“Today, after giving all of that material to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, out of 321 emails, they cherry-picked six emails to ask me about,” Costello said at a news conference following his testimony Monday afternoon. “Of course they took them out of context. When they took them out of context, I told the grand jurors — I don’t know if this ultimately worked or not — to hear the whole package.
Cohen denied most of Costello’s claims during an interview on MSNBC Monday evening, denying that Costello had ever been his attorney, that he had ever waived the attorney-client privilege, and that he was scheduled to appear in court again Wednesday.
“It’s playing into a typical Donald J. Trump playbook,” Cohen said of Costello’s comments. “Find out how you’re going to muddy the waters as much as you can, discredit that person, discredit them.”
Costello insisted that during a meeting they had, Cohen appeared distraught and willing to do “anything” to avoid jail time.
“Well, he went to jail,” Costello said. “Now he’s on a revenge mission.”
On Monday, Cohen said Costello did not use Trump’s money to make the payments.
“The heart of it is that Michael Cohen told us that Stormy Daniels’ attorney had reached out to him and had negative information that Stormy Daniels wanted to sue Trump,” Costello said. “So Michael Cohen decided on his own — and he told us, on his own — to see if he could take care of this.”
Cohen later purchased a $130,000 home equity loan to pay off Daniels, Costello said. But Cohen rejected that argument.
“It’s absolutely not true. I don’t know what conversations he’s referring to,” Cohen said, when asked if he had taken out a loan to make the payments. Daniels did not want to be sued, but said he wanted to make the details of the alleged affair public.
It was expected that a charge sheet would be filed against the former president May decrease by Monday evening. But Costello’s testimony could throw a wrench in that timeline.
“If they want to go after Donald Trump and they have solid evidence, so be it,” Costello said. “But Michael Cohen is far from solid evidence.”
However, Trump’s legal troubles stretch far beyond Manhattan. The former president and 2024 presidential candidate faces criminal charges in Atlanta and Washington.
