The fifteenth day of former President Donald J. Trump‘s Manhattan-based hush money trial saw the prosecution‘s case end with a catastrophic admission of theft by Michael Cohen as the prosecution rested its case. Even more troublesome for District Attorney Alvin Bragg was that Trump’s defense team brought Robert Costello, Michael Cohen’s former criminal defense attorney, as its second witness.
Costello, the former Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, made his career telling juries the truth. Before giving his testimony on Monday, Costello testified before Congress last week that Cohen had repeatedly said to him that he had no evidence against Donald Trump when facing criminal investigation in 2018. On Monday, he told the same recollection of events to the Manhattan jury.