White House lawyer Ty Cobb, who has been leading the administration’s response to Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, will retire at the end of the month, the White House announced Wednesday.
“For several weeks Ty Cobb has been discussing his retirement, and last week he let Chief of Staff Kelly know he would retire at the end of this month,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
Cobb said it was “an honor to serve the country in this capacity,” adding, “I wish everybody well moving forward.”
According to the New York Times, President Donald Trump is planning to hire veteran attorney Emmet Flood in his place.
Flood previously worked for former President George W. Bush to assist him through several congressional investigations and represented former President Bill Clinton during his impeachment hearings. Flood’s firm, Williams and Connolly, also represented Hillary Clinton throughout the FBI’s investigation of her use of a private email server.
Trump has not confirmed who will replace Cobb, but the Times reported in March that the lawyer would soon be out and that he would be replaced by Flood. At the time, the president had blasted the report as a “false story” and said that he was happy with his executive branch attorneys.
The Failing New York Times purposely wrote a false story stating that I am unhappy with my legal team on the Russia case and am going to add another lawyer to help out. Wrong. I am VERY happy with my lawyers, John Dowd, Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow. They are doing a great job and…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2018
Just 11 days after the tweet, John Dowd quit following internal disagreements.
Wednesday’s legal team reshuffle comes the same week that Mueller’s team began negotiations to interview the president. The Times published a copy of the 40 proposed questions that Mueller wished to ask Trump to examine the president’s ties to Russia and determine whether he had sought to obstruct the probe’s progress.
If Flood is to become White House lawyer, he could prove more adversarial than Cobb due to his prior experience—relevant as Trump’s sit-down with Mueller looms.
