President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Jay Goldberg, harshly criticized Rudy Giuliani for hurting his case against longtime fixer Michael Cohen. All the back-and-forth about whether Cohen could be trusted ultimately essentially cancels out the evident effort to discredit the man who was Trump’s trusted adviser for years. “I knew as soon as Giuliani spoke that he was damaging Trump’s case immeasurably,” Goldberg, who was Trump’s divorce lawyer, told CNN.

“It ranks near 100 in terms of damage.”

"I knew as soon as Giuliani spoke, that he was damaging Trump's case immeasurably ... it ranks near 100, in terms of damage." - Jay Goldberg, President Trump's personal friend and long-time attorney, on Giuliani's initial support of Michael Cohen's honesty https://t.co/hbKgLaovO6 pic.twitter.com/cbEMnhJ7XI — OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) July 27, 2018

The switch from trustworthy individual to liar seems to have happened rather quickly. On July 8, Giuliani told ABC News that he had “no concerns that Michael Cohen is going to do anything but tell the truth.” Now the tune is markedly different with Giuliani saying on Thursday that Cohen “is a proven liar.” That transition seems to suggest that Trump’s legal team believes at least part of the case on Russian meddling could come down to Cohen’s credibility, notes the Washington Post.

Giuliani on whether he is concerned that Michael Cohen will flip on Pres. Trump: "I have no concerns that Michael Cohen is going to do anything but tell the truth and if he does, as I said, there's no suggestion that anything happened" https://t.co/LEjDQ0Nhtt #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/qHJUrgM7Fc — ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) July 8, 2018

The early statements of confidence on Cohen’s credibility and trustworthiness will end up canceling the later doubts and illustrate why Giuliani isn’t right for the job of defending the president, Goldberg said. The early defense of Trump’s fixer “strips the defense of its main weapon of claiming that he is coloring his testimony to favor the government, so he can get a letter of cooperation,” Goldberg said. The president’s divorce lawyer added that “no defense lawyer would say that.”

Goldberg said he had long been skeptical of whether Giuliani was appropriate for the job, saying that he told the president not to hire him. “I didn’t think Giuliani knew how to handle a case from the defense perspective. He was a long-time prosecutor and he didn’t know how to set a case up for the possible impeachment of a witness such as Cohen,” Goldberg said.