Trump's Trials - Testimony in hush money trial concludes; Trump did not testify in his defense

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

For this episode of Trump's Trials, All Things Considered host Ailsa Chang speaks with NPR's Andrea Bernstein.Testimony in Former President Donald Trump's criminal trial in New York is now in the books. The prosecution and the defense have rested, and Trump did not testify.Topics include:- Testimony from the defense's witnesses- What's nextFollow the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify for new episodes each Saturday.Sign up for sponsor-free episodes and support NPR's political journalism at plus.npr.org/trumpstrials.Email the show at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

From NPR, this is Trump's Trials, I'm Scott Dessler. Our regular episodes come out every Saturday, but there's some breaking news in one of former President Trump's cases today. So we're going to share a story that just aired on NPR, and then we'll be back with more in our usual episode on Saturday. Thanks for listening. This message comes from NPR sponsor Organic Valley, a co-op of small organic family farms. Dairy farmer Tyler Webb shares how he and his family work with nature to manage challenges on the farm. When I think of land stewardship, it's taking the opportunity

to, like, slowly walk through your farm. To listen. To try to observe subtle patterns. When you're not reliant upon pesticides and herbicides and things to navigate your way through farming, you're looking for ways to work in harmony with our ecosystem. From a pesticide perspective, you know, flies can be a concern. And so a lot of this bird habitat we have on the farm is because we're looking for tree swallows.

They just cruise around all day long and eat flies. They come back every year in April and they put a big dent on the fly population during that period. Discover Organic Valley Dairy at ov.coop slash ethically sourced. You're listening to Trump's Trials. I'm Scott Detrow. And now here's Elsa Chang. Testimony in former President Trump's criminal trial in New York is now in the books. The defense and the people have rested and Trump will not be testifying in his own defense.

And Pierce Andrea Bernstein has been covering this trial and joins us now. Hi, Andrea. Hey, Elsa. Okay, so what was the last day of testimony like? It was pretty dramatic, like all of the trial. The defense only called two witnesses in total, a paralegal to certify some records, and attorney Robert Costello, a lawyer who tried to get Michael Cohen to hire him at a crucial inflection point.

It was in 2018 after the FBI had searched Cohen's home and office. But before Cohen had decided to plead guilty to violating campaign finance laws at the direction of Trump. In his own testimony, Cohen said he'd felt pressured by Costello to stay on the team. And during Cohen's testimony last week, prosecutors showed an email where Costello told Cohen

he had friends in high places. Sleep well tonight. Okay, so wait, why did the defense want Costello to testify? There's reason to believe that Trump himself chose Costello. Trump had high praise for Costello yesterday, even though Trump was not supposed to be discussing witnesses. The idea seemed to be that Costello would expose Cohen as a self-serving liar, because Costello is, as Trump said self-serving liar because Costello

is, as Trump said, a quote, highly respected lawyer. But the problem for Costello was that Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, gave a tight cross examination where Costello got tripped up. Wait, how? How did that happen? Hoffinger asked Costello if he'd said at his first meeting that he told Cohen how close he is to Rudy Giuliani. Costello said he hadn't.

Then Hoffinger showed an email where Costello said exactly that. Hoffinger was also able to introduce another email from Costello saying that then President Trump was at that time paying for some of Cohen's lawyers. And the email showed Costello trying to hide that, saying, quote, our issue is to get Cohen on the right page without giving the appearance that we are following instructions from Giuliani or the president. So those emails certainly suggested that Trump was trying to prevent Cohen from coming forward and telling the truth, which of course Cohen ultimately did do, leading to this very criminal trial. And now the jury is left with all

of this in their heads for the next week. The judge sent them home until Tuesday for summations. They were instructed not to consume any media, but just today Trump told reporters in the hallway he might break his gag order to defend the Constitution. So that's the situation we're in while our trial goes dark. While it goes dark. Wait, why did the judge organize the schedule that way? He told jurors he didn't want to break up summation jury instructions and deliberations

and that there was no way to start summing up today because due to Memorial Day weekend, there's only one more day of court this week. But we did spend the afternoon listening to lawyers' arguments on how the judge will instruct the jury. And it's important in this case, they're not being asked to determine something like did someone attack someone, which is the kind of crime that often gets tried

in this building. Instead, the jury has to determine there were false records and they were falsified in furtherance of another crime, which the DA has argued was conspiring to unlawfully influence the election. And exactly what that latter part means could be the difference between a conviction and an acquittal. Indeed.

That is NPR's Andrea Bernstein. Thank you so much, Andrea. Thank you, Elsa. Thanks for listening to Trump's Trials from NPR. Keep an eye out for more episodes like this whenever big news happens. And we'll be back later this week with our rake of the show on Saturday. I'm Scott Detro. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Wyse, the app that makes

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