President Trump said Wednesday he wouldn’t recommend that anyone hire Michael Cohen as a lawyer, after Cohen turned against Trump and told a court that Trump directed him to violate campaign finance laws.
“If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
[Opinion: Cohen’s plea could land Trump in the witness chair]
If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2018
Cohen once said he would “take a bullet” for Trump, but has since decided to act against him. Cohen’s own attorney, Lanny Davis, said Wednesday that Cohen changed his mind after Trump’s press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin this summer.
“He certainly found Donald Trump unsuitable to hold the office after Helsinki,” Davis said. “He worried about the future of our country with somebody who was aligning himself with Mr. Putin and denying what his entire intelligence community — his own appointees have said is an indisputable fact that Putin interfered with our presidential election on behalf of President Trump and he still denies that.”
Davis also said Cohen is so opposed to Trump that he is not seeking a pardon from the president, and wouldn’t accept one if it were offered.
“Not only is he not hoping for it, he would not accept a pardon. He considers a pardon from somebody who has acted so corruptly as president to be something he would never accept,” Davis said on NBC.
Cohen pleaded guilty on Tuesday to five counts of tax evasion from 2012 to 2016, one count of making a false statement to a financial institution, one count of willfully causing an unlawful corporate contribution, and one count of making an excessive campaign contribution.
