Alvin Bragg Hid Exculpatory Evidence From Donald Trump; Knew That Michael Cohen Was Directly Contradicting His Previous Claims Made to Prosecutors, But Presented His New, Improved Testimony While Hiding His Orginal Testimony

That's why Rudy Giuliani' attorney Robert Costello insisted on testifying -- to tell the grand jury the things that Soros DA Alvin Bragg was hiding from them.

On Monday night, during an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, Robert Costello, the surprise witness in the case, discussed his testimony before the Manhattan Grand Jury earlier in the day. Costello stated that he testified for two hours in front of Soros-funded DA Alvin Bragg's grand jury and claimed that during that time, he came to the conclusion that the DA's office was not interested in discovering the truth.

"I just spent two hours or so testifying before the grand jury in downtown Manhattan, and I got my point across," Costello said. "Although it was clear to me that the Manhattan DA's office did not want to get to the truth. I need to explain that a little bit. I called them up after I saw Michael Cohen on TV, stating things that he said he was going to tell the grand jury and had told the grand jury that were contrary to what he told us when we first represented him in April of 2018. So I'm sitting at home watching these lies, and I said I've got to do something about it. I don't represent Donald Trump, but I do stand for justice. And I think I have a legal obligation to inform both sides. So that's what I did."

Fox News legal commentator Gregg Jarrett says that Bragg's hiding of evidence from the grand jury could be a disbarrable offense. I mean, of course it's not, he's in New York City and acting to further The Regime, but for other people it could be a disbarrable offense.

As I explained in my last column, the DA invented his case against Trump by taking an alleged misdemeanor business records violation and supercharging it into a felony by citing an imagined second crime arising out of a supposed campaign finance violation. The novelty of such a charge is exceeded only by its absurdity.

The indictment appears to hinge on the DA's argument that a 2016 payment made to porn star, Stormy Daniels, was intended to help Trump's presidential bid and should have been accounted for as a campaign contribution, not legal fees, when he reimbursed his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, who paid Daniels to keep her mouth shut about a purported 2006 affair that Trump vigorously denies. Confused yet? You should be.

The flaw in Bragg's tortured logic is two-fold. First, non-disclosure agreements in exchange for money are perfectly legal. Second, Cohen long ago stated that the payment had nothing to do with the campaign but was made to protect Melania Trump from an embarrassing, albeit false, accusation. As such, it is not an illegal campaign donation under the law. Hence there is no crime.

It appears that Bragg's star witness is none other than Cohen who has performed an astonishing pirouette by recanting his earlier statements. He now claims that the money was intended to help Trump's campaign fend off a damaging story. Reliance on such a disreputable character as Cohen is a clear sign of the DA's desperation. Cohen's hatred of Trump is well known. He has carved out a career of trashing his former boss.

Cohen has always had a warped relationship with the truth. He peddled so many lies that there is no way to know whether the disgraced and disbarred lawyer even understands the concept of honesty. Among the smorgasbord of crimes that sent him to prison was lying to congress.

In a sudden turn of events, Cohen's former attorney Robert Costello --no longer bound by the attorney-client privilege that was waived by his ex-client-- testified before the grand jury on Monday. According to Costello, in April of 2018 Cohen repeatedly stated that the Daniels payment was intended to protect the candidate's wife, not the campaign. Moreover, Cohen insisted that he acted all on his own and not at the behest of Trump. While testifying for over two hours, Costello said he realized that Bragg had been hiding from the grand jury nearly all of the files he had previously turned over to the DA that corroborated Cohen's original story.

He points out that Hillary Clinton, of course, proveably lied on federal financial disclosure forms:

Consider the case of Hillary Clinton who secretly funded the anti-Trump dossier in 2016 by deploying campaign lawyers to pay ex-British spy Christopher Steele more than $1 million dollars to compose his phony document. Candidate Clinton listed it as a "legal expense," even though its sole purpose was to advance her campaign against Trump, her opponent. The Federal Election Commission fined Hillary for brazenly violating campaign finance laws.

But New York prosecutors never even thought about bringing criminal charges because it involved, well... Hillary.

A lot of Cohen's original claims were from emails sent to Costello and Giuliani, who represented him at that time. Bragg cherry-picked six emails to show the grand jury, and suppressed 330 emails where Cohen made statements inconsistent with his new story, Costello says.

That last clip explains why Costello is able to disclose information damaging to a former client. Apparently Cohen waived attorney-client privilege, signing a document saying he waived it 22 times.

Now, Bragg thinks that Cohen was lying before, and telling the truth now.

Fine. Then make that argument.

But you can't just hide the evidence from the jury.

posted by Ace at 01:00 PM

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