Memos from 2018-19 shake up Trump case: Cohen denied having incriminating evidence on hush money

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By Nick Givas and John Solomon

An attorney who advised disgraced Trump organization lawyer Michael Cohen provided Manhattan prosecutors with voluminous documentation, including contemporaneous emails and memos, purporting to show that in 2018 Cohen wanted Donald Trump to help cover his legal bills and repeatedly claimed he had no evidence incriminating the former president in a hush money deal with porn actress Stormy Daniels.
 
“Cohen said he had no information against Trump,” one memo summarizing attorney Robert Costello’s interactions with Cohen stated. That memo, dated April 2019, recounted Costello’s interview with federal prosecutors about conversations he and colleagues had with Cohen a year earlier.
 
Costello, a former federal prosecutor who has represented famous clients like George Steinbrenner, Leona Hemsley, Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon, told Just the News on Tuesday he provided Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office with more than 300 pages of emails, memos and texts chronicling his dealings with Cohen.
 
He said his documents showed Cohen took out a bank loan known as a HELOC — on his own — during the 2016 presidential election to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 under a nondisclosure agreement so she would remain quiet about her alleged relationship with Trump. Cohen bragged he kept the situation quiet so that Melania Trump and Cohen’s own wife wouldn’t learn about it, Costello said in an interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast, recounting what he said Cohen told him back in 2018.
 
“He said,” Costello recalled, “‘I didn’t believe the information, but I knew that this was a situation that would cause embarrassment. So I negotiated with this lawyer, and we worked out a an NDA … for the payment of $130,000.’
 
“And I said, ‘Did you get that money from Donald Trump?’ ‘No.’ ‘Did you get it from any Trump Organization?’ ‘No.’
 
“I said, ‘Did you take that money out of your own savings or checking?’ ‘No.’
 
“I said, ‘Well, how’d you get the money?’ He said, ‘I took out a HELOC loan.’ ‘Why would you take out a HELOC loan to cover something like this?’ He said ‘because I wanted to keep it secret. If I took money from my account, my wife would know about it. I didn’t want my wife to know about it. I didn’t want Melania Trump to know about it.’ He said, ‘That’s why I did it that way.'”
 
“Now, if you’re gonna do it that way, that means you’re keeping it from Donald Trump and Melania Trump,” Costello added, summarizing the story he offered grand jurors and Manhattan prosecutors.
 
In a 2019 summary of Costello’s interview with the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York (SDNY), Costello alleged that in 2018 Cohen wanted to talk to Giuliani, then a lawyer for the 45th president, about getting Trump or his insurance company to pay Cohen’s legal bills.
 
“Yes, during the long conversation on June 23, 2018, Cohen asked me to talk to Giuliani and ultimately to Trump about Cohen applying to Aeon Insurance, under the D&O policy, to pay the legal fees, and Cohen did not want ‘the big guy’ to oppose Cohen’s request,” Costello said, according to the summary of the interview with federal prosecutors.
 
Costello also provided a contemporaneous email with a colleague from June 2018 in which he recounted his conversations with Cohen about Giuliani and payment of legal bills.
 
“He asked me to communicate with Rudy and have him tell the President that all of these stories about cooperating are bullshit,” Costello wrote. “To tell him that he is not talking to reporters. He is not talking and friends (cq). These stories from sources are fiction.”
 
“I believe the issue for Cohen is money,” Costello explained in the email. “Who is going to pay for these lawyers.”
 
Cohen did not respond to requests by email or text from Just the News for comment. His lawyer Lanny Davis declined to answer questions, instead offering an attack on one of the reporters in this story.
 
“I decline to comment to Mr. Solomon who, sadly, in my opinion since I was once a great admirer of his, no longer practices fact-based journalism,” Davis said.
 
In interviews with MSNBC, Cohen acknowledged having contacts with Costello, but suggested the former federal prosecutor was “‘making up stories” to the grand jury and carrying out “a typical Trump play.”
 
In those interviews, Cohen also claimed he did not believe he had waived his attorney-client privilege from his conversations with Costello. “I don’t recall waiving anything,” he said. “But, again this is, I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
 
But one of the documents that Costello provided to Just the News shows that Cohen signed a declaration in 2019 for federal prosecutors waiving any claim of privilege from his interactions with Costello.
 
“Although I do not believe that any of my communications with Costello or other lawyers at DHC are subject to attorney-client privilege, I hereby waive whatever attorney-client or other privilege that might be argued have attached to such communications,” the February 2019 declaration from Cohen stated.
 
You can read that document here:
 
File
 CopitrakScan_99999.001 (6).PDF
 
The back and forth between Costello and Cohen is just one of many signs, experts said, that Bragg’s office will face challenges if it brings an indictment on state charges against Trump based on the testimony of his former lawyer, who pled guilty to making false statements to Congress and other crimes and served time in prison.
 
“Using Cohen as a witness would be the greatest gift to Trump,” Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Just the News. “If they’re smart, they will try to work around Cohen, try to pick some of the other witnesses, maybe some tapes … I don’t think they’re gonna put Cohen on the witness stand.”
 
Costello testified Monday to a grand jury in Manhattan helping Bragg’s office investigate a hush money payment to Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign. Costello said he volunteered to testify to the grand jury because he believed he had information that would impeach the story Cohen has given on television about what he told the grand jury.
 
