President Donald Trump's actions in Helsinki were a "significant turning point" for his former lawyer Michael Cohen, and changed his mindset from being a person who said he'd take a bullet for the president to questioning his suitability for office, attorney Lanny Davis said Wednesday.
"It was evolutionary," Davis told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" about Cohen, who pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges of campaign-finance violations and other charges. "I can tell you that Helsinki was a significant turning point."
Cohen was "worried about the future of our country" after he saw Trump at his Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July, Davis said.
He was shaken by seeing Trump aligning with the Russian president, even though "everybody in his intelligence community, including [Director of National Intelligence] Dan Coats" said Putin interfered to help Trump win the 2016 election, Davis said.
"Trump is the only one left denying that," said Davis. "That shook up Mr. Cohen."
Earlier events also affected Cohen, said Davis, noting that when he first was hired, "we talked about what caused him to change change his mind from taking a bullet for Donald Trump in the statement he made to seriously worrying act his unsuitability as president after he became president."
The process was "painful," said Davis, and "when he and I talked when I decided to help him, it was after several weeks of talking about the evolution that he's gone through."
He also agreed with show co-host Mika Brzezinski, who asked if Cohen is worried Trump will do something 'unbelievably idiotic" to deflect from the headlines.
"Everybody in America who isn't a hardcore [who] doesn't care whether he lies...everybody else in America is worried about a president of the United States who acts recklessly, sometimes acts without the ability that you would want to have a president mentally and denies his own intelligence community's unanimous assessment, including Dan Coats and Mike Pompeo and everybody else that Putin interfered to help him get elected."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.