'Tawdry on steroids': Prosecutors must show Trump was 'willing to dive into' tabloid muck

Both jurors and voters have been hearing details about the "unseemly" world of tabloid publications as part of Donald Trump's hush money trial, but a legal expert explained that prosecutors must show the former president was a willing participant in those "tawdry" schemes.

The quadruple-indicted ex-president has been charged with falsifying business records to illegally conceal his hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, and panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" reacted to her attorney's testimony that exposed negotiations around celebrity scandals that walked right up to the line of extortion.

"You know, it's a highly unattractive world, as you said, seamy and kind of, you know, salacious and awful," said Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson. "I think most people watching this might take issue with the question of whether or not this lawyer is an extortionist. That doesn't get to the question of the trial, though, the falsification of business records as a felony, so I'm not quite sure which way it cuts. I'm curious to ask [legal analyst] Lisa [Rubin] how do you think it played at least inside the courtroom and maybe outside of the courtroom? Because this is really, like, tawdry on steroids, the whole story we heard [Thursday]."

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Rubin agreed, and said that prosecutors must demonstrate to jurors that Trump was not an innocent victim of one of these schemes but a longtime player in that world.

"It's absolutely tawdry on steroids," Rubin said. "To your point about whether [attorney Keith] Davidson engaged in something akin to what he'll call extraction, if not extortion, to the extent that jurors believe that Trump lowered himself into this world as opposed to the fact that he might have been floating well above it, that's really the question that the [Manhattan district attorney] has to answer. They have to show these people, not only that this seamy underbelly of American gossip existed, but that Trump was willing to dive into it with those folks."

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