Yes, I know The Donald tweeted (or “truthed” or “passed emotional gas” or whatever) that he expects to be indicted on Tuesday. That was to rally the brownshirts and see what chaos he can cause. Behind the scenes, his cadre of chaos clowns (his lawyers) are doing just about every form of legal hail Mary in New York City, in Atlanta, and — I’m sure — in DC to stop any Trump indictments cold (or at least delay them as long as possible to top them at the height of the Presidential campaign.
Enter one Robert Costello, clearly on the Trump train, and given the opportunity to testify in support of Orange Julius to DA Bragg’s grand jury (a right targets have in New York State). Costello was there to impeach star witness Michael Cohen in a final attempt to derail any potential indictment. That’s his right, Trump’s right, etc. However, information in a grand jury testimony is controlled by the D.A., and Costello clearly didn’t get to do what he wanted to.
Let me interrupt here: As you know, most grand jury proceedings are at least somewhat secret. Witnesses pop in, pop out, maybe the give a bit of color to the media, or maybe they “no comment” their way through the scrum. Either way, that is not what Costello did. Because he was not there just to impeach Cohen, which he clearly tried to do
Robert Costello made his way into public view, today, to blow up the entire grand jury proceeding. Not in the jury room, really. We have no idea what he did there, except that he answered less questions than he wanted to — apparently. And we know that much because…
Instead of “no comment,” or “I answered all the questions and still no comment,” Robert Costello had a press conference outside of grand jury where he attacked Michael Cohen, but then also attacked DA Alvin Bragg by demanding that he pay attention to all several hundred pages of the documents that he insists are central to proving Trump should not be indicted (or at the very least that Michael Cohen really, truly is a liar) and show them all to the grand jury.
Now, I’m speculating that Costello has no idea what other evidence Bragg has. I’m no lawyer, but I certainly wouldn’t move to indict based on Michael Cohen’s testimony alone. But Costello isn’t only there to stop the indictment (he knows he can’t) or slow it down (the DA is not going to extend jury time for all of that — because they probably know exactly what is — or isn’t — really in it). He wasn’t even there to just impeach Michael Cohen.
He was there for his press conference — to blow up the legal process by inserting undo political pressure on it. Costello went there to impugn and politicize the grand jury proceeding. It was for sabotage’s sake alone — and judging from the press coverage thus far? It landed with a thud.
