Former Michael Cohen attorney Bob Costello on Cohen's thirst for revenge

Joining us now is Robert Costello, former legal advisor to Michael Cohen. He used to be with the Southern District of New York as a prosecutor and has been coming out because he just, well, we're going to find out.

Coming out, telling what he knows about Michael Cohen going into this trial and where this trial should go. Robert, welcome to Brian Kilmachow. I appreciate it. Thank you. Hi, Brian.

How are you? I know you've been a busy guy of late. First off, from what you know about the trial, you came up yesterday and basically he says and remember anything that you said that you said that he said. I'm talking about Michael Cohen saying he said that he had nothing on Trump. What are your thoughts about how your name came up and what his response was? Well, my initial thoughts are I saw, before yesterday, I saw part of a transcript where Cohen was testifying on direct and he was talking about me in that initial meeting and virtually everything he said is a lie.

And it's not just one on one. Remember, I wasn't there in that room alone. I had my law partner sitting next to me, the guy who knew Michael Cohen for 10 years. Michael Cohen was a stranger to me.

I had no idea who he was or what his involvement was in anything. So there's at least two witnesses against one. But then there's also contemporaneous documents and notes that I took because quite frankly, my instinct told me don't trust this guy. And I'm glad I have those instincts because I took all sorts of... I wrote memos to the file and emails and text messages to my partner about Michael Cohen because I simply didn't trust him. He told us many fibs, but on that first meeting when he was, by his own admission, suicidal, looking desperately for an escape route, as he called it, that's what he wanted to find out.

He wanted to find out how can I get out of this mess that I see coming. We didn't know exactly what it was because according to Michael Cohen, he hadn't done anything wrong in his life up to that point. He told us he was cooperating with the special counsel. He was cooperating with Congress.

He forgot to tell us that he lied to Congress. But I explained to him, listen, Michael, the Southern District of New York couldn't get a search warrant on a lawyer's office by themselves. They have to go to main justice to get approval first and then they have to go to a judge and show them the probable cause. These are very smart people in the Southern District of New York and they're saying that there is evidence of a crime at the places to be searched and they have probable cause at least to support that. I said, so tell me what it is in your past that you've done that would cause them to look into this.

He denied that he had done anything wrong. In any event, we get down to the nitty-gritty with... He's telling us that he was on the roof of the Regency Hotel. That's where we met in a conference room on the second floor.

The two nights before he was on the roof and he was going to jump off because he just couldn't handle it. He's telling you this story. Yes.

Yeah. He's telling me and he's telling my lawyer partner who knew him for 10 years and they had business relationships on both at Sterling National Bank on an advisory committee as well as Columbia Grammar and Prep, a private school in Manhattan. He's saying, listen, I am literally at wits end. I'm ready to jump off the building.

You got to tell me, is there a way out of this? That's when we got into discussion because he kept on saying, I can't believe they're trying to put me in jail for NDAs. I said, Michael, an NDA is a non-disclosure agreement. It's perfectly legal.

It's done all the time in civil cases when they wrap up a settlement. There's got to be more here. What are you not telling us? What's going on? So I said, tell me about the Stormy Daniels thing and how that came about. And obviously what I was interested in because I explained to him, look, when the Southern District of New York focuses on somebody like you, you're not the target.

You're simply in the way. The target is clearly Donald Trump. They want any information you have about Donald Trump. So I said to him, why did you get involved with Stormy Daniels? He said the lawyer contacted him.

He was in New York. He said Stormy Daniels was going to claim that Donald Trump had sex with her unless somebody either settled with them and gave them an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement, or bought the story. So Michael said, look, I didn't believe that allegation one bit. He said, I thought it was absolute nonsense. However, he said something like that would cause great embarrassment.

It'd be a great embarrassment to Melania, he said, and that's why I decided to take care of this. I said, did Donald Trump have anything to do with this? No. Did he know about this? No.

Did he assist you in any way? No. I said, how did you get the money? Was it Donald Trump's money? No. From his companies? No. From anybody associated with Trump? No.

Well, where did you get it? He said, I took out a HELOC loan, which is a home equity loan. I said, for $130,000, why would you do that? He said, because I didn't want Melania to know, I didn't want anybody to know, I didn't want my wife to know. He said, because my wife's in charge of our family finances, and if I took money out of my account, she'd know right away, and she'd ask a hundred questions. So the long and the short of it is, he absolutely said over and over again, because when I was asking him, do you have any truthful information that you could tell the prosecutors that will get you out of this thing? Anything on Donald Trump?

