Michael Cohen's one-time lawyer accused him on Wednesday of committing perjury during his testimony the day before in former President Donald Trump's New York trial.
Longtime criminal defense attorney Robert Costello told a House Weaponization Subcommittee hearing that Cohen was lying when he took the stand on Tuesday and accused Costello of strong-arming him to stay quiet about Trump in 2018.
"I read Michael Cohen's testimony from yesterday's trial in New York on the way down on the train, and virtually every statement he made about me was another lie," Costello told the panel, according to the Washington Examiner. "The story he told yesterday was that Rudy Giuliani and I were somehow conspiring to try and keep him quiet, to try and keep him from flipping … and that's ridiculous."
Costello reportedly represented Cohen for a couple months beginning in April 2018, during a Justice Department investigation of the former Trump lawyer. He described his experience as Cohen's counsel for the subcommittee, recalling that his client seemed desperate to avoid prison.
"I will do whatever the F I have to do," Costello quoted Cohen as saying. "I will never spend one day in jail."
Frantically seeking an "escape route," Cohen had confessed to Costello that he had considered jumping off the roof of the Loews Regency Hotel in Manhattan two nights before their first meeting there, Costello said during the hearing.
According to the Examiner, Costello has been practicing law for 50 years and previously worked at the U.S. attorney's office in New York. The New York Times reported that Cohen never officially retained Costello and never paid him for his advice.
Costello said he told Cohen that providing the U.S. attorney's office in New York with any incriminating information he had about Trump could help him avoid jail time, but Cohen said he didn't have any evidence.
"I swear to God, Bob, I don't have anything on Donald Trump," Costello recounted Cohen as saying. "I don't have anything on Donald Trump."
Costello told the House panel that he could speak freely about his conversations with Cohen because Cohen had waived attorney-client privilege.
In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to charges of tax evasion, lying to a bank and campaign finance violations. He was sentenced to three years in prison and admitted, as part of his plea deal, to making payments to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
The Department of Justice did not prosecute Trump over the matter, but Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought charges against the former president several years later. Cohen, who ultimately flipped on Trump, is the star witness in Bragg's case, despite having been convicted in 2018 of lying to Congress.
After Cohen flipped and began implicating Trump, Costello said he tried to alert Bragg's office that Cohen was an "inveterate liar," but the district attorney was not interested in hearing his side of the story.
He said he could back up his claims that Cohen was lying with emails and text messages, as well as the testimony of former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and attorney Jeff Citron.
"He picks out, cherry picks, certain emails or text messages and tries to make them look like something else," Costello said of Cohen.