WASHINGTON – The end of the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president is in sight as Donald Trump’s defense team rested its case Tuesday in Manhattan, where jurors had heard weeks of testimony from nearly two dozen witnesses about Trump’s alleged reimbursement of hush money to a porn star the 2016 presidential election.
Trump did not take the stand after his team called only two witnesses.
The former president is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. New York prosecutors allege that Trump covered up compensation for his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, for paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels just before Election Day in 2016 to silence her about a rendezvous with Trump.
Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, denies the affair and claims he paid Cohen for routine legal work.
The case will not resume until after the Memorial Day holiday, when closing arguments are expected.
A back channel to Trump
The second and final witness from Trump’s defense team, former federal prosecutor and longtime New York lawyer Robert Costello, stepped away from the witness stand Tuesday morning. His brief but tense appearance began Monday afternoon and included a reprimand from Judge Juan Merchan for “contemptible” behavior.
Costello testified that he met 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 shortly before the 2016 presidential election.
After Merchan acceded to a series of objections from the prosecution on Monday, Costello shouted “Jeez” and “ridiculous” at the microphone and rolled his eyes at Merchan at one point. Merchan cleared the courtroom, including the press, to address Costello and Trump’s defense team.
Costello’s testimony confirmed that he provided a back channel for Cohen to communicate with then-President Trump through Costello’s close contact and Trump’s former legal adviser Rudy Giuliani while Cohen was under investigation, according to reporters at the courthouse.
New York does not allow courtroom recordings but does make them publicly available Transcripts of the procedure.
During cross-examination, prosecutor Susan Hoffinger showed a series of emails from Costello to convince jurors that Costello actively worked to assure Trump that Cohen would not turn against him during the federal investigation.
In an email between Costello and his law partner, he asks, “What should I say (expletive)?” He is playing with the most powerful man in the world,” said reporters at the courthouse.
Hoffinger also learned from Costello in her final series of questions that Cohen had never formally contacted him to seek legal representation – reinforcing that Costello only appeared in Cohen’s life after the FBI raid.
Trump’s multiple impeachments
Costello did not publicly criticize the hush money trial against Trump and Cohen until May 15, when he stated before the Republican-led subcommittee on arming the federal government in the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.
So, Costello told Lawmakers said the lawsuits filed against Trump this election year were “politically motivated.”
Trump, who faces dozens of criminal charges in four separate cases, was indicted in New York April 2023.
In addition, three further criminal proceedings were initiated against Trump in 2023. They are all still on hold.
- The former president was indicted by a federal grand jury in Florida in 2011 June 2023 because of allegations of misuse of classified information. Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon postponed indefinitely proceedings, making a trial unlikely before the November election.
- Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, DC in 2011 August 2023. He was accused in a four-count indictment of knowingly spreading falsehoods about the results of the 2020 presidential election and plotting to overturn them. Trump claimed presidential immunity from the criminal charges in October 2023, which both the federal trial and appeals courts rejected. Trump is waiting for a decision by the US Supreme Court.
- Weeks after being charged with interfering with the federal election, Trump was indicted to state allegations in Fulton County, Georgia, for alleged interference in the state’s 2020 presidential election results. The Georgia case was becomes entangled in pre-trial disputes for alleged misconduct by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Conditions in the courtroom
In the obscure, heavily secured hallway just meters from the New York County Supreme Court courtroom, Trump again criticized the trial on Monday and accused prosecutors of trying to keep him away from the campaign.
“We’re here an hour early today. I was supposed to give a speech for political reasons. I can’t have anything to do with politics because I’ve been sitting in a very cold courtroom for four weeks. It’s very unfair. They have no case, they have no crime,” he told the news cameras, in front of which he stopped to speak every day during the trial.
Trump told the cameras that outside the courtroom it was like “Fort Knox.”
He complained that there were “more police than I have ever seen anywhere” and said that “there is not a single civilian to be found within three blocks of the courthouse.”
This statement is incorrect. States Newsroom attended the hearing on Monday and witnessed the scene in front of the courthouse in the morning and in the early and behind schedule afternoon.
Just as dawn was breaking, people standing in the general line for the few public seats in the courtroom argued over who sat in front of whom.
About an hour later, a woman with a megaphone showed up at the adjacent Collect Pond Park to read from the Bible and amplify contemporary Christian music from her phone. A man walked up and down the park holding a sign that read “Trump 2 Terrified 2 Testify.”
Several people sat outside, eating and chatting at tables in Collect Pond Park at 1 p.m., according to reporters leaving the courtroom after Merchan dismissed the jury for lunch.
Late in the afternoon, a tiny handful of protesters with Trump flags and signs shouted that he was innocent.
