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Appearing on MSNBC early Saturday morning, conservative attorney George Conway predicted that Donald Trump's antics in Judge Arthur Engoron's courtroom on Thursday will haunt him if he shows up at the second E. Jean Carroll defamation trial set to start next week.

Speaking on MSNBC's "The Weekend," Conway said that Trump's meltdown during closing arguments when Engoron gave him a window to speak did not go unnoticed by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan who will likely keep the former president on a short leash if he shows up.

'There were two separate cases, one was the case that was tried, the defamation he engaged in against E. Jean Carroll after he was president," he began. "This is the one, this is the first case they would've brought that got held up because he claimed that the federal law prevented the lawsuit and then he later claimed that he was immune to it because he was president."

"And the first trial, where he had the opportunity to testify but did not, was where E. Jean Carroll presented her story and the story of the women who she told, just like within a day or two after the rape, and then the jury found, and Trump refused to show up to rebut that she was raped that day."

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"And so, he is precluded —there is a doctrine called collateral estoppel: if you lose an issue once to a party, you can't relitigate it," he explained. "So basically, E. Jean Carroll's lawyers are saying, they made a motion to exclude all sorts of things that he wants or that he might try to do to relitigate it. Also to make sure that Trump does not pull the kind of crap that he pulled the other day in court across the street."

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For all of his bluster and accusations at his $370 million financial fraud trial, at the end of the day the fact that Donald Trump "cooked the books" is what will end up costing him when Judge Arthur Engoron renders his final verdict regarding the Trump Organization.

That is the opinion of conservative lawyer George Conway who appeared on MSNBC's new "The Weekend" show featuring co-hosts Symone Sanders-Townsend, Michael Steele and Alicia Menendez.

Invited to address the closing arguments in the trial where Judge Engoron has already ruled the former president is guilty of fraud. Conway was asked what played out in the courtroom as the trial concluded.

"The New York case is interesting because, unlike the other, the four criminal cases, his freedom is not on the line here: his fortune is on the line and his businesses are on the line," he explained. "What the judge has already found based upon, frankly, undisputed evidence, is that he cooked the books. He cooked his own books and then he presented the books to lenders and insurers and so on and so forth."

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'His argument is, 'Well, they got all our money back, they weren't actually defrauded,' when the truth of the matter is, you cannot have fake books," he elaborated. "Even if you're a private company because people sometimes will have to rely on those books. And it's a privilege to do business either as a New York incorporated corporation or as a foreign corporation, out of state corporation, that has the right to do business in New York. That's a privilege and you can't abuse that privilege the law says, by cooking your books."

"Basically, his problem is he has no defense to the fact that he cooked the books and so, you know, that's why he has all this bluster," he added. "He can be put out of business, basically. The court has the power to basically revoke his ability, his corporate status."

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Just days before the "First in the Nation" Iowa Republican Caucuses, two volunteers for the struggling DeSantis campaign were asked if they would vote for Donald Trump in the general election if he becomes the GOP's presidential nominee.

"Absolutely not," one volunteer who voted for Trump twice told CBS News (video below). "In 2020 I was very enthusiastic because of the choice we were facing, but I will not be voting for Donald Trump."

CNBC host Brian Sullivan on Friday exploded at the thought that there would be no post-primary debates in the 2024 presidential election.

"You got to be kidding. Of course, there's going to be presidential debates," he said during an interview with political strategist Frank Luntz in which the host claimed to have spoken with a person with insight into the pulse of the future presidential race once two candidates distinguish themselves. "This is the United States. We would never do that."

Friday filings by both special counsel Jack Smith and former President Donald Trump's legal team might as well have been moving chess pieces on the board — with Smith playing for keeps.

Former prosecutor Charles Coleman, appearing on MSNBC's "The 11th Hour" with Stephanie Ruhle, set the stage for the lesser covered federal case the 45th president is facing in Florida that accuses him of dodging requests to hand over classified documents stowed away at Mar-a-Lago.

"The View" co-host Ana Navarro busted Donald Trump's latest excuse to try to delay his New York fraud judgment.

The former president's attorneys had asked Justice Arthur Engoron to delay closing arguments in the trial, which had been scheduled for Thursday, to be paused until at least the end of the month after the death of his mother-in-law, and Navarro ripped the request as disingenuous.

Earlier this week, Mediaite published a report claiming it had heard a recording of Trump-loving operative Roger Stone talking with a security guard about assassinating Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Stone denied that he had ever said such a thing and taunted Mediaite for not producing the recording.