MSNBC legal analyst Neal Katyal predicted that former President Donald Trump will be convicted is New York hush money trial.

The Republican nominee faces criminal charges for allegedly falsifying business documents regarding hush money payments during the 2016 election season. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has charged him with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records regarding the reimbursements checks he gave to Michael Cohen for the amount of $130,000 given to Stormy Daniels to allegedly cover up their affair allegation.

During a Sunday interview on MSNBC with host Jen Psaki, Katyal said that Trump’s claim that he was not aware Cohen gave payments to Daniel was false because he “watched over every penny” in his business.

Trump is also criminally indicted in three separate Jurisdictions for his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his handling of classified material after leaving the White House.

PSAKI: What we should expect from the defense, given what we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks in their closing argument?

KATYAL: The first thing I’d say, Jen, is it’s just significant that we are having we’re finally at closing arguments after Trump’s repeated attempts to delay this, to stop this trial, even just a couple days ago, rushing to the Court of appeals, saying the judge has to be recused for bias and stuff. All of that has been beaten back by the appellate court in New York. And so now we are finally going to get to closing arguments. And I think what the Trump defense is going to do is basically to say, this is not a case about Donald Trump. It’s a case about Michael Cohen and then putting Michael Cohen on trial. But call him a liar. They’ll say he was convicted because he was a liar, that he’s in it for his own ends, that he’s in it for ego because he’s not a spurned lover, but a spurned lawyer by Donald Trump and the like. And what the prosecution is going to say, picking up on what Andrew said just a moment ago, and I totally agree with that, is that this is not just a case about Michael Cohen, it’s a case about Michael Cohen — plus. Cohen is just gravy.

And it’s things like the Hope Hicks testimony that Andrew referred to, but it’s also handwritten notes that we’ve got. And those checks that you just flashed on the screen a moment ago, which picks up on paragraph 33 in the complaint, these are checks that Donald Trump himself signed. And so that shows knowledge of the whole scheme. And I think at the end of the day that Trump defense is going to play trying to get to beyond a reasonable doubt, just getting one juror who’s going to say, hey, I disagree because in our system that means you can’t put him in jail. And the prosecution is going to say, hey, this is common sense. We’re talking about a guy, Donald Trump, who watched every penny. Do you really think that he would have been cool with all this money going out of his account without knowing it? Do you really think he would just reimburse $430,000 or whatever that number is, without some knowledge about what was going on? Of course not. So it’s a common sense case, and I suspect that it’s going to be successful.

Watch the clip above via MSNBC.

The post Common Sense’: MSNBC Legal Analyst Katyal Thinks Trump Conviction All But Certain in Hush Money Case first appeared on Mediaite.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/Luh5gft