Disagreements over legal strategy are hardly novel, especially in a situation as murky and high-stakes as this one. What is unusual is the public display of disagreement and the level of paranoia that Cobb’s comments reveal, which are part of a larger pattern of a troubled legal response by the Trump team to the Russia investigation. Even as the lawyers on the case are at loggerheads on strategy, some staffers have already left or been pushed out, and this is only the latest puzzling incident for Cobb.

At the beginning of the month, several outlets reported that Mueller had obtained a letter that Trump drafted, but did not send, to Comey explaining his firing. The letter, described as a “rant,” focuses heavily on the president’s anger that Comey had not publicly stated that Trump was not personally under investigation. Cobb dismissed the letter as irrelevant, and when Business Insider’s Natasha Bertrand asked a follow-up, Cobb wrote to her, “Are you on drugs? Have you read anything else on this???”

Days later, Cobb had a peculiar email exchange with Jeff Jetton, a D.C. ramen-shop owner who has become a strangely powerful conduit for information on the Russia investigation. Jetton got Cobb’s White House email and sent him an invective-laced series of messages. Cobb decided to engage. After several dismissive replies, he wrote to Jetton:

Dude U have no idea! I walked away from $4 million annually to do this, had to sell my entire retirement account for major capital losses and lost a shitload to try to protect the third pillar of democracy. Your hate I will never understand as an American. Hope you get help!

Cobb also said that he wanted to do the job because “more adults in the room will be better,” identifying himself and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly among them. Cobb told Mother Jones that he “was trying to turn someone who appeared angry into a friend. And privately. My bad. This was what I believed to be a private conversation.”

Cobb’s noisy conversation at the steakhouse suggests he may not have learned his lesson, but in any case, it was apparently too late, because Cobb had also been exchanging emails with a prankster claiming to be Dan Scavino, Trump’s social-media guru. Messaging with the fake Scavino about Bertrand, Cobb quipped, “Any drone time left?” The prankster later shared the emails with Bertrand.

Cobb’s erratic, imprudent behavior seems likely to eventually fulfill his comment to Jetton that he wouldn’t be at the White House long. Regardless of the quality of his lawyering, Cobb appears to be unreliable, incautious, and to have fraught relations with colleagues.

For someone with as much experience in lawsuits—as both plaintiff and defendant—as Trump, the president has struggled to find good legal help. Dowd’s predecessor as Trump’s private lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, was also pushed out after several bizarre moments as well. He delivered a blistering but factually challenged and contradictory press conference after Comey’s testimony to the Senate in June. Kasowitz also sent a series of profane and unhinged emails to a stranger, a decision he chalked up to long days and the late hour. Mark Corallo, a veteran Trump aide who had worked as a spokesman for Kasowitz, also left at that time. Meanwhile, Jamie Gorelick, a high-profile Democratic lawyer, stepped down in July from representing Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser.