A former defense lawyer for ex-Trump attorney Michael Cohen said that Cohen falsely accused him of wrongdoing, was never open with him about the scope of his crimes, and still hasn't paid a $43,000 legal bill.

Robert Costello, a partner at Davidoff Hutcher & Citron, told ALM that his communications with Cohen have been twisted and taken out of context in news articles and in the recent report by special counsel Robert Mueller. He said he believed Cohen and his legal adviser Lanny Davis were smearing him and, with Cohen having waived attorney-client privilege, Costello said he feels the need to respond publicly.

“I don't have anything to hide,” said Costello. “This guy Cohen has muddied the record and tried to muddy our reputation. I won't let that happen.”

Costello has not been accused of wrongdoing by prosecutors and said he has complied with document requests from federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and the House Intelligence Committee. He was one of multiple defense lawyers who advised Cohen in the lead-up to his guilty plea, and his interactions with Cohen, along with other events, underscore the fraught relationships Cohen had with some of his own lawyers.

A former prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, Costello said he was on Cohen's legal team for about three months in 2018. His name surfaced in March 2019 in news reports that described him as a friend of President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and a lawyer who had hinted at the prospect of a pardon to pressure Cohen not to cooperate with prosecutors.

Costello said nothing could be further from the truth and he thinks Cohen and Davis planted that idea in the press. In an interview in his firm's office, as he leafed through stacks of emails and memos he wrote during that time that he allowed a reporter to review, he described how Cohen sought to meet him, not knowing about Costello's 45-year friendship with Giuliani. Costello said he only asked Giuliani about the chance of a pardon at Cohen's request, and he got a “curt” reply that it would not be discussed.

Cohen was one of several prominent New Yorkers who have turned to Costello for legal advice, including Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and businesswoman Leona Helmsley. Most of Costello's practice consists of representing people involved with federal criminal matters, he said.

Another former federal prosecutor, solo practitioner Michael Q. Carey, said he has a high opinion of Costello's character. Carey knows Costello from their days in the U.S. Attorney's Office together and regards him as a friend.

“Generally speaking, we're all trained the same way, and that's to be very, very careful not to cross the line of impropriety,” Carey said. “I have no reason to think he ever did that.”

In contrast, Davis, Cohen's spokesman, said Costello had ulterior motives when advising Cohen. “Mr. Costello pursued Mr. Cohen like a predator on behalf of Mr. Guiliani and the administration to control the narrative and continue to deceive the American people,” Davis said in a statement.

“I can understand a man trying to run away from his own words, including sending a bill to Mr. Cohen for his conversations with Mr. Giuliani to try to keep Mr. Cohen in the Trump 'liars club',” Davis said. “Mr. Costello's repugnant and heartless attacks on Mr. Cohen's state of mind demonstrates the type of person he is. The problem for Mr. Costello is there is no need to reply to him. His own words speak for themselves.”

'Off the Ledge'

Costello said the ultimate outcome of Cohen's criminal case—including pleading guilty to charges of lying to the IRS, Congress and a bank—was likely inevitable. But he said Cohen never admitted to him that he faced any legal peril more serious than a campaign-finance charge related to payments to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump, a charge Costello viewed as unlikely to stick.

According to Costello, he met Cohen in April 2018 through his partner Jeffrey Citron, who knew Cohen socially, after federal authorities searched Cohen's home, hotel room and office. Cohen had been represented by Stephen Ryan of McDermott Will & Emery for months before that, and he was widely seen as facing increased pressure in the wake of the raids by authorities.

The three of them met at Cohen's hotel, nine days after the searches, to talk about the legal risks Cohen faced. Costello said his friendship with Giuliani, who at that point was a prominent Trump supporter, was discussed briefly.

Cohen expressed concern and confusion at the initial meeting about the charges he might face from federal or perhaps state prosecutors, Costello said. Cohen also swore he wouldn't spend a day in jail and said he had been thinking about killing himself, according to Costello. Costello said Cohen's remark stuck with him and made it clear to him that calming Cohen down and assuring him should be a key priority.

A day later, when it was reported that Giuliani had joined the president's legal team, Costello reminded Cohen of their prior relationship and said in an email that it could be “very very useful.” Cohen was then participating in a joint defense agreement with Trump.

Soon after, Costello told Cohen in an email that he had spoken with Giuliani, and Giuliani was “very very pleased” that Costello was on his team. He wrote that Giuliani said they should keep their “back channel” of communication open. Costello said Giuliani used the term simply to reflect the fact that Davidoff Hutcher's work for Cohen was not public.

“We're trying to literally talk him down off the ledge,” Costello said. Those remarks were “all to calm down a suicidal guy,” not to hint at a potential pardon, he said.

