Judge in Trump's hush money trial threatened to remove witness from court for behavior on stand

NEW YORK — The judge in Donald Trump 's hush money trial cleared the courtroom of reporters Monday and then threatened to remove the defense's witness from the trial altogether because of his behavior on the stand, which included making comments under his breath and rolling his eyes, a court transcript showed.

"I'm putting you on notice that your conduct is contemptuous," Merchan said, according to the transcript of the conversation that occurred when the press was out of the room."If you try to stare me down one more time, I will remove you from the stand."When Merchan brought the press back in, Costello's testimony continued and it will resume Tuesday. The defense is using him in an effort to attack the credibility of Trump attorney-turned-adversary, Michael Cohen.

Cohen was the last witness — at least for now — for prosecutors, who are trying to prove that Trump sought to bury unflattering stories about himself and then falsified internal business records to cover it up as part of a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election. The defense has painted Cohen as a media-obsessed liar who is on a revenge mission aimed at taking down Trump.

"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 told jurors. Cohen said he never paid the Trump Organization back. Cohen has never been charged with stealing from Trump's company.

Source: Law Daily Report (lawdailyreport.net)

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