No. And I must have asked him that seven or eight different ways. He kept on saying, give the same answer each time, I swear to God, Bob, I don't have anything on Donald Trump. I said, now it wasn't until subsequent meetings, sitting down and talking with this guy, where I said, you know, Michael, I'm trying to understand your motivation here.

Why would you go out of your way to take care of this on your own? And the answer is, when Trump got elected, he took his inner circle down to Washington. Michael Cohen thought he was in that inner circle, but he was the only one left behind, and he was very bitter about that. I said, Michael, if you went to Washington, what do you, what job do you think you would have gotten? Believe it or not, he said, well, I think I could have been Attorney General of the United States, or at the very least, the Chief of Staff to the President.

Now I'm looking at this guy saying, you know, he's living in La La Land, if he thinks that. But in any event, he was bitter about that. And he was desperately seeking a way to get back into Trump's graces. And here's the thought, when he sees this situation, he takes care of it with a HELOC loan. Trump doesn't know anything about it, according to him, over and over again. And later on, he goes to Trump and says, listen, boss, you could have had a big problem here, but me, Michael Cohen, I solved this for you, and nobody knew about it.

And this way, he would get back into Trump's graces, and hopefully go to Washington. That's what I believe motivated Michael Cohen. But he made it absolutely clear that Donald Trump had nothing to do with this at the time he made the payment. So the New York Times writes today that Cohen felt that you became the messenger of Trump, delivering implicit instructions to him saying, stay in the fold, don't flip, don't speak. Ridiculous.

Here's why. First of all, he made that statement and said that I was in cahoots essentially with Rudy Giuliani right from the beginning. Rudy Giuliani wasn't even in the case at the time that we met with Michael Cohen at the Regency Hotel. The announcement of Rudy Giuliani representing Donald Trump happened, I think, three or four days later. And I sent an email, which the DA's office has, and the U.S. Attorney's Office has, everybody has it, that told Michael, listen, in case you haven't seen the news, Rudy Giuliani is going to be Trump's lawyer. And that's good news for you because I know him very well. I've known him for 50 years. He also said that we were dangling a pardon at one point in time.

That's nonsense. The very first day when I was talking to him about what his escape route, that's how he phrased it was, he talked about a pardon. He wanted to know if he could get a pardon. I said, Michael, it's ridiculous. You haven't even been charged with a crime. We don't know what it is that they think you might have done. I said, it's way too premature for any talk of a pardon.

But Michael is a nudge and he doesn't drop things like that. And every time I met with him after that, he wanted me to, especially when Rudy Giuliani became Trump's lawyer, he wanted me to call Giuliani and ask him about a pardon. And I kept on telling him the same thing. It's too early. This is premature. Finally, because he's such a pain in the neck, I said, all right, Michael, I'm going to do it once, but I'm telling you in advance, I know what the answer is going to be. You're going to get shot down and that'll be the end of it. But this way, at least you're not going to ask me anymore. So I called Giuliani and I told him, listen, I understand it's premature, but Michael is insisting he wants to know if there's any possibility of him receiving a pardon.

Giuliani responded immediately, exactly as I predicted. He said, the president will not discuss pardons with anybody. Don't bring this up again, Bob. And his tone changed. We're very friendly, but his tone changed.

It was clear. I'm going to answer this question once and I don't want to be bothered by this again. Now, if they thought that Michael Cohen was a threat, they could have easily pardoned him, but they didn't. By the way, Robert Costello is with us, former legal advisor to Cohen. So he never paid you? Did he owe you money? How could you give him all this advice for free?

Well, I'll tell you how that came about. First of all, he wasn't my client. The partner that was with me, it was his client because he knew Michael Cohen. And so financial responsibilities, the way we do it in our firm is up to the person who brings in the particular client. Michael Cohen testified on direct that he was given a retainer agreement immediately the first day that we met with him at the Regency Hotel.

Absolute nonsense. In fact, a retainer agreement was given to him by my partner probably six, seven days later. I believe there's an email that demonstrates that. So it's another lie by Cohen. And what Cohen did, as you'll see, if you reviewed the emails that I gave to the district attorney's office, I kept on telling my partner, look, this guy is slow playing us. I don't think he has any intention of signing the retainer agreement, but he kept on saying he was going to do that. He was going to make an announcement. But I viewed him as just stringing us along.

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Hey, it's Hutton and Withrow. Hot Mike is here on the Outkick Network. We've got your afternoon covered with the latest sports discussion, and it's available wherever you find your audio.

Daily analysis and news. He is hot. I am Mike. Actually, my name is Chad.

His name is Jonathan. But you get the picture. We're going to bring it every single day. Whatever you want to call us, we'll respond to. We just want you to respond to what we're dishing out every day. And while you're here, we hope you subscribe to the podcast, like, subscribe and share. And I just see they put in one of your emails, quote, I'm sure you saw the news that Rudy's joining the Trump team.

