Although attorney Bob Costello's testimony before the Manhattan grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump's role in the hush payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels discredited Michael Cohen, it might have actually helped District Attorney Alvin Bragg by preventing him from making the mistake of using Cohen as a witness, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax on Tuesday.
Dershowitz, appearing on Newsmax's "John Bachman Now," said that using Cohen, the main source of evidence that the district attorney has against Trump in the case, "would be a gift to Donald Trump's legal team, because they could destroy and devastate him and turn this into a credibility contest," which Cohen would lose.
Dershowitz asserted that "this is the worst abuse of prosecutorial discretion I have seen in my 60 years of practicing law," as this is a very weak case legally.
With numerous experts poking holes in the case that Bragg has apparently compiled, Dershowitz acknowledged that it was reasonable to ask why the district attorney would bring a case that does not appear to be winnable.
However, he said that "I don't think they want to lose [the case] in the trial court... and any trial jury in New York may very well convict, after all, this is the bluest of the blue cities."
But Dershowitz insisted that such a conviction would "be reversed on appeal... but by that time two years will have gone by and no one will care."
In such a situation, Dershowitz surmised, a prosecutor might think he has nothing to lose, adding that he will receive his 15 minutes of fame by getting headlines twice — for the indictment and then the conviction.
Dershowitz said it is a shame that there is the politicization of both sides trying to weaponize the criminal law, while in the past people were more likely to be judged on the merits of the case.
He also pointed out that the motive as to why Trump made an incorrect entry into his business records was clearly that he wanted to avoid embarrassment and not because he tried to avoid being caught for violating a federal statute concerning campaign contributions.
Dershowitz added that if he was representing Trump in the case he would advise him not to take the stand.
He would also tell the former president not to deny that he had an affair with Stormy Daniels.
Dershowitz said that Trump should neither admit it nor deny it, because it would harm his credibility in front of the jury by denying the affair.
In addition, it is not particularly relevant to the charges he is facing, since Trump is not being accused of having an affair, but instead misrepresenting it on his business record.
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