White House attorney Ty Cobb said Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team has been understanding with him and has now received nearly everything it asked for. | Jerry Cleveland/The Denver Post via AP Ty Cobb on Russia probe: Mueller is 'my audience, not anybody else'

While he may work for the West Wing, White House attorney Ty Cobb said this week that the audience for his job is Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading an investigation of the 2016 campaign.

Cobb, in an interview on Wednesday with Vox, said the Trump administration’s cooperation with the Mueller investigation was delayed at one point because of staffing issues. But Cobb said Mueller’s team has been understanding with him and has now received nearly everything it asked for.


“The reality is that I had hoped with some success we could have gotten the document production [sending documents to Mueller] done earlier, but I didn’t have the staff or the support internally in the White House initially to get that done. And Mueller fully understood that,” Cobb said. “He’s my audience, not anybody else, and I needed him to understand that I was working as hard as I could with whatever I had to meet his deadline, so, mission accomplished as far as I’m concerned.”

Cobb said the incendiary book by author Michael Wolff slowed the work of Mueller’s team because its contents prompted additional interviews to conduct. The FBI internal watchdog report that led to the firing of Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s former deputy director, could similarly slow Mueller’s team, as could the forthcoming book from former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by the president last spring.

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The Trump administration continues to have no interest in firing Mueller, Cobb said, despite speculation that the president may be inching towards such a decision. Instead, Cobb said, the interactions between Mueller’s team and the White House have been mostly without incident.

“This has gone in a very smooth way. You haven’t heard any complaints from Mueller, and everything is negotiated heavily, so it’s not like we just opened up the file drawers and let them come in and pick out what they wanted,” he said.