Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the local New York official leading the charge to arrest 45th President Donald Trump, is facing calls for his disbarment after allegedly withholding vast amounts of exculpatory evidence from the Grand Jury in Trump’s “hush money” case.
The revelation came after Bob Costello, the former attorney for ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, raised questions about Cohen’s reliability as a witness against and claimed Bragg withheld hundreds of pages of documents and emails from the Grand Jury.
“Michael Cohen is far from solid evidence,” added Costello. “This guy, by any prosecutors’ standard—and I used to be deputy chief of the criminal division in the Southern District of New York—I wouldn’t have touched a guy like Michael Cohen, especially if he’s a convicted perjurer.”
"Michael Cohen is far from solid evidence:" Cohen's former legal advisor Robert Costello attacked his ex-client's credibility as the "star witness" in the hush money case against former President Donald Trump. More: https://t.co/crLKBCYjsW pic.twitter.com/TYRpvSmR9W
— NewsNation (@NewsNation) March 20, 2023
“The only thing I’m doing is trying to tell the truth to the grand jurors because I read all these lies in the media that are being promoted by one side,” said Costello. “If you see the full picture … If they want to go after Donald Trump and they have solid evidence, so be it.”
“Don’t cherry pick six emails out of 330 and then ask Costello questions about it. That’s not fair, by anybody’s standard,” said Costello.
Costello referred to documents he gave the Bragg’s office that, according to him, were “cherry picked” by his office then a small portion delivered to the Grand Jury.
Today the Grand Jury’s meeting was postponed following the revelation its members may not have received all of the evidence. According to legal expert Gregg Jarrett, Costello’s appearance before the Grand Jury set off fireworks, per Kyle Becker:
“I mentioned it yesterday, I think, when Bob Costello got into that Grand Jury room and told them, ‘Wait a minute. You don’t have the hundreds of pages I handed over to Alvin Bragg over here? You only have six cherry-picked documents?’ You know, hiding from grand juries exculpatory information is reprehensible and unconscionable,” Jarrett said. “And the conduct of Alvin Bragg and his henchman Mark Pomeranz, who specifically says in his book, ‘We’re targeting zombies because we don’t like his beliefs,’ those guys should face disbarment proceedings.”
Trump reportedly faces misdemeanor charges – which are being elevated by Bragg to felony status – over claims he paid campaign funds to Stormy Daniels to buy her silence in the days before the 2016 election.
Daniels claims she had a brief affair with Trump, while Trump claims he was being blackmailed by parties who sought to influence the 2016 election.
The claims advanced by Daniels would have gone public around the same time as the clandestinely recorded Access Hollywood tape, which prominently featured Trump making jokes about receiving sexual attention from the opposite sex due to his status as a celebrity billionaire while on a bus with Billy Bush.
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