Trump shakes up legal team
Hires Clinton impeachment lawyer
WASHINGTON • Facing critical decisions in the Russia investigation, President Donald Trump has hired Emmet Flood, a veteran attorney who represented Bill Clinton in his impeachment process.
The White House announced the hiring not long after announcing the retirement of lawyer Ty Cobb, who has been the administration’s point person dealing with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. It’s the latest shakeup for the legal team grappling with unresolved questions on how to protect the president from legal and political jeopardy.
Cobb informed White House chief of staff John Kelly last week that he would retire at the end of May.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Flood would be joining staff to “represent the president and the administration against the Russia witch hunt.”
Cobb did not personally represent the president, but he was a critical adviser, coordinating dealings with Mueller, functioning as a point person for document and interview requests and working closely with Trump’s personal lawyers.
His retirement comes as the president’s personal legal team has been negotiating the terms of a possible sitdown between Trump and prosecutors. Cobb had advocated co-operation with Mueller, including a presidential interview, in hopes of bringing the investigation to an end. Trump initially said he was eager to be interviewed, but his perspective on Mueller soured after a raid last month targeting his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, in a separate investigation.
Cobb’s retirement is the latest evolution for a legal team marked by turnover. His lead personal lawyer, John Dowd, left in March. Another attorney who Trump tried to bring on ultimately passed because of conflicts, and the president two weeks ago added former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a pair of former prosecutors, Martin and Jane Raskin, to work alongside mainstay lawyer Jay Sekulow.
But critical decisions lie ahead. The president’s legal team has not committed to an interview with Mueller.
Those negotiations are hugely consequential, especially since one of Trump’s former personal attorneys, John Dowd, confirmed that Mueller’s team in March raised the prospect of issuing a grand jury subpoena for Trump, which would seek to force a sitting president to testify under oath.