Government

With Trump Gagged, House GOP Holds Hearing To Trash Michael Cohen

The people's business!

By
on
michael cohen

Michael Cohen (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

With Donald Trump trapped in a dingy Manhattan courtroom, barred from attacking his enemies, the task of calling in trollstorms has fallen to his allies.  Luckily he’s got “surrogates” in high places, including Congress, where the House Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government spent yesterday counter-programming the trial with a televised hearing focused on the New York prosecution.

Chairman Jim Jordan invited Trump’s former lawyer Jim Trusty, as well as “Cohen’s” former attorney Robert Costello to testify, along with some ghoul who worked to end DACA and separate immigrant kids from their parents under Trump, and now serves as general counsel for the America First Legal Foundation. The Committee has not seen fit to release Trusty’s transcript, giving us instead a double dose of the ghoul. Let’s just assume he said what he’s been saying on Fox, just longer:

But we did get Costello’s statement and written supplement, which is … a lot.

Costello, who worked at SDNY decades ago, has a storied history in Trumpland. He first emerged as a conduit between Trump and Cohen during the Mueller investigation, where he was accused of dangling a pardon to Cohen if he would stay on-side. Costello went on to represent his longtime friend Rudy Giuliani in his various civil and criminal matters, as well as partnering with him to publicize the Hunter Biden “laptop.” He followed that up by steering Steve Bannon to defy a Congressional subpoena, netting him a conviction for contempt of Congress. Eventually Costello sued Giuliani and Bannon for non-payment of bills, although he lists them as his most prominent clients on his firm bio, alongside such “luminaries” as Leona Helmsley and “Vatican Banker” Michele Sidona.

In 2023, when DA Bragg was preparing to indict Trump, he dispatched Costello as a rebuttal witness to trash his former “client” Michael Cohen, and it’s clear from Costello’s testimony yesterday that he’s still salty about it.

Sponsored

The Zoom meeting was with approximately 8 Assistant District Attorneys. It began with one ADA saying: “assume we have read all your materials, what do you want to say?” Hardly a warm greeting for someone trying to help them get to the truth. All the collective group did was sit and listen as I described the many lies told by Cohen.

For his part, Cohen claims there was never any attorney-client relationship, but, to the extent that any such privilege existed, he waived it in 2018 when he pled guilty to tax fraud and campaign finance violations. Costello has interpreted this waiver as relieving him of any duty of loyalty to someone whom he called a client and he’s attacked Cohen ever since. Indeed the 32-page memo attached to his testimony, in which Costello details every interaction with Cohen, suggests that his loyalty was at best conflicted from the get go.

At 4:18pm, Costello and Cohen have a ten minute call in which Cohen says it’s great that you were able to make contact with Rudy as there a number of things I want the “Big Guy” to know. Cohen said he also wanted to find out how the Southern District wound up with this case. He wanted to know who was involved and who authorized a search warrant for his office and home. Cohen said: “there’s a lot of stuff on the internet about me that simply isn’t true. There are stories that I hate Trump, that I blame Trump for the search warrant and that I am telling my friends that I am cooperating. These stories are all bullshit and I want the “Big Guy” to know that.” Costello then called Giuliani and left a message. Later Giuliani called back and Costello reported all that Cohen had said and Giuliani thanked him and said it’s good that we can talk and avoid these misunderstandings that are being promoted in the media. Giuliani asked Costello to assure Michael that the President does not hate him and in fact the President feels very bad that Michael is in the situation he is in and understands how hard this must be on Michael’s family. At 8:57 pm, Costello sends Cohen an email summarizing the Giuliani conversation.

Costello defends this, and the phrase “back channel,” as normal parts of a joint defense agreement.

Costello sends an email to Cohen just after midnight. Reference is made to a ‘back channel of communication” because that is the phrase Giuliani used. Nothing nefarious is intended by the use of that phrase because there was a joint defense agreement. This is a situation that exists in every joint defense agreement and Cohen was in a Joint Defense Agreement with the President as Giuliani acknowledged.

Sponsored

But if his loyalty was a little muddy back in 2018, it’s pellucidly clear whom he’s repping now. Here’s his explanation for Cohen making the $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels:

The reason and his motivation for this became obvious upon further revelations by Cohen regarding the fact that when Trump’s inner circle went to Washington after the Inauguration, Michael Cohen was left behind in New York. Cohen stated that he thought that when Trump became President, that he, Michael Cohen, could become Attorney General of the United States or at least Chief of Staff to the President. As delusional as this may be, Michael was angry that he had been left out. Procuring this NDA would be a way to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump and save embarrassment for Melania because he knew that Donald Trump was very concerned about not doing anything to embarrass Melania.

Michael Cohen tried to get back in Trump’s good graces in 2017 by making the hush money payment in 2016??? What even is linear time?

The Subcommittee’s Democrats, who called former prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks to testify, were not impressed.

“You know that coming down here, outside of that courtroom while that witness is on the stand, to try to impeach his credibility and his testimony is jury tampering,” Rep. Dan Goldman scolded Costello. “You know it is unethical. You know that you are trying to discredit a current witness at a current trial.”

Does he though? Does Costello have a firm grip on legal ethics? Gonna need to do some more back channeling to figure that one out.

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.

Topics

, , , ,