21 Shares Reddit 5 Email

“Emmet Flood will be joining the White House staff to represent the president and the administration against the Russia witch hunt,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “Ty Cobb, a friend of the president, who has done a terrific job, will be retiring at the end of the month.”

The replaced Cobb long raised eyebrows on the political right with his deferentialapproach to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s now nearly year-long investigation, ostensibly focused on Russian election interference. In that time, Cobb repeatedly setdeadlines by which he thought Mueller would be finished probing the Trump campaign and White House, all of which proved woefully optimistic, and twice discussed Trump’s defense strategy in public, to the delight of journalists.

Flood’s appointment, along with the recent addition of former U.S. Attorney and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to head the team, may herald a rejection of Cobb’s “full cooperation mode” and the adoption of a more aggressive posture towards Mueller, who reportedly wishes to interview the president on topics related more to obstruction of justice than anything involving Russia or “collusion.”

“[Fellow Trump lawyer] Jay [Sekulow] felt that he needed someone that was more aggressive,” Giuliani told the Washington Post about Flood’s replacing Cobb. “That’s not a criticism of Ty, but it’s just about how we’re going to do this.”

Others with knowledge of the defense team were less diplomatic. “Cobb was a mistake from the beginning. He is the author of a legal strategy that was as radical as it was unwise — the unprompted and immediate waiving of executive privilege. His persistent over-promising and under-performing leaves Rudy and Emmett Flood an enormous mess to clean up,” former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon told Breitbart News.