, come election night, or the next day, when it looked like Donald Trump is going to win the election, Keith Davidson said, ‘Oh my God, what did we do?’” noted Kirschner.
It showed “they recognized the potentially dramatic damage they had done to the country by engaging in conduct that may have actually facilitated Donald Trump getting elected,” he added.
It is also clear that Davidson “and the others involved in this scheme knew that these hush money payments were being made to impact the election, not to try to conceal information from Melania or Donald Trump’s family,” he added.
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