NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s defense team rested its case on Tuesday morning after questioning two witnesses in as many days in the former president’s hush money trial.
Trump did not take the stand, a decision that came after Judge Juan Merchan left open the opportunity for prosecutors to question Trump about some of his unrelated legal battles.
“We’ll be resting pretty quickly, meaning resting the case. I won’t be resting. I don’t rest. I’d like to rest sometimes, but I don’t get to rest,” Trump told reporters as he entered the courtroom Tuesday.
Defense attorneys first questioned a paralegal who worked at Trump attorney Todd Blanche’s law firm. The paralegal, Daniel Sitko, had created a chart of dozens of phone calls between Michael Cohen and a longtime attorney who once advised him named Robert Costello. Sitko explained the chart and confirmed details of it on Monday.
Costello served as the defense attorneys’ second and final witness. Trump attorney Emil Bove began questioning Costello later on Monday, and his testimony ran into Tuesday morning.
Trump’s team brought Costello in to dispute aspects of the testimony of Cohen, who accused Costello of dangling a pardon in front of him in 2018, when Cohen was facing federal prosecution. Cohen claimed Costello, who was friends with then-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, pressured Cohen to stay quiet about Trump and made hints that Trump would grant him clemency if he did so.
On Tuesday, Trump attorney Emil Bove helped Costello to clear the air.
“Did you ever pressure Michael Cohen over anything?” Bove asked.
“I did not,” Costello replied.
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Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, was Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s star witness in the case. Bragg, an elected Democrat, looked to Cohen to claim Trump was well aware of an allegedly illegal payment scheme Cohen carried out to silence porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. But Cohen has deep-seated credibility problems, and Trump’s defense team spent days tearing down Cohen’s claims.
Costello, for his part, was able to defend himself to some degree against Cohen’s claims, but Merchan had severely limited his testimony. Merchan’s repeated decisions to sustain objections from prosecutors while Costello was responding to questions at one point prompted exasperation from Costello and a dramatic moment of admonishment from Merchan.
Merchan also placed strict limitations on the prospective testimony of former Federal Election Commission chief Bradley Smith, whom Trump’s attorneys wanted to call to the stand to shut down prosecutors’ claims that Trump conspired with Cohen to violate election laws. Because of Merchan’s restrictions, however, the defense decided not to bring Smith in.
Merchan announced after the defense had rested that attorneys would present their closing arguments in one week and that he expected jury deliberations to begin Wednesday, meaning a verdict could come by the end of next week.
