Tension in the court: Will ex-president be indicted or not, and when will it happen?
The long wait for a possible criminal indictment against Donald Trump continued Monday after a grand jury heard testimony from a defense witness in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into the former president’s hush money deal with porn star Stormy Daniels.
The decision could come as soon as Wednesday, the next day the grand jury is scheduled to meet.
Robert Costello, a veteran city defense lawyer who has represented former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and right-wing strategist Steve Bannon, testified for two hours as a witness for Trump to undermine Michael Cohen’s credibility.
“I told the grand jury, among other things, that if you put a gun to Cohen’s head he couldn’t tell the truth,” Costello told the Daily News.
Cohen, Trump’s ex-fixer and now foe, is a critical witness in the probe. He was federally convicted of making the $130,000 payment to Daniels on Trump’s behalf in 2018 to buy her silence about Trump having sex with her at a Lake Tahoe charity golf tournament in 2006. In his guilty plea, Cohen said Trump directed the payment and that it was intended to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
Cohen was in the building on standby Monday when Costello met with the grand jury, ready to be called as a rebuttal witness, but prosecutors sent him home.
“If Bob Costello’s comments were any more fantastical, he would be a best-selling fiction author,” Cohen told The News. “I stated years ago and remain consistent that the payment was done at the direction of, in coordination with and for the benefit of Donald J. Trump.”
It wasn’t clear whether prosecutors intend to call Cohen back Wednesday, when the grand jury is set to meet again. Cohen said that he had not been asked to come back.
The DA’s office has not revealed any information about the confidential probe. Still, an invitation to testify extended to Trump last week — which he declined — fueled speculation criminal charges against the former president could come any day. The courtesy call commonly comes during the final stages of a probe.
Once the DA has finished presenting evidence, the grand jury, impaneled in January, will be tasked with deciding whether or not to return an indictment against Trump. The potential criminal charges would mark the first ever brought against a former U.S. president.
Local and federal authorities were preparing for chaos to descend on the lower Manhattan courthouse should an indictment happen now that Trump called Saturday for his supporters to “protest” his arrest.
NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell and Mayor Adams held a security briefing for elected officials Monday afternoon.
It was not clear whether Costello’s participation significantly impacted the DA’s investigation or whether it will prompt prosecutors to call anyone else as a witness before putting the vote to the jury.
The defense lawyer acted as a legal adviser to Cohen before their relationship soured. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election outlined the men’s relationship, describing Costello as advising Cohen after the FBI raided his office and hotel room in 2018.
As Trump tweeted that he was confident his longtime fixer wouldn’t flip on him, Costello emailed Cohen words of comfort, saying he had a “Very Very Positive” conversation with Giuliani.
“You are ‘loved,’ ” Costello wrote in a 2018 email to Cohen, according to the Mueller report. “They are in our corner . . . . Sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places.”
Four months later, Cohen pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to issuing the payment to Daniels and helping to arrange another to Playboy model Karen McDougal, paid out by the National Enquirer’s publisher, among other crimes. Sources say DA Bragg is exploring whether Trump committed a felony under New York law in paying back Cohen.
In the feds’ case, they said Cohen falsely billed Trump and his company for retainer services and the company falsely logged them as “legal expenses.”
The Manhattan DA’s office has declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.