According to recent reports, Michael Cohen’s former lawyer rebuked his arguments before Congress. New York defense attorney Robert Costello disputed Cohen’s testimony, labeling Cohen as a “habitual liar and totally unreliable witness.”
Costello delivered his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday where he suggested Cohen had lied on the witness stand during the hush money trial. Costella has reportedly accused Cohen of stating in 2018 that he created the hush money scheme that serves as the basis for Trump’s charges.
A prepared statement from Costello read in part, “Each time Cohen said to me: ‘I swear to God, Bob, I don’t have anything on Donald Trump.’ Cohen must have said this at least ten times because I kept coming back to it from different approaches.
Costello’s remarks further indicate that Cohen was eager to avoid criminal punishment, to which Costello urged him to be truthful. According to Costello, Trump’s former lawyer claimed to have had no incriminating evidence on the former president.
The testimony continued, “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. 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.”
However, Cohen eventually acquired a new legal team and offered a much different story to the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. At this point, Costello obtained a waiver of attorney-client privilege and provided confidential memos to federal prosecutors.
According to the prepared statement, “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. 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.”
Per Costello’s prepared comments, Cohen stated in 2018 that he developed the plan to take out a home equity loan to provide the six-figure hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. He suggested that Trump was unfamiliar with the details surrounding the scheme.
“When asked if Trump had any knowledge of this, Cohen told me no,” Costello alleges in his prepared statement. “When asked whether Cohen got the $130,000 from Trump or any Trump entity or friend, Cohen again said no.”
He continued, “When asked if this was from Cohen’s own money, Cohen said no. He was asked where, then, did he get the money and Cohen explained he took out a HELOC Loan because he didn’t want anybody to know where the money came from.”
Notably, Costello’s statement agrees with other witnesses in the case who suggested that Trump had advised the payment in the interest of protecting his marriage with Melania. However, the prosecution has argued Trump approached the payment to Daniels for politically motivated reasons to defend his image with voters ahead of the election.
Ultimately, Costello’s remarks outright claim that Cohen is untruthful, which dilutes his legitimacy as a witness in the trial. “He lied repeatedly both about consequential and inconsequential details. Whenever it suited his purposes, Michael Cohen showed no hesitation to lie,” his testimony further stated. “The pattern is consistent that Cohen lies when he thinks it is to his own advantage but tells the truth when it is to Michael Cohen’s own advantage.”
Featured image credit: The Circus, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michael_Cohen_in_2019.png
"*" indicates required fields