Tag: T.J. Kirkpatrick

“Are we going to meet Thursday or Friday?” Mr. Costello texted Mr. Giuliani on a Monday. Mr. Costello told prosecutors in a recent meeting that the pardon discussion had been initiated by Mr. Cohen and rejected by Mr. Giuliani. When Mr. Giuliani was hired by the president a few days later, Mr. Costello emailed Mr. Cohen: “I told you my relationship with Rudy which could be very very useful for you.” “Great news,” Mr. Cohen replied. The next day, after speaking to Mr. Giuliani by phone, Mr. Costello wrote in an email to Mr. Citron that the president’s lead lawyer had been “thrilled that I reached out to him about Cohen.” He added that Mr. Giuliani was “calling the president tonight.” Mr. Costello also shared his upbeat assessment with Mr. Cohen. Under an information-sharing agreement among the lawyers, Mr. Ryan had discussed with Mr. Giuliani that the Trumps had reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the hush money he paid to the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels. As the president’s lead lawyer continued to publicly discuss the hush-money scheme in the days and weeks that followed, Mr. Cohen told associates that Mr. Giuliani was “blowing this whole thing.” ‘Keep on Punching’ Days after Mr. Giuliani appeared on Fox News, Mr. Costello confided to Mr. Citron, his partner, about his mounting concerns that Mr. Cohen was stringing them along. “Does Cohen really want a friend of Comey as his lawyer?” he asked in a text message. In the interview with The Times, Mr. Giuliani said that he was new to the issue of the legal fees at the time, having just been hired by Mr. Trump a couple of months earlier. “The idea that the Trump Organization should have paid his legal fees and expenses is a total crock.” Distrust between the two sides only grew in June when the comedian Tom Arnold tweeted a selfie with Mr. Cohen and later claimed that they were teaming up to take down the president. Mr. Davis said that he asked Mr. Cohen at the time why he wanted to hire him.

In seven angry pages, Justice Stephen G. Breyer recounted how the conservative majority on the court had refused his request to delay the execution of an Alabama inmate for a few hours so he and the other justices could discuss the matter in person at their usual Friday morning conference. Instead, by a 5-to-4 vote in the middle of the night, the court allowed the execution to proceed, with the conservative justices in the majority and the liberals in dissent. The dispute among the justices on Friday lasted long enough that Alabama officials postponed the execution of the inmate, Christopher L. Price, which had been scheduled for Thursday night. “To proceed in this matter in the middle of the night without giving all members of the court the opportunity for discussion tomorrow morning is, I believe, unfortunate.” The majority, in a brief unsigned opinion, said Mr. Price had waited too long to raise his claim that Alabama’s method of execution, a lethal injection of three chemicals, could subject him to excruciating pain. Mr. Price asked to be executed using nitrogen gas, a method allowed by Alabama law. Around 9 p.m. on Thursday, Alabama officials asked the Supreme Court to allow the execution to go forward. In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the majority was “profoundly wrong.” In March, the court halted the execution of a Buddhist inmate in Texas in similar circumstances, over two noted dissents, with the majority apparently satisfied that the request had been timely. In his dissent on Friday, Justice Breyer reviewed the proceedings in Mr. Price’s case and said undue haste had undermined justice. “I recognized that my request would delay resolution of the application and that the state would have to obtain a new execution warrant, thus delaying the execution by 30 days. “But in my judgment, that delay was warranted, at least on the facts as we have them now,” Justice Breyer wrote.