Costello’s fiery testimony made aspects of the prosecutors’ case even ‘stronger than it was,’ ...
Donald Trump’s biggest defense witness was a “disaster” for his New York criminal trial,..
Trump's attorneys called Robert Costello to the stand on Monday to bolster their argument that Trump’s former lawyer
Michael Cohen acted alone when he paid hush-money to adult film star
Stormy Daniels....
... Costello’s testimony actually bolstered the prosecution’s claim that Trump engaged in a pressure campaign to keep Cohen from telling federal prosecutors about the supposed scheme. “If anything, I think it made the people’s case on this whole pressure campaign issue even stronger than it was,”....
Costello, a lawyer who gave Cohen legal advice in 2018, testified Cohen told him Trump knew nothing about the payments to Daniels, and that he handled them on his own. Costello rebuked prosecutors’ claims that he was tasked by Trump to keep Cohen from cooperating.
But on cross-examination,
prosecutors confronted Costello with emails that suggested otherwise.
“
Our issue is to get Cohen on the right page without giving him the appearance that we are following instructions from Giuliani or the president,” Costello wrote in one 2018 email, referencing Trump and the then-president’s close aide Rudy Giuliani.
Grasso believes that
Costello’s testimony opened the door for prosecutors to hammer home their account of the so-called pressure campaign even stronger.
“
When Costello took the stand for the defense case and was confronted with those emails … he might have locked the prosecution’s narrative on that dynamic,” Grasso said.
That, coupled with
Costello’s on-the-stand behavior, leads Grasso to believe that the jury was left with a bad taste in their mouths.
