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. (More Ty Cobb stories.)
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