Trump team loses another lawyer
Legal shakeup seen as a turn to a more combative stance
WASHINGTON — Another senior member of President Donald Trump’s legal team is stepping down, the latest high-level turmoil as the White House grapples with special counsel Robert Mueller’s efforts to interview the president — and to subpoena him if necessary.
The shakeup Wednesday was seen as another sign that Trump is seeking a more combative approach to the Russia investigation that has clouded his presidency from the start and led to criminal charges against several former aides.
It also may signal that Trump will refuse to submit to an interview, or fight a grand jury subpoena, setting the stage for a constitutional battle over his executive powers. The legal question of whether a president can be required to answer questions in a criminal case has never been tested.
The confrontation looms as Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer who advocated for cooperating with Mueller’s prosecutors, including submitting to an interview, prepares to exit this month and be replaced by Emmet Flood.
Flood helped represent President Bill Clinton at his impeachment trial in January 1999. Clinton was acquitted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
In a statement, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Flood will represent the president and the administration “against the Russia witch hunt,” using the harsh rhetoric that Trump deploys almost daily but Cobb avoided.
Trump’s thin stable of lawyers has undergone con- Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team said it could subpoena the president. siderable turnover since the Justice Department named Mueller as special counsel last May. He is investigating whether any of Trump’s aides cooperated with Russian efforts to manipulate the 2016 election, or if the president obstructed justice by trying to block or influence the probe.
Trump last month hired Rudy Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor and mayor of NewYork, to replace John Dowd, a veteran white collar defense attorney who was Trump’s lead lawyer until he resigned in March. Giuliani reportedly has met with Mueller and is seeking to negotiate limits to any potential testimony.
The first test of Trump’s increasingly bellicose stance will likely come as Mueller continues to push for a presidential interview. In a testy meeting in early March, the former FBI director told Trump’s lawyers that he could issue a subpoena for the president to testify before a grand jury, according to The Washington Post.
Trump seemed to confirm details of the March meeting in a tweet on Wednesday evening, sharing a comment that Dowd had reportedly made to prosecutors — “This isn’t some game. You are screwing with the work of the president of the United States.”
The possibility of a subpoena has raised the stakes for Trump, who has publicly said he is eager to sit down with prosecutors even though his advisers believe it would be a perilous encounter given the president’s routine use of exaggeration, hyperbole and outright falsehoods.
With Cobb’s departure, “the number of people who think the president should talk to Mueller has gotten to zero,” said a source familiar with Trump’s legal team who declined to speak publicly about their deliberations.
A standoff between Jus- tice Department officials and GOP lawmakers escalated Wednesday as Trump waded into a controversy over demands to release a highly sensitive document outlining who and what is being investigated by the special counsel.
The Justice Department has refused to turn over the document, known as a “scope memo,” citing its own independence and longtime precedent that it doesn’t disclose the details of ongoing investigations.
“A Rigged System — They don’t want to turn over Documents to Congress. What are they afraid of? Why so much redacting? Why such unequal “justice?” At some point I will have no choice but to use the powers granted to the Presidency and get involved!” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning.
If Trump resists a grand jury subpoena, the dispute could rocket to the top of the U. S. Supreme Court’s docket, setting the stage for an unprecedented showdownbetween the executive and judicial branches.
Several previous White House episodes are relevant, although none shows clearly how the justices might rule.
In July 1998, independent counsel Kenneth Starr issued the first subpoena to a sitting president to compel Clinton to testify to the Monica Lewinsky grand jury. Several weeks later, Clinton agreed to submit to four hours of questioning by prosecutors at the White House after Starr withdrew the subpoena.
In June 1974, during the Watergate scandal, the Supreme Court voted unanimously to force President Nixon to give a special prosecutor secretly recorded audio tapes of the president’s conversations.
The release of the Oval Office tapes helped turn public opinion against Nixon and he resigned two months later. But the decision did not address the question of whether Nixon could be required to testify.
Senior members of Congress have warned Trump not to try to fire Mueller, warning it could lead to a constitutional showdown. But a Trump refusal to submit to a special counsel interview, or honor a subpoena, could be a fast track to a similar result.
“There’s a potential for a constitutional crisis right around the corner in all of these things,” said Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who teaches white collar criminal law at George Washington University.
Many legal experts say Trump could not legally refuse a grand jury subpoena.
“I could see it going back to the Supreme Court,” said John Yoo, a former senior Justice Department lawyer during President George W. Bush’s first term, who now teaches law at U.C. Berkeley. “But I don’t see how Trump could win.”
Paul Rosensweig, who worked with Starr in the Clinton investigation, said Trump could delay his testimony by fighting a subpoena, but ultimately he would fail in the courts.
Mueller appears to have anticipated a high-stakes legal clash. His team includes Michael Dreeben, a highly respected deputy solicitor general who two years ago earned the rare distinction of arguing more than 100 cases before the U. S. Supreme Court.
At least part of the scope of Mueller’s investigation was revealed this week when the New York Times obtained a list of roughly four dozen likely questions for Trump that was compiled by the president’s lawyers after they spoke to Mueller’s team in March.