Lawrence O’Donnell Tries to Downplay the Fact that Michael Cohen Stole from Trump Org: He Was Trying to ‘Rebalance the Bonus’

JANSING: “Let me bring in MSNBC Lawrence O’Donnell, host of the ‘Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,’ who has been inside the courtroom, even there almost every day, you have the strength of beyond mortal men. But what was — what was worth it to you today? What did you see? What did you hear?”
O’DONNELL: “Well, you know, the courtroom is where I began as a writer and a Reporter a long time ago. So this is a homecoming for me in terms of the — a workplace. The — the shocking thing at the end of that cross-examination, and I — I just can’t tell you how — just how stunning it was. Because it’s the thing that I was waiting for. I saw everything Todd Blanche — I’ve seen every minute of cross-examination, seen every single question he’s asked. And he sat down and — and ended his cross-examination without asking a single question about the $130,000 that appears on the Allen Weisselberg notes, about how they were structuring the payments to Michael Cohen. He asked about the $50,000. That’s irrelevant to the $130,000. And that’s where he very effectively got Michael Cohen to say — to agree that yes, he stole $30,000. Later, when Cohen was asked about that on redirect by the prosecution, it didn’t really sound like stealing $30,000. It sounded a lot like Michael Cohen, doing the little that he could within that calculation to rebalance the bonus he thought he was deserved and it still came out as less than the bonus he thought he deserved and the bonus he’d gotten a year before.”