Donald Trump’s defense attorneys just jumped the shark

| 3:35 pm EDT May 20, 2024
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Donald Trump’s defense attorneys made a de facto admission this mornin that Trump will not be taking the stand in his own defense. But just when it appeared they might not put on a defense at all, they’ve instead decided to call the most surreal of witnesses: Robert Costello.

If you’re trying to place the name, think all the way back to when this criminal case was in front of the grand jury. Trump exercised his right to put his own witness in front of the grand jury, and it ended up being Robert Costello, an attorney who has represented various people in Trump world.

While outside the courtroom, Costello spewed the kinds of conspiracy theories so bizarre that you’d have thought they came straight from Rudy Giuliani (and it’s possible they did). So the guy can’t have said anything less insane to the grand jury. Yet now Trump’s attorneys are putting Costello on the stand during the trial.

This feels like a true “jumping the shark” moment. It’s such a bizarre move that the prosecution is already challenging what Costello will even be allowed to testify about. It seems pretty clear that Trump’s legal team is simply looking to fill the air with nonsense in order to pander to pro-Trump conspiracy theorists and such.

In other words, they’re no longer even trying to win the trial, and are instead merely trying to keep Donald Trump happy by putting on the kind of incoherently nonsensical defense that Trump wants.