
NEW YORK – Prosecutors rested their case against former president Donald Trump on Monday, a momentous day in the month-long trial that was quickly overshadowed by the judge’s angry dressing-down of a witness he thought was being disrespectful.
For most of the day, the trial seemed to be winding down; defense lawyers indicated they did not plan to call Trump as a witness and might finish presenting their case in a few hours. That schedule suddenly changed when their second witness, lawyer Robert Costello, infuriated the judge.
“Are you staring me down right now?” New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan asked incredulously of Costello, an outspoken critic of the case filed against Trump by the Manhattan district attorney.
“Clear the courtroom,” the judge ordered.
The court officers began yelling at news reporters to leave, the reporters began yelling to be allowed to object, and for a few minutes the calm, deliberate pace of the high-profile trial was a loud, confusing affair.
Merchan, who tends to be soft-spoken even when angry, had not erupted like that before. The confrontation began after Trump’s lawyers called Costello, a longtime defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, to describe his legal discussions with Michael Cohen in 2018.
Cohen is the most critical prosecution witness in Trump’s trial for allegedly falsifying business records related to a hush money payment. He finished four days of testimony on Monday, telling the jury that he was acting at Trump’s direction when he arranged the $130,000 payment in 2016.
Cohen testified he was reimbursed for that hush money with a series of monthly payments from Trump in 2017, categorized as legal retainers rather than a campaign expense. Prosecutors made those payments the basis of the 34 counts against the former president and presumptive 2024 Republican White House nominee. Trump has denied the charges. His lawyers sought Monday for the case to be dismissed entirely – a request the judge signaled he is unlikely to grant.
Costello was called as a witness to contradict some claims made by Cohen, with Trump’s lawyers arguing his testimony would show that Cohen had committed perjury at this trial. Costello, who once represented Rudy Giuliani, appeared last week before the House Judiciary Committee to criticize Cohen.
The veteran lawyer wasn’t on the stand long before he started to get annoyed at Merchan, and the judge immediately reciprocated, bristling as Costello repeatedly answered questions that had already been ruled improper.
At one point, Costello muttered “jeez,” when the judge sustained an objection from the prosecutors. The witness also waved his hand in apparent frustration that he wasn’t being allowed to answer many questions.
The judge grew irate that Costello appeared to be talking back to him and had the jury sent out of the room so he could scold the witness.
“What did you say?” Merchan demanded of Costello. “What did you say?”
“I would like to discuss proper decorum in my courtroom,” Merchan told Costello. “So when there is a witness on the stand, if you don’t like my ruling, you don’t say, ‘jeez,’ okay? And then don’t say ‘strike it,’ because I am the only one who can strike testimony in the courtroom.”
Merchan’s lecture continued: “If you don’t like my rulings, then you don’t give me side-eye and you don’t roll your eyes,” Merchan added.
But the stern warning didn’t have the desired effect, as Costello fixed his gaze for an uncomfortably long period of time on the judge.
Furious, the judge asked if Costello was trying to stare him down, and then ordered most of the public to leave the courtroom.
Members of Trump’s entourage, which on Monday included several Republican members of Congress, disgraced former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik and the defendant’s son Eric Trump, were allowed to stay.
“I’m putting you on notice that your conduct is contemptuous,” Merchan told Costello, according to an early transcript of the proceedings released Monday evening. “If you try to stare me down one more time, I will remove you from the stand.” He warned Trump’s lawyers that if Costello continued to misbehave, all of Costello’s testimony would be struck from the court record.
“Can I say something, please?” Costello asked.
“No, no. This is not a conversation,” Merchan replied.
About five minutes after the reporters were ordered out, they were told they could return – a roller-coaster end to what had otherwise been a smoothly rolling trial day.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” Trump said outside the courtroom later. He called the judge “a tyrant” and the trial “a disaster for our country. It’s a disaster for New York state, New York City.”
Merchan said at the start of the day that he would not try to squeeze closing arguments and deliberations around scheduled days off on Wednesday and Friday, so summations in the case would be held the day after Memorial Day.
The 19th day of trial began Monday with the two sides sparring over whether the jury should see a photo of Trump and his longtime bodyguard, Keith Schiller, together on Oct. 24, 2016, at almost exactly the time that Cohen claims he spoke to Trump about the payment.
That phone call has become a critical point of contention in the case; Cohen claims he spoke to Trump on Schiller’s phone about the hush money deal, while Trump’s lawyers introduced a series of texts that preceded the call suggesting it was a conversation about a minor security headache.
At one point Monday, the judge weighed summoning a CSPAN archivist from the Midwest to testify to the accuracy of the image, but eventually the two sides agreed instead to just agree on the basic facts of the image.
Once Cohen was back on the witness stand, defense attorney Todd Blanche continued to press him on alleged inconsistencies, contradictions, and misdeeds in Cohen’s account.
As part of his cross-examination, Blanche asked Cohen to explain how his 2017 reimbursement from Trump for $130,000 in hush money somehow ballooned to $420,000.
The answer, according to previous testimony, is complicated.
Cohen has said that when CNBC had launched a poll to determine the top business executives of the last century, Trump was low on the list initially and wanted to be higher. So Cohen hired a company called Red Finch to cast a slew of votes for Trump, which Trump approved.
Ultimately, the CNBC poll was scrubbed ahead of schedule, and Trump felt that the work hadn’t been worth the money, so he refused to pay Red Finch.
Cohen said he withdrew $20,000 from his own bank accounts and paid the company in cash in a brown paper bag, even though the amount Trump actually owed was $50,000.
Eventually, Cohen received reimbursement for the whole $50,000, doubled to cover the taxes on the payment. That meant Trump was charged $100,000 for a bill of $50,000, only $20,000 of which was paid to the company. Cohen admitted in his earlier testimony that he pocketed the $30,000 difference.
“You stole from the Trump Organization?” Blanche asked.
“Yes, sir,” Cohen replied.
Cohen later explained that he kept the difference for himself because he was angry that his year-end bonus at the Trump Organization had been cut from $150,000 to $50,000.
“I just felt like it was almost like self-help. I wasn’t going to let him have the benefit this way,” Cohen said.
Trump’s lawyer also pressed Cohen to admit that he was financially motivated to help convict Trump. At times in his answers, Cohen seemed to agree with that, and at times he disagreed.
“You actually have a financial interest in the outcome of this case?” Blanche asked.
“Yes, sir,” said Cohen.
“What is your financial interest in this case?” Blanche said.
“I talk about it on my podcast, I talk about it on TikTok, and they make money, and that’s how I was viewing your question,” Cohen said. “Whether Mr. Trump is ultimately determined innocent or guilty, is not going to affect whether I speak about it or not.”
Cohen told Blanche that he might make more money if Trump is acquitted, because “it gives me more to talk about in the future.”
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger then got another turn to question Cohen, and used the time to try to undercut any damage done during the lengthy, accusatory questioning by the defense.
“Would you have paid … $130,000 if Mr. Trump had not signed off?” she asked Cohen. “No ma’am,” he replied.
“I know it may feel like you are on trial here after cross-examination, but are you actually on trial?” Hoffinger asked.
“No, ma’am,” Cohen said.
“Are you charged with any crimes in this case?” she asked.
“No, ma’am,” he answered.
(c) 2024, The Washington Post · Shayna Jacobs, Devlin Barrett, Tom Jackman
The left doesn’t even bother anymore to fake impartiality
Merchan is either bought and paid for, or a commie, or both.
Alvin Bragg is a disgrace and will go down as the the worst DA in NYC’s history.