(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Taking a page from the erstwhile House Jan. 6 committee and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s politicized Department of Justice, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was accused Tuesday of withholding hundreds of pages of exculpatory evidence from the grand jury considering whether to indict former President Donald Trump.
Robert Costello, the former legal adviser of key witness Michael Cohen, levied the allegations Tuesday night on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.
He said Bragg was hiding “all of the files he had previously turned over to the D.A. that corroborated Cohen’s original story.”
BREAKING: Fox News says Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg concealed exculpatory evidence from a grand jury, citing Cohen’s former lawyer Robert Costello.
Costello claims Bragg had hid “all of the files he had previously turned over to the DA that corroborated Cohen’s original story.”
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 22, 2023
According to Costello, the grand jury had received only “six cherry-picked documents” of the tranche of files that he had handed over to Bragg, Becker News reported.
Cohen served as Trump’s personal lawyer until the Mueller investigation raided his New York office, leading to his own criminal indictment in the alleged hush-money payoff of porn-star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.
His initial story refuted the allegations of Daniels and co-conspirator Karen McDougal, a former Playboy bunny, that Trump had any knowledge the payments Cohen had made to the two aging sex-workers, both of whom claimed to have had trysts with Trump roughly 10 years prior to his run for president.
Costello, who testified before the grand jury earlier in the week, has publicly spoken out about Cohen’s unreliability as a witness.
"Michael Cohen is far from solid evidence:" Cohen's former legal advisor Robert Costello attacked his ex-client's credibility as the "star witness" in the hush money case against former President Donald Trump. More: https://t.co/crLKBCYjsW pic.twitter.com/TYRpvSmR9W
— NewsNation (@NewsNation) March 20, 2023
In response to Costello’s bombshell, Gregg Jarett, a Fox News legal analyst and prominent investigative journalist, called for the disbarment of the prosecuting attorneys involved in the cover-up.
“You know, hiding from grand juries exculpatory information is reprehensible and unconscionable,” Jarett 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.”
Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, a red-pilled liberal law expert, praised Costello as a game-changer in the probe.
“I think that Bob Costello has changed this case dramatically,” Dershowitz said.
“I think that Bragg note now only has two possible results from that: No. 1, 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,” Dershowitz said.
“Or he could say, ‘Look, I have to drop the case,’” Dershowitz continued. “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.”
Although it was widely speculated that the grand jury might indict Trump early this week, leading to what the former president himself said would be a Tuesday arrest, the Left’s hopes were dashed when nothing happened.
The grand jury reportedly will not meet again until Thursday at the earliest.
However, Dershowitz speculated that the cause for the delay might be related to Costello’s surprise testimony.
“I think maybe that’s a reason for the delay here,” he said. “I think ethical experts are now telling Bragg, ‘Wait a minute, you cannot use Cohen.”
Headline USA reached out to Cohen at his personal Gmail account and will update with any response.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.