“He’s making some of this stuff up,” Costello told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Tuesday. “He’s embellishing.”
 
Costello said he told grand jurors that Cohen appeared distraught when they first met in spring 2018 in a hotel, and that he even talked of committing suicide. He said he repeatedly asked Cohen if he had incriminating evidence on Trump that could be used to get Cohen a plea deal and that Cohen repeatedly said he did not.
 
“Even a serial liar tells the truth, once in a while,” Costello said. “And when a person like Michael Cohen is in extremis, he’s ready to kill himself, that’s the one time that he’s going to give up Donald Trump if he had something at that point in time. But he didn’t.”
 
Costello’s account in the interview Tuesday matches what he told Congress during the Russia collusion investigation against Trump, according to a summary of that interview he turned over to prosecutors.
 
In that 2019 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, Costello said he had asked Cohen if he had any useful information to offer up to prosecutors regarding Trump, but Cohen replied that he had none.

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I think it appears at this time that Bragg delayed trying this charge again until, one, it was closer to the 2024 election and, two, perhaps the existence of all this exculpatory evidence (which others clearly saw there was no reason to charge Trump with any crime) would be forgotten. He would bring together a different group to examine the evidence and he would hide the evidence showing Trump was innocent and Cohen is a liar.

Yet, Bragg is a Democrat golden boy, alright.

It was Trump who announced he would be arrested Tuesday.

Last edited 1 year ago by Greg

Ha been appealed, not going anywhere.

That WAS an appeal ruling.

Beijing biden is the one who has mishandled classified documents.

Trump committed no crime in the classified documents fiasco and played no role in the fedsurrection.

Meanwhile, in Georgia: Trump wants to block Georgia prosecutors from using evidence in monthslong special grand jury investigation into his election interference

…In a motion filed to court Monday, Trump’s attorneys argue that the state statutes authorizing the special grand jury used by the Fulton County district attorney’s office are too vague to be constitutional. They also argued that statements from the prosecutor’s office, the jury foreperson, and the judge overseeing the process violated Trump’s rights…

Lots of luck with that.

Last edited 1 year ago by Greg

Yeah that is not working out so well either. . The grand jury cannot indict because of some technicality.

Another bogus attempt with no basis in law.

Last edited 1 year ago by TrumpWon

Meanwhile Beijing bidens economy is getting worse by the day.

Today the Fed put banks unrealized losses further into the red, hey buy treasury bonds, they said they are a safe investment they said.

And another 11 CCP deals with the Biden Crime Family to investigate.

Yet another phony, political, Hail Mary from the desperate left.

I’m afraid your giggling witch has spoiled that caper for you.

Last edited 1 year ago by Just Plain Bill

Garland is absolutely desperate. Trump had every right to have the declassified documents he had. Idiot Biden, on the other hand, STOLE his and let Hunter use them to further their influence peddling enterprise.

Michael Avenatti — There’s no case against Trump

Trump was finished on January 6, 2021.

You hang on that that lil guy as expenses continue to go up because this criminal regime and people watch their retirement portfoilio shrink as SSI goes down the tubes, and 11 more Biden Crime family payoffs get exposed. You just hang in there. Keep your eyes wide shut.

Yes, yes he is
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The average Biden supporter
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Last edited 1 year ago by kitt

Moron

Trump has won the Republican primary before it has started

Last edited 1 year ago by TrumpWon

More’s the pity for the GOP. They’ll get their clock cleaned. Again.

Beijing biden hints at a run in 2024.

Will he get over 100 million votes this time around?

You haven’t figured out yet why Biden hasn’t announced?

“While I am fighting against Radical Left Lunatics, Persecutors, and unfair Prosecutors who want to destroy us all, Ron DeSanctimonious is not working for the people of Florida as he should be, he is too busy chatting with a Ratings Challenged TV Host from England, desperately trying to rescue his failing Campaign—But it’s my fault, I put him there!”

Nor have you figured out that the New York case isn’t the ticking unexploded bomb.

Last edited 1 year ago by Greg

He is waiting for the doctors that took the top of his head off to tell him if he has a brain.

Beijing biden does not know what day it is.

Your ticking time bomb is a dud

“We’ve Created a Special System of Justice for Donald Trump” – Professor Alan Dershowitz

The New York case is actually the lowest priority on a short-list of three. If Trump’s base had any sense, they’d be looking for a viable 2024 candidate.

Last edited 1 year ago by Greg

Blah Blah I have no idea what statute but my television says….
You need better courts and sharper attorneys seems they could all Fup a sunny day.
Hide evidence
Jury member goes on media bender, information leaked from sealed records.
Theres your short list

More moronic comments from a moron

Arrest Bragg and Cohen and everyone else associated with this.
Including George Soros and his family.
Its time these TRAITORS were dealt justice like the Founding Fathers would of doled out.

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Boris Epshyten: Breaking News Update – Grand Jury In Total Meltdown (rumble.com)

Last edited 1 year ago by TrumpWon

The New York case is actually the lowest priority on a short-list of three.

All three totally lack merit. The New York farce is simply the most opportunistic.

Georgia dead in the water
NY a joke
Classified records also killed by leaks.
Is there another pile of dung you would bet your farm on?

Appeals Court Panel Stacked with Obama, Biden Judges Sides with Special Counsel Jack Smith, Directs Trump’s Lawyer to Testify Before Grand Jury