'You make it sound bad': Fox News host taken aback by 'disturbing' legal news for Trump

Fox News legal analyst Andy McCarthy told host Howard Kurtz that he found legal developments in Donald Trump's hush money trial "very disturbing" for the former president.

On the Fox News Media Buzz program Sunday, Kurtz asked McCarthy about defense attorney Emil Bove's strategy of cross-examining former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker in the Manhattan trial. Pecker testified that he ran a so-called "catch-and-kill" scheme to scuttle negative stories about Trump.

"In the hush money case, is Donald Trump's lawyer helping or hurting the case by the way that he cross-examined the Enquirer's David Pecker, especially on the hush money payments to the former Playboy model, Karen McDougal?" Kurtz wondered.

McCarthy said Trump's lawyer was in a "hard spot" because of Justice Juan Merchan's rulings.

"But I also think that if you're going to take the position that the hush money payments, which are really non-disclosure agreements that are a staple of civil litigation and settlements in the United States, if your position is that those are lawful, it doesn't make sense to me to cross-examine Pecker in a way that tries to distance Trump from those agreements," McCarthy explained. "I think you shouldn't worry about them if they're lawful."

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The attorney continued: "And the other thing that's happening in there, Howie, that is very disturbing, is the judge is letting a lot of evidence in about the belief of Pecker, and I'm sure this will be with Michael Cohen as well, that they violated the federal campaign laws because the state is teeing this up as a conspiracy to violate those laws, even though that's not the charge of the indictment."

"So you make it sound bad, and you take it seriously, but maybe that's not such a good idea," Kurtz reacted.

Watch the video below from Fox News or at the link.