Costello had also heard from Giuliani that Cohen expressed thoughts of suicide to Jerry Falwell Jr. over a June dinner. (Falwell declined to comment through a spokesman. Giuliani said via email that he remembers “Jerry telling me he was worried about Michael being suicidal.”) If Cohen was contemplating suicide in April and later at his meeting with Falwell, Costello said, it's unlikely Cohen was counting on a pardon.

'Stringing Us Along'

It didn't take long for frustrations between Cohen and Costello to mount. In a May 4 email, Costello told Citron, who declined to comment for this story, that “I think we have to stop dealing with him until he signs the retainer.” Cohen never ended up doing so, although Costello said their exchanges “constituted a retainer” and would hold up if they were ever to sue Cohen for unpaid legal fees.

Asked if such a suit was coming, Costello was noncommittal.

“He was stringing us along,” he said in an interview. “I've been slow-played before, and I knew it.”

Costello said he got the sense that Cohen's main concerns were getting his legal bills paid by Trump or his real-estate company and communicating to the president that he could be trusted. Costello said Cohen initially told him that Costello's job would be dealing with the press, but in calls, seemed mostly to want Costello to tell Giuliani and “the big guy”—Trump—that he was loyal and would not break.

Emails showed Cohen was often slow to respond to Costello's inquiries. In a message to Costello, Cohen said his time was taken up by working with a McDermott team that was screening seized documents for private or privileged materials.

Costello described having to walk something of a tightrope. On one hand, he believed Cohen wanted to assure the president that he was loyal. On the other hand, Cohen would frequently complain about Giuliani's public comments, but would not get into specifics, Costello said, and he demurred when Costello recommended Cohen and his lawyers meet Giuliani to iron out whatever differences they might have.

Costello told Citron in a May 15 email, “our issue is to get Cohen on the right page without giving him the appearance that we are following instructions from Giuliani or the President. In my opinion, this is the clear, correct strategy. We must … restore this to a far more simple investigation of things that well they might not look good politically are nevertheless legal.”

In June, the relationship between Costello and Cohen began to crumble faster. For months, Cohen had declined to tell Costello which other lawyers he'd been speaking to, and Costello said he only learned that Guy Petrillo, of Petrillo Klein & Boxer, was among them when Cohen accidentally sent an email to the two of them at once. In communications with Giuliani, Costello noted that Petrillo worked in the SDNY U.S. Attorney's office at the same time as former FBI director James Comey.

In July, Costello learned that Cohen was working with Davis, a longtime supporter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and told Giuliani on July 5 that it seemed Cohen had cast his lot with “the Comey-Clinton team.”

Costello told Cohen that month that he would not be moving forward as his lawyer, and Davidoff Hutcher billed Cohen shortly thereafter for $43,000. 

Cohen said he would not pay, and in the weeks that followed, Costello and Cohen traded angry emails in which the narratives that have emerged publicly since March began to take form.

In emails, Cohen accused Costello of coming to him, “peddling … your relationship with Rudy as a 'back door' channel” to Trump. Costello denied that and urged Cohen to pay his bill.

In an interview, Costello said he would have continued to work with Cohen, even if it meant cooperating and becoming adverse to Giuliani and Trump, if Cohen had been honest and signed the retainer. Costello said he only reached out to Giuliani with Cohen's approval.

In about a year's time, Cohen has gone through several lawyers. He was first represented by McDermott's Ryan, who advised him during the time he made dishonest statements to Congress. Representatives of McDermott didn't respond to a comment request.

And in the months that followed Costello's own breakup with Cohen, Cohen's relationship with Petrillo reportedly began to fray. By February 2019, CNN reported that their relationship had devolved into a “forced marriage,” and said Cohen had hired Michael Monico and Barry Spevack to advise him on Congressional testimony that month. Petrillo did not respond to a request for comment.

Costello said Cohen's problems stemmed from his own bad judgments. In a memo last year, Costello wrote that Cohen felt “lonely and isolated” and said Cohen's “Achilles heel” was an attraction to celebrity. He recalled how Cohen, in one of their meetings, referred to a list of TV journalists and pundits as his “friends.”

When Cohen pleaded guilty in August and began seeking donations to a “truth fund,” Costello called the news “priceless” in an email to Citron. He also sent Citron a link to Cohen's Twitter feed, saying, “follow this fool as he commits [hara-kiri],” a form of ceremonial disembowelment.

“Everything that he did showed me that he didn't even know what was in his personal self-interest,” Costello said in an ALM interview.

Cohen is currently scheduled to report to authorities Monday to begin serving his three-year prison sentence.

Editor's Note: After online publication of this article Friday, Lanny Davis said his public relations firm drafted and submitted the statement that appears in this article in error. He submitted the following revised statement: “I can understand a man trying to run away from his own words, including sending a bill to Mr. Cohen for his conversations with Mr. Giuliani to try to keep Mr. Cohen in the Trump 'liars club',” Davis said, adding, “The problem for Mr. Costello is there is no need to reply to him. His own words speak for themselves.”