Defense Presses Judge to Dismiss Trump Case After Prosecution Rests

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

65% : Trump appeared alert and engaged, his attention focused on the witness box, during Costello's testimony.
56% : There's no disputing that Mr. Cohen provided legal services for President Trump in 2017.
47% : Trump signed the checks in the White House, but he was doing so because Cohen was performing legitimate legal services for him as his personal attorney, Blanche argued.
42% : The case is the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president and the first of four prosecutions of Trump to reach a jury.
42% : He said he considered Cohen a client and had only his interests, not Trump's, in mind during their interactions.
36% : "Michael Cohen said numerous times that President Trump knew nothing about those payments, that he did this on his own, and he repeated that numerous times," Costello testified.
35% : Among other things, Cohen told jurors that Trump promised to reimburse him for the money he fronted and was constantly updated about efforts to silence women who alleged sexual encounters with him.
35% : "Costello said he told Cohen the matter could be resolved quickly "if he had truthful information about Donald Trump and he cooperated.
32% : They further dug into Cohen's sources of income in the years since Trump originally took office.
30% : But, Costello said, Cohen told him Trump "knew nothing" about the hush money paid to the porn actor.
27% : It remains unclear whether Trump will testify.
27% : Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
27% : Blanche underscored that Trump was in the White House while Michael Cohen was being repaid, far removed from the Trump Organization offices where his invoices and checks were being processed.
26% : ""I swear to God, Bob, I don't have anything on Donald Trump," Cohen replied, according to Costello.
23% : Trump denies the women's claims.
20% : After the fireworks over Robert Costello's testimony, Trump lawyer Emil Bove tried to get at one of the main reasons he said he called the attorney to the stand: to rebut any suggestion from prosecutors that Costello was part of an effort to arm-twist Michael Cohen to stay loyal to Donald Trump.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.