I have been watching jury consultants on the Trump trial. Both on MSNBC as I recall, at least the second one, which I just watched, was. Jury consultants here study the selected jury for their reactions to testimony. Both consultants were women. The first stated that on direct of Michael Cohen there was a moment that she said she had never seen before in a jury. It was when Cohen testified that Trump told Cohen to push the Daniels payments until after the election if possible. The consultant said that six jurors simultaneously swiveled their chairs toward Cohen. They realized how important that moment was and they paid closest attention and reacted in unison.
The second woman I found particularly insightful. She said that there were two times when she saw the jury react to Cohen on cross examination. She pointed out that many in the media know Michael Cohen as a bombastic, often abrasive person. But what the jury has seen of Cohen is a soft-spoken, a little hang dog at times, and on cross "defeated", that is how Cohen presented to this second jury analyst. But then Todd Blanche took Michael Cohen out of the courtroom for the jury. Blanched played a Cohen podcast where he raved and shouted and cursed that he wanted to see Trumpie behind bars. The contrast was "striking" and the jury "reacted". She didn't characterize the reaction but we're all human, we've all been in situations where we think we have a handle on a person's personality and then he abruptly and starkly changes. We're taken aback, that's the reaction. That would have hurt Cohen's credibility with the jury. They would have had doubts about just who Michael Cohen was.
The second time that this second analyst noticed the jury reacting was of course Blanche's Perry Mason moment:
