‘Ignored’ Dowd quits as lawyer
WASHINGTON: John Dowd resigned as President Donald Trump’s lead lawyer for the special counsel investigation as Mr Trump signalled he was prepared to ignore his advice and wanted a sit-down with investigators.
After days of uncertainty among the president’s lawyers about their status, Mr Dowd ultimately broke with Mr Trump over whether he should agree to be questioned in the inquiry, a person briefed on the matter said.
Mr Dowd viewed an interview as too risky; the president reiterated shortly after Mr Dowd resigned that he wanted to clear his name. “I would like to,” the president told reporters at the White House when asked about meeting with investigators for the special counsel, Robert S Mueller III. “I would like to.”
Mr Dowd’s departure cleared the way for the president to embrace a more aggressive posture toward the investigation and marked another reshuffling of personnel for Mr Trump.
In the most politically consequential investigation in decades, the president has refashioned his legal team several times, a revolving door that mirrors the high turnover among senior White House and campaign aides.
“I love the president,” Mr Dowd said in a telephone interview. “I wish him the best of luck. I think he has a really good case.”
Now, as he weighs whether to be interviewed by Mr Mueller, the president will be advised by a cadre of lawyers better known for their television and advocacy work than their courtroom triumphs.
This week, the president hired Joseph diGenova, a longtime Washington lawyer who has pushed the theory on Fox News that the FBI and the Justice Department framed Mr Trump.
The former US attorney in Washington, Mr diGenova has been on television in recent years more than he has been in court. He has appeared in only three federal criminal cases in the past two decades, according to the national database of federal court records, and has not filed an appearance in a federal criminal case in eight years.
Mr diGenova was brought aboard by Jay Sekulow, his longtime friend and the president’s other personal lawyer for the Mueller probe.