I told you my relationship with Rudy, which could be very useful for you. You wrote in two twenty eighteen. Right. Two twenty eighteen. No, it can't be. Oh, no.

April 19th, April 19th, twenty eighteen. OK. When we met with Michael Cohen on April 17th. So that first day at the Regency Hotel, Rudy Giuliani was not representing Donald Trump. Right. Which is contrary to what Cohen testified.

So that's not surprising. So, Bob, you were in front of the grand jury and you said, I'd like to straighten out the record, knowing the grand jury was a layup for prosecution. You weren't there anyway. And is it because you felt compelled that you knew the truth and you can't believe where this direction was heading and the pressure on Cohen got him to say whatever was necessary?

Yeah, that's pretty much it. I was sitting at home watching TV knowing, by the way, that we had a waiver of the attorney client privilege because Michael Cohen, he tried to lessen his sentence after he pled guilty to eight federal counts. He tried to lessen his sentence stupidly by going down and lying to the assistant U.S. attorneys, telling them that he could give evidence of Rudy Giuliani and Bob Costello dangling a pardon in front of him in order to keep his mouth shut. Well, of course, as I've just explained, the emails and everything completely contradicts that story because it's a lie. So they called me in, they sent me a copy of the attorney client privilege, called me in to be interviewed by two FBI agents and two assistant U.S. attorneys. At the end of the interview, I had all four of them laughing at the ludicrous stuff that Michael Cohen was alleging because I showed them documented proof that refuted that. That's why the U.S. Attorney's Office never used Michael Cohen again as a witness. That's why, at least one of the reasons why, the U.S. Attorney's Office did not give him any cooperation credit when it came to his sentencing. Michael Cohen has a very convenient and sketchy, I'll use his term, memory about this stuff, but the documents tell a different story. Robert, if you were on Donald Trump's defense team, would you call you?

I would, yes. People think the case is so strong that they have a strong enough case to prove he's not guilty that they should let it rest and they're worried about other things that you know about this case that could give the prosecution more life, resuscitate the prosecution. Well, there's nothing that I know about this case that could give the prosecution more life. This case is dead.

It was dead on arrival. It never should have been brought. It should have been dismissed by this judge. He still has an opportunity to do that, but I doubt very much he will do that. So I don't think there's any downside with me.

I think there's only an upside. But it's a judgment call, you know, and I haven't been sitting in court and I've never seen any of these 12 jurors, so I have no feeling for what those people are like or which way they're leaning or whether they've made facial gestures during the weeks of trial that indicate which way they're leaning. So I'm not the right person to ask that. The right person is the Trump team. They'll make whatever the correct decision is, I'm sure. Have they been contacted you? Have they contacted you?

I can't talk about any contacts with anybody. I'm just, I'm going to stay out of that realm. How about this? Is Monday open on your schedule? Clever. Monday I will take the train, the Long Island Railroad, into my office. How's that?

So why? I actually get a car in the morning. I'm also coming from Long Island. I know you're coming from a different town, but it starts with an M. So we'll see. I think you're familiar with that town, too. Yes, yeah.

So the best restaurant in that area is definitely Publican's, by the way. But Robert, to get into this storm right now, it's definitely going to affect your personal life and your professional life. I'm sure you thought about that.

Oh, sure. I mean, listen, I thought about that a year ago when I gave the information to the Trump team and the district attorney's office at the same time. A lot of people said to me, stay out of this. It's not your fight. You can only get hurt by this. But I said, listen, what about truth and justice here, guys?

Don't you think that counts? And they're going after a former president of the United States? I can't sit by on the sidelines and let Michael Cohen lie and not tell the people involved on both sides of the ledger there. Exactly the Michael Cohen that we met and what he told us, because what he was saying on TV was the exact opposite to what he had told us at a moment when he was suicidal. I mean, boy, if there's ever a time when you're going to tell the truth, when you're so desperate that you're going to kill yourself and somebody says, listen, I have a way out of this. If you've got truthful information on Donald Trump, your problems are solved by the end of the week. Robert Costello, former legal adviser to Michael Cohen, saying 1-800-CALL-ME because I think you need me.

And that's for the defense of Donald J. Trump. Robert Costello, have a great weekend. Thanks so much for your time. Thank you. I'll have a beer at Publican's. OK, it's on me. Promise.

I got my Amex there, so just say it. It's on Brian Kilmeade. Robert Costello, thank you. Back in a moment. You're with Brian Kilmeade. Listen to the show at free on Fox News podcast, plus on Apple podcast, Amazon music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.