White House lawyer Ty Cobb to depart this month 1:30 PM ET Wed, 2 May 2018 | 01:44 
 
 Trump lawyer Ty Cobbis leaving the president's team dealing with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and will be replaced by Emmet Flood, who represented President Bill Clinton during his impeachment. 
 
 Cobb's departure and Flood's arrival is just the latest shuffling of President Donald Trump's legal team to deal with Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. And it reportedly is due to a desire to be more aggressive in responding to that probe. 
 
 "For several weeks Ty Cobb has been discussing his retirement and last week he let Chief of Staff [John] Kelly know he would retire at the end of this month," White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a prepared statement Wednesday. 
 
 "Emmet Flood will be joining the White House Staff to represent the President and the administration against the Russia witch hunt," Sanders said. 
 
 "Ty Cobb, a friend of the President, who has done a terrific job, will be retiring at the end of the month." 
 
 The moves were first reported by The New York Times. 
 
 Flood, a Washington lawyer, was said to be in discussions with Trump two months ago about joining his legal team for Mueller's probe. 
 
 The Times reported that Flood is expected "to take a more adversarial approach" to Mueller's investigation that Cobb, 68, who has advocated for cooperation with Mueller's probe. When he was hired last summer, Cobb said that the White House was "in full cooperation mode." 
 
 But the White House now may be less cooperative. 

 “Emmet Flood will be joining the White House staff to represent the president and the administration against the Russia witch hunt,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in a statement, adopting the president’s derisive label for the special counsel investigation. “Ty Cobb, a friend of the president, who has done a terrific job, will be retiring at the end of the month.” 
 
 Like many veterans of the meandering, yearslong Clinton investigation, Mr. Flood has told people he is wary of special counsel inquiries. He has expressed concerns about the scope of Mr. Mueller’s investigation in particular, a view that resonates with the president. Mr. Cobb, by contrast, has expressed admiration for Mr. Mueller and has never adopted the president’s “witch hunt” language. 
 
 Mr. Cobb, 67, was not a supporter of the Trump campaign, and though he expressed fondness for Mr. Trump, he repeatedly reminded people that he represented the White House as an institution, not the president himself. “It has been an honor to serve the country in this capacity at the White House,” Mr. Cobb said in a telephone interview. “I wish everybody well moving forward.” 
 
 Mr. Flood is expected to take a more adversarial approach than Mr. Cobb, who voluntarily turned over White House documents to Mr. Mueller. He has credited that cooperation with preventing a protracted — and losing — subpoena fight that would have hobbled the administration. But the strategy frustrated the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, and some in the West Wing who said Mr. Cobb was too willing to accede to Mr. Mueller’s requests. 
 
 “Cobb’s radical theory of the case, to waive executive privilege from the very beginning, was not simply wrong. It was reckless,” said Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House strategist. He said that Mr. Cobb had been fired, rather than left, after repeatedly predicting the end of an investigation that never came. “Unfortunately, you cannot undo the serious damage he has caused the president and the presidency.” 

 Yesterday, we speculated on why Trump lawyers leaked what appears to be their own attorney work-product about the possible questions Robert Mueller wants to ask Donald Trump. Today, a big shoe dropped that might shed some light on Trump’s true intentions. 
 
 From the New York Times: 
 
 President Trump plans to hire Emmet T. Flood, the veteran Washington lawyer who represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment, to replace Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer who has taken the lead in dealing with the special counsel investigation, who is retiring, according to two people briefed on the matter. In a phone interview, Mr. Cobb said he informed the president weeks ago that he wanted to retire. He said he planned to stay at the White House, likely through the end of the month, to help Mr. Flood transition into the new job. 
 
 Ty Cobb is the only Trump lawyer who hasn’t had his reputation totally ruined by association with Trump. And, to illustrate how low that bar is, Ty Cobb is the same guy who noisily talked about hidden documents while out at lunch. That’s the guy that’s been Trump’s “best” lawyer. 
 
 Ty Cobb has been all about cooperation with the Mueller investigation. He’s been a voice of reason. He’s been working with Mueller to set up the conditions under which Trump could sit down for an interview about all those recently leaked topics. It is thought that Cobb would have suggested submitting to a subpoena, should it come to that. 
 
 Getting rid of Cobb suggests a far more aggressive posture towards the investigation. When coupled with the fact that Trump is making noises that Mueller has exceeded the scope of his investigative mandate, it certainly seems like Team Trump is planning to use those questions to argue that any Mueller subpoena would exceed his mandate. Joe Patrice, who called this yesterday, has explained how ridiculous it is for Trump’s team to use questions that they themselves wrote to argue that Mueller is out of bounds. But we live in crazy world. 
 
 If Trump doesn’t voluntarily sit down, then Mueller will have to subpoena. Without Cobb around, it certainly seems like that subpoena will be fought by Trump all the way up to the Supreme Court… on which currently sits a 9th justice hand-picked by Trump who sits in stolen seat. 
 
 Our slow-moving constitutional crisis could turn into a full-on train wreck soon enough. 
 
 But, then there’s Emmet Flood. We can’t yet know what his plan is, but we do know that Flood represented Clinton during his legal battles. And we also know that Clinton was subpoenaed, and Clinton eventually submitted to an interview which caused Ken Starr to pull back the subpoena. So we don’t actually know how Emmet Flood is going to want to play this. 
 
 Still, it’s Donald Trump. We should already know that he will be willing to do anything to save himself and keep himself in power. He doesn’t care about the Constitution. He doesn’t care about the justice system. He’s likely willing to use all of his power to protect himself. 
 
 Ty Cobb was a voice against burning the whole thing down. Now… he’s gone. 
 
 Trump to Add Clinton Impeachment Lawyer Emmet Flood to Replace Ty Cobb [New York Times] 
 
 Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.
– President Trump's legal team is getting another makeover. The White House on Wednesday confirmed White House lawyer Ty Cobb would retire at the end of this month, a prospect he has apparently been discussing for weeks. He's been Trump's point person in Robert Mueller's ongoing Russia probe, and the New York Times' sources say he'll be replaced by one of the lawyers who represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment, Emmet Flood. It reports Flood had last year considered coming on board, but that the requirement that he work alongside Trump's New York lawyer Marc Kasowitz became a dealbreaker. The Times notes the hiring isn't finalized, but offers this take: that Flood will "take a more adversarial approach to the investigation than Mr. Cobb, who had pushed Mr. Trump to strike a cooperative tone." At Above the Law, Elie Mystal hypothesizes that if Mueller subpoenas Trump, with Cobb gone, Trump will fight it to the Supreme Court. But he acknowledges Flood is a wild card. We "know that Clinton was subpoenaed, and Clinton eventually submitted to an interview which caused Ken Starr to pull back the subpoena. So we don't actually know how Emmet Flood is going to want to play this." CNBC has more on Flood's background: He was the lead lawyer in the White House Counsel's office during George W. Bush's administration, and dealt with hundreds of Congressional investigations. He also represented Dick Cheney in the civil lawsuit filed against him by the CIA's Valerie Plame.