OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Michael Cohen’s former attorney trashed his testimony in Donald Trump’s ‘hush money’ trial earlier this week in Manhattan, describing his onetime client as a “habitual liar” who is “totally unreliable.”
Cohen, Trump’s former ‘fixer’ attorney who has since been disbarred and is a convicted perjurer, was criticized by prominent New York defense attorney Robert Costello, who is set to testify before the House subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government “that Cohen told his lawyers back in 2018 that he had concocted himself the hush-money scheme that Trump is charged with and had no incriminating evidence against the former president,” Just the News reported.
Costello, formerly the deputy chief of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office’s prestigious criminal division, claims in his prepared testimony obtained by Just the News that Cohen repeatedly asserted Trump had done nothing wrong during his 2018 debriefing while federal prosecutors were investigating whether Trump violated any election laws in 2016.
Ultimately, federal prosecutors decided not to bring charges.
Costello stated that Cohen was suicidal at the time and had been assured he could secure a deal from federal prosecutors if he provided provable dirt on the former president, the outlet reported.
“Each time Cohen said to me: ‘I swear to God, Bob, I don’t have anything on Donald Trump,’” Costello’s prepared testimony states. “Cohen must have said this at least ten times because I kept coming back to it from different approaches.
“Cohen kept on saying: ‘Guys I want you to remember, I will do whatever the F … I have to do, I will never spend one day in jail,’” Costello recalled. “I even said to Cohen at one point: ‘Michael, now is the time to tell the truth and cooperate if you want your legal problems to disappear.’
Cohen would again reply: “I swear to God, Bob, I don’t have anything on Donald Trump.”
When Cohen hired new lawyers and changed his story to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, Costello secured a waiver of attorney-client privilege. He then turned over previously privileged memos to federal prosecutors that directly contradicted Cohen’s revised account of events, the outlet said.
Costello said that the evidence was so compelling that federal prosecutors decided not to pursue charges against Trump based on Cohen’s claims.
“After that, the U.S. Attorney’s Office never dealt with Cohen again, having concluded, rightly, that he was a habitual liar and totally unreliable witness,” Costello’s prepared opening statement said. “That office chose to not bring any charges against President Trump. Clearly the correct decision. But the same cannot be said for the for the New York District Attorney’s Office.”
Meanwhile, Georgetown law professor Jonathan Turley opined on Tuesday that after reviewing Cohen’s testimony, he still can’t find the crime Trump supposedly committed.
Cohen, previously convicted of lying to Congress while facing additional allegations of perjury, appeared in court to testify in the case revolving around a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
Ahead of Cohen’s testimony, New York Judge Juan Merchan rejected prosecutors’ plea to present a severance agreement involving former Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg as evidence prior to Cohen’s testimony.
“It was really interesting before his testimony to watch this effort to get in the agreement of the accountant. That was such an obvious and dishonest move by the prosecutors,” Turley said, referring to Weisselberg’s severance agreement during a Fox News segment.
“You have to wonder whether this judge is having second thoughts about his failure to stop this case or at least force the prosecution to be clear about it. There is nothing stopping the prosecutor from calling that accountant, so the introduction of that agreement was clearly intended to suggest to the jury that they have some smoking gun evidence, but because of this agreement, they can’t present it. That’s entirely untrue, and so Merchan was right to say I’m not going to let you do that,” Turley continued.
“It goes to how this is a Potemkin village of a case. They are proving stuff not in evidence while leaving suggestions of stuff that is in evidence with the jury,” Turley added. “So the thing to keep in mind is: When the prosecution wraps up its case, the defense will stand up and make a standard motion for a directed verdict to say there is insufficient evidence to support a crime in this case.”
