Prosecutors are frequently mentioning lawyer Robert “Bob” Costello in the Trump trial this week during the exhaustive testimony of Michael Cohen. While he’s not a witness, he’s been talking a lot about his relationship with Cohen. What type of relationship? Depends on who you ask.
The Trump trial, over an alleged illegal hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, has seen Trump’s former fixer Cohen testifying in court all week. The prosecution’s case hinges on Cohen’s testimony that Trump personally asked him to pay off Daniels to the tune of $130,000. The alleged crime is that Trump attempted to hide the payment.
What is Costello saying?
This is where Costello comes in. Costello has been making the rounds telling anyone who will listen that Cohen is lying and had previously told him, “I swear to God, Bob, I don’t have anything on Donald Trump.”
Costello is not new to the case, by the way. He also made waves back in March of last year after he testified to the grand jury in Trump’s defense, but whatever he said didn’t end up stopping the jury from indicting Trump.
Costello, who has close ties to Rudy Giuliani, reached out to Giuliani about Cohen around June 2018, saying that Cohen needed “a little loving and respect booster” because he wasn’t “thinking clearly” and felt “abandoned.” This was when the investigation was in its infancy and Trump was publicly distancing himself from Cohen.
When they met, Costello acted as a legal adviser to Cohen, with the possibility of representing him (which never happened), meaning that their conversations were protected under attorney-client privilege. Costello waived that right in 2019 and started blabbing, saying that he was never able to get the President’s lawyers and Cohen’s lawyers synced up.
“What we had here was a failure to communicate,” Costello said in 2019. “My mission was to get everyone tuned in to the same channel. My thought was a face-to-face meeting among all the lawyers together with Cohen would put everyone on the same channel. The meeting never happened, and the rest is history.”
Fast forward to May 14 of the trial and Costello’s name appeared in court, by prosecutors. While the relationship between Costello and Cohen was informal, prosecutors wanted to highlight it to show how Trump had continued influence over Cohen. They say that Costello was Trump’s messenger after Trump and Cohen stopped communicating.
At one point, Costello sent an email to Cohen that said, “Sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places.” Then the two had a falling out, and Costello tried to undermine Cohen to the grand jury. Here’s where things get interesting. Because he’s not a witness, Costello is free to speak wherever. Costello appeared on Fox News the morning of May 16 saying he should be allowed to testify because the jury didn’t have the whole picture about Cohen. His other claim is that Cohen told him he took care of the Stormy Daniels payment himself because otherwise it would be “embarrassing to Melania.”
Costell said Cohen told him “I decided to take care of this myself.” How did he get the money? “… he took out a home equity loan for $130,000 and used that, and he did tell us that he got repaid later.” Whether or not this will end up in court as testimony remains to be seen.
Is Cohen lying?
On Wednesday, Costello testified to the House Judiciary Committee that Cohen was lying on the stand. Democrat committee member Dan Goldman from New York accused Costello of “jury tampering.”
“If you have information about Michael Cohen’s testimony, you should talk to Donald Trump and his lawyers to see if they want to call you as a witness to impeach Michael Cohen,” Goldman said.
On Fox News, Costello fired back that the jurors were the ones who were prejudicial, claiming they could be suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome” because they were from heavily democratic New York City.
“I understand that 87% of the voters voted not for Donald Trump in the last election, so you have to assume that there is Trump derangement syndrome out there and that this jury will be reflective of that.” He went on to say that some of the jurors will “convict Donald Trump” regardless of the evidence. The trial is expected to last several more weeks.