BREAKING: Manhattan DA Accused Of Concealing Exculpatory Evidence From Grand Jury

March 22, 2023 in News by RBN Staff

 

Source: Trending Politics

Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett on “Hannity” on Tuesday night revealed that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg hid hundreds of pages of exculpatory evidence from the New York grand jury.

Jarrett furthermore called for the disbarment of the prosecuting attorneys involved in the travesty of justice.

“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 Pomerantz, who specifically says in his book, ‘We’re targeting zombies because we don’t like his beliefs,’ those guys should face disbarment proceedings.”

Jarrett also added this in a new Fox News column:

In a sudden turn of events, Cohen’s former attorney Robert Costello —no longer bound by the attorney-client privilege that was waived by his ex-client— testified before the grand jury on Monday. According to Costello, in April of 2018 Cohen repeatedly stated that the Daniels payment was intended to protect the candidate’s wife, not the campaign. Moreover, Cohen insisted that he acted all on his own and not at the behest of Trump. While testifying for over two hours, Costello said he realized that Bragg had been hiding from the grand jury nearly all of the files he had previously turned over to the DA that corroborated Cohen’s original story.

Concealing exculpatory evidence from a grand jury is reprehensible conduct. But the overarching question is this: was Cohen lying at the outset of the investigation or is he lying now? I doubt even he knows. Inveterate liars tend to lose track of their lies.

Bragg’s determination to snooker a grand jury into indicting Trump is an egregious abuse of government authority. It constitutes the weaponization of the law for political gain. But it is also—and importantly—selective prosecution of the worst kind.

Harvard Law Professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz added his perspective on the charges being brought by the Manhattan D.A.

“You know, in my new book, “Get Trump,” I go through all of those four allegations and I say, there’s plenty of smoke, but there’s no fire,” Dershowitz argued. “And if there were a fire, it would be set by arsonists.”

“There is no crime committed in any of the four allegations, and I prove that categorically in my book “Get Trump,” he added. “Where did I get the name? Get Trump. I got that from Letitia James’ campaign slogan. Her campaign promise was, ‘I promise you I will get Trump’.”

“And I want to add something new that hasn’t been said before,” he continued. “I think that Bob Costello has changed this case dramatically. I think that Bragg note now only has two possible results from that. Number one, he can say, alright, ‘I’m going to try to make the case without Cohen.’ He cannot use Cohen as a witness anymore.”

“That would be unethical because of the testimony that Costello gave,” he went on. “Or he could say, ‘Look, I have to drop the case.’ He may not be able to make it without Cohen. But if he can’t make it without Cohen, he can’t make it, because no ethical prosecutor is allowed to put on as a witness, somebody who has told the lies and has contradicted himself so much.”

“So I think that Bob Costello — it’s a game changer,” he added. “I think maybe that’s a reason for the delay here. I think ethical experts are now telling Bragg, wait a minute, you cannot use Cohen. So if you can make it through Pecker, if you can make it through some of the other people, okay, go ahead. But if you can’t make it without Cohen, you cannot bring this charge.”

“That’s a powerful statement,” Sean Hannity remarked.

On Tuesday, a former legal adviser to Michael Cohen, attorney Robert Costello, was called as a key witness in the New York grand jury investigation into former President Donald Trump’s alleged payment to adult actress Stormy Daniels. Costello claimed that testimony from the former Trump attorney is “far from solid evidence.”

Costello told reporters following his testimony that Cohen is “totally unreliable” in the probe against Trump. He added that the disgraced lawyer is “a convicted perjurer.”

“I’m the one who decided to do this. A lot of people cautioned me against it because I have nothing to gain. 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.”

“But Michael Cohen is far from solid evidence,” added Costello. “This guy, by any prosectors’ 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.”

As noted by the Epoch Times, Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to “charges of tax evasion, making false statements to a federally insured bank, and campaign finance violations in connection with an alleged $130,000 payment to a lawyer representing adult actress Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.”

“Cohen claims that Trump, during his 2016 presidential campaign, directed him to arrange the payment to Daniels as ‘hush money’ in order to buy her silence after she claimed to have had an affair with Trump,” the report added. “The money was allegedly paid using campaign funds, a violation of campaign finance law.”

Donald Trump is expected to face a potential indictment from the grand jury on Wednesday. The former president will reportedly turn himself in to authorities to face trial.

Follow Kyle Becker on Twitter @kylenabecker.