Prosecutors in Donald Trump's hush money case have a "huge problem," a CNN commentator said as the trial resumed Monday.
Jury consultant Robert Hirschhorn told CNN that the evidence presented to date could result in Trump's acquittal, even by a left-leaning New York jury.
In a nutshell, Alvin Bragg hasn't shown a direct link between Trump and the alleged cover-up at the heart of the case.
Trump is charged with "falsifying business records," but the prosecution's case has been full of salacious, unrelated detail to support a complicated narrative about "election interference."
Many of the prosecution's own witnesses have offered up testimony favorable to Trump, and that pattern continued on Monday as the trial finally turned to Trump's alleged bookkeeping offense.
Former Trump Organization comptroller Jeffrey McConney conceded during cross-examination that he never spoke to Trump about reimbursing his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who paid $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels.
McConney also said Trump never directed him to bill Cohen's reimbursement as a legal expense. The alleged deception surrounding the reimbursement is the basis of Bragg's entire case.
While many speculate that a left-leaning jury could find Trump guilty anyway, Hirschhorn said McConney "has not provided that crucial… link between the crime and the defendant's either knowledge of it or ordering that the documents be falsified."
"It’s a big problem and I’m telling you, if they don’t fix this problem what you’re looking at is, is this kind of verdict right here of a not guilty."
"Even from a predominantly Democratic jury, they have to follow the evidence in the case.”
Despite the lack of evidence against Trump, the trial's defects may prove to be fatal to any chance of Trump getting a fair shake.
The latest example of this came Tuesday when Stormy Daniels was permitted to give a salacious, off-the-rails account of her alleged one-night stand with Trump.
The defense asked for a mistrial, calling the testimony prejudicial and purely aimed at embarrassing Trump, but Judge Juan Merchan denied the request and said he would instruct the jury to ignore parts of her testimony.
"I don’t think we have reached the point where a mistrial is in order," he said.
