WASHINGTON – The end of the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president is in sight as Donald Trump’s defense team wrapped up its case Tuesday in Manhattan, where jurors heard a week of testimony from nearly two dozen witnesses about Trump’s alleged return of hidden money intended to silence a porn star ahead of the presidential election in 2016.
Trump did not take the stand after his team called just two witnesses.
The former president is accused of committing 34 crimes related to falsifying trade records. New York prosecutors allege that Trump withheld restitution from his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen for paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels just before Election Day in 2016 to keep her silent about her tryst with Trump.
Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive 2024 presidential nominee, denies the scandal and maintains that he paid Cohen for routine legal work.
The case will not resume until after the Memorial Day holiday, when closing arguments are expected.
Backchannel to Trump
The second and final witness for Trump’s defense team, former federal prosecutor and longtime New York-based attorney Robert Costello, stepped down Tuesday morning. His brief but tense speech began Monday afternoon and included a reprimand from judge Juan Merchan for “contemptuous” behavior.
Costello testified that he encountered a panicked and “suicidal” Cohen in April 2018, after the FBI raided Cohen’s New York hotel room as part of an investigation into his $130,000 payment to Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. .
After Merchan received a series of objections from prosecutors on Monday, Costello shouted “jeez” and “ridiculous” into the microphone and at one point rolled his eyes at Mercan. Merchan left the courtroom, including the press, to address defense attorneys for Costello and Trump.
Costello’s testimony confirmed that he provided Cohen with a back channel of communication with then-President Trump through close contact between Costello and former Trump legal adviser Rudy Giuliani while Cohen was under investigation, according to reporters in court.
New York does not allow recording in the courtroom, but does allow public recording transcriptions proceedings.
During the hearing, prosecutor Susan Hoffinger showed a series of Costello’s emails in an attempt to convince jurors that Costello was actively working to assure Trump that Cohen would not turn on him during the federal investigation.
In one email between Costello and his law partner, he asks, “What should I say to this (expletive)?” According to courthouse reporters, he’s playing with the most powerful man in the world.
Hoffinger also determined from Costello during her final series of questions that Cohen never officially invited him for legal assistance, confirming that Costello only came into Cohen’s life after the FBI raid.
Trump’s numerous accusations
Costello was publicly critical of the hush money lawsuit against Trump, as well as Cohen, as recently as May 15, when he testified before the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Armaments of the Federal Government.
There, Costello he said lawmakers that cases filed against Trump this election year are “politically motivated.”
Trump, who faces dozens of criminal charges in four separate cases, was indicted in New York on April 2023.
Three other criminal cases were also filed against Trump in 2023. They all remain in limbo.
- The former president was indicted by a federal grand jury in Florida June 2023 regarding allegations related to improper handling of classified information. Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon postponed indefinitely proceedings, making a hearing before the November election unlikely.
- Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington August 2023. In a four-count indictment, he was accused of knowingly spreading falsehoods about the results of the 2020 presidential election and planning to invalidate them. In October 2023, Trump claimed presidential immunity from criminal charges, which was denied by both a federal trial court and an appeals court. Trump is waiting for a decision from the US Supreme Court.
- Weeks after being accused of interfering in federal elections, Trump was impeached on state fees in Fulton County, Georgia, for allegedly interfering with the state’s 2020 presidential election results. There was a Georgia case immersed in pre-trial disputes regarding alleged misconduct by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Courtroom conditions
In a gloomy, tightly secured hallway just steps from the New York County Supreme Court courtroom, Trump again criticized Monday’s trial and accused prosecutors of wanting to keep him off the campaign trail.
“We are an hour early today. I was supposed to make a speech for political purposes. I am not allowed to have anything to do with politics because I have been sitting in a very frigid courtroom for the last four weeks. This is very unfair. They don’t have any case, they don’t have any crime,” he said to the news cameras he appeared in front of every day during the trial.
Trump told cameras it was like “Fort Knox” outside the courtroom.
He complained that there were “more police than I’ve ever seen” and claimed that “there’s not a civilian within a three-block radius of the courthouse.”
This statement is false. United Newsroom appeared at the hearing on Monday and witnessed the scene outside the courthouse in the morning, afternoon and behind schedule afternoon.
As dawn broke, people standing in line in front of the public, vying for the few public seats in the courtroom, argued over who was standing in front of whom.
About an hour later, a woman with a bullhorn showed up at the adjacent Collect Pond Park to read from the Bible and play contemporary Christian music played from her phone. A man was walking through the park with a sign that read, “Trump 2 Scared 2 Testify.”
Several people were sitting outside eating and chatting at tables in Collect Pond Park at 1 p.m., as evidenced by reporters who left the courtroom after Merchan dismissed the jury for lunch.
By behind schedule afternoon, a compact handful of protesters holding Trump flags and signs shouted that he was innocent.
