MANHATTAN (CN) — Donald Trump’s biggest defense witness was a “disaster” for his New York criminal trial, according to a former judge who watched the testimony from inside the Manhattan courtroom.
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.
But retired New York judge George Grasso believes that 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,” Grasso told Courthouse News.
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. A judge for 12 years who has watched every day of the proceedings from an aisle seat in the courtroom, Grasso said he’s never seen anything quite like Costello’s conduct.
“My first thought was, as a former judge, ‘Is this guy kidding?’” Grasso said.
Costello enraged New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan on Monday when he repeatedly uttered frustrations with rulings and glared at the judge from the witness stand. In response, Merchan cleared the press out of the courtroom to chide Costello.
“Sir, your conduct is contemptuous right now," Merchan said, according to court transcripts. “I'm putting you on notice that your conduct is contemptuous. If you try to stare me down one more time, I will remove you from the stand.”
Merchan excused the jury before scolding Costello. But prior to that, Grasso says Merchan’s frustration was still palpable.
“I think the jury saw enough of this. I think the jury probably, legitimately, has a lot of respect for the judge,” Grasso said, adding that Costello’s behavior “probably turns off the jury.”
Jeffrey Evan Gold, a criminal defense attorney at the New Jersey-based Helmer, Conley & Kasselman, echoed that sentiment.
“What did the jury see? They’re seeing a red-faced lawyer having a fight with the judge,” Gold told Courthouse News. “To see this judge — who had been mild-mannered for this whole time and pretty even-keeled — get upset, you could tell from what little they saw that he was upset like they’d never seen him.”
Gold likened Costello’s conduct to that of a “mob lawyer” straight out of the 1990 film “Goodfellas.” He says the defense would have been better off not calling any witnesses at all.
“There was no real reason to call him,” Gold said. “You don’t call on a witness that isn’t going to help you, unless you’re desperate. And I don’t think they were desperate. I don’t think they needed a Hail Mary.”
Costello is a fervent ally to the former president. He’s made numerous media appearances supporting Trump in this case, even appearing in front of a congressional committee earlier this month to thrash its merits.
Both Gold and Grasso suspect it was Trump’s idea to bring Costello in to testify, not his defense team’s. In the end, Gold said the testimony just made their job more difficult.
“It wasn’t just a disaster,” Gold said. “It aided the state’s case.”
Costello didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump is standing trial on 34 counts of falsifying business records, which prosecutors claim was part of a broader scheme to quell negative press surrounding Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The former president rested his case on Tuesday without taking the stand. Trial is dark until next week, when counsel will deliver closing arguments. After that, the jury of 12 Manhattanites will determine Trump’s fate. He is the first president, current or former, to stand trial on criminal charges.
Read daily transcripts of the Trump hush-money criminal trial here. Note there is a delay of several days before new transcripts are posted.
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