When Donald Trump’s defense team called Michael Cohen’s former legal adviser Robert Costello to testify, his obnoxious antics disrupted the courtroom as he insulted and angered Judge Juan Merchan and wound up getting blown out of the water by his own emails former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi explained during a CNN Panel Tuesday morning.
Rossi went on to explain that Trump’s team erased any doubts the jury was feeling about Cohen’s credibility as a witness and instead began to distrust Costello, according to Raw Story.
“do you think the defense ultimately made a mistake by putting Robert Costello on the witness stand and having him be the final witness instead of it being Michael Cohen yesterday, acknowledging that he stole tens of thousands of dollars from the Trump organization?” CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins asked.
“You hit the nail on the head,” Rossi told her. “Instead of focusing on michael Cohen as a thief and a liar, they made a huge mistake.”
Further, he added that Trump’s attorneys seriously bungled “primacy and recency,” something that’s crucial in a trial of this stature.
“you always start off strong, because you only get one chance at a first impression, and people always remember your last act,” Rossi said. “by calling mr. costello as their last witness — actually their only witness, they had a minor one — Michael Cohen said, ‘i really didn’t trust mr. costello. i essentially thought he was a little sleazy and that he was working for giuliani and trump, so i didn’t want to give them anything that’s going to hurt me in the end.’ so that’s very understandable. and when Costello took the stand, kaitlan, and he acted the way he did — in my 30, 35 years of practicing law as a prosecutor and a defense attorney, i’ve never ever seen that, he insulted the judge. And frankly, kaitlan, he insulted the jury.”
Costello acted like a complete jerk in the courtroom, riling the judge, enough so that he sent the jury and the press out of the courtroom to tell Costello what’s what. When everyone came back to the courtroom, Costello was beet red, with the wind clearly taken away from his sails.
“they may not have heard the sidebar, but remember … there are two attorneys on that jury and they figured out why the judge had them leave the room and it was because of the decorum,” Rossi said. “the defense ended on a horrible, horrible note, and it washed away everything they were trying to do with michael cohen. and here’s the kicker. They actually rehabilitated michael cohen, because mr. costello did come across as a little unsavory.”
Indeed, he tried to engage in a staring match with Judge Merchan and was audibly disgusted at times. Acting like this while testifying undoubtedly alienated the jury and it was a stupid move on the Trump team’s part to even have this man testify. If the attorneys had done their work, they might have understood this (although most of Trump’s attorneys seem a bit dense, however). But at least they may have been smart enough not to call this self-important ass to the stand.
But it won’t be long before we know how all this plays out, now that this rather pathetic defense team of attorneys has rested.
I’ve included a clip of Rossi’s comments below.
Actual call Trump to testify was the worts thing they could do …. calling Costello was only the “next” worst thing