John Dowd (pictured) had been spearheading negotiations with Special Counsel Robert Mueller for a potential interview with the president, while Jay Sekulow handled public communications. | Richard Dew/AP Photo Trump’s Russia probe lawyer John Dowd resigns The departure comes amid a larger shakeup of the legal team handling the Mueller investigation.

John Dowd resigned Thursday as President Donald Trump’s lead lawyer for the Russia investigation amid a wider shakeup of Trump’s legal team that raised new questions about Trump’s strategy for dealing with special counsel Robert Mueller.

Dowd stepped down just days after he issued a statement calling for Mueller’s probe to be shuttered, which he first attributed with his title as the president’s lawyer and then backtracked to say he was speaking only for himself.


“I love the president and wish him well,” Dowd said in an email to POLITICO.

Dowd, a prominent Washington white collar defense attorney with a prickly demeanor, signed on as a personal attorney to the president last June and recently had been spearheading negotiations with Mueller for a potential interview with the president.

But the 77-year old attorney had grown increasingly frustrated by his work for Trump, according to a source familiar with the Trump legal team strategy. Dowd was particularly upset to learn on Monday that Trump had decided to hire Joseph diGenova, another bulldog lawyer and scandal veteran to help with his Russia response.

Trump had also been gauging interest from other prominent attorneys, including former George W. Bush Solicitor General Ted Olson, who recently turned down an offer from Trump by citing conflicts with his law firm.

Trump’s legal team has long been riven by a debate about how Trump should handle Mueller’s investigation in both political and legal terms. Dowd had preached a confrontational approach, warning Trump of the risks of speaking to Mueller—at the risk of perjuring himself—and calling in a Saturday morning statement on the Justice Department to “bring an end” to its “manufactured” Russia probe.

Asked Thursday at a China trade event at the White House whether he was still willing to speak to Mueller, the president responded, “Yes, I would like to.”

Given the recent addition of the combative diGenova to Trump’s team, it is not clear that Dowd’s departure will substantially impact its overall strategy.



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Dowd had previously been known best for representing Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the Keating Five Scandal, and for leading a Major League Baseball investigation of gambling allegations surrounding baseball great Pete Rose.

Jay Sekulow, who has been handling public communications and research on constitutional issues for the Trump legal team, declined on Thursday to answer questions about how the president’s attorneys would be organized going forward.

“John Dowd has been a valuable member of our legal team and we will continue our ongoing cooperation with the office of special counsel regarding this inquiry,” Sekulow said in a statement to POLITICO.

Trump’s legal team has seen remarkable flux, particularly given the stakes for a president who could potentially face impeachment or even indictment over allegations that his campaign colluded with the Kremlin and that he has sought to obstruct justice. Trump insists that such charges have been manufactured by political partisans.

The president originally tapped his longtime personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz to represent him in the Justice Department’s Russia probe, which Mueller has led since shortly after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey last May.

But the New York-based Kasowitz stepped down last summer amid concerns he wasn’t best positioned to tangle with a Washington scandal.

While the president continues to speak with Kasowitz, he has mainly relied on Dowd and Sekulow to manage the Russia probe for him as an individual. Washington lawyer Ty Cobb runs the White House’s official response to the investigation with a team of about five aides who draw taxpayer salaries.

The changes to the Trump legal team are seen as a bad omen for Cobb, who has been urging cooperation with Mueller. In an interview on Wednesday, former Cobb law partner Robert Bennett called for Cobb to resign in order to preserve his professional reputation.

“I hope my friend Ty Cobb will leave the team. He’s not helping himself or his reputation,” Bennett said.

Cobb did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump has recently been frustrated with his lawyers, who had been giving him a steadily changing series of target completion dates for a Mueller probe that has only appeared to widen in recent weeks to include allegations, seemingly unrelated to Russia, that a consultant for the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates worked with a top GOP fundraiser.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted that “the Mueller probe should never have been started,” insisting that “there was no collusion and there was no crime” and branding the investigation a “WITCH HUNT.” It was the first time Trump had specifically mentioned Mueller by name on Twitter — something his lawyers have counseled him to avoid doing.

This week he hired diGenova, a fierce critic of the Russia investigation who earlier this year told Fox News that Trump had been framed by the Justice Department and FBI “with a falsely created crime.”

Trump’s free-wheeling style has worn on his lawyers. He’s ignored their advice to restrain himself on Twitter and disregarded their counsel that he not discuss details of the probe beyond his legal team.

Legal experts say those are reasons why Trump has struggled to attract the caliber of lawyer that has historically leapt to represent a sitting president. Olson, Robert Giuffra Jr. and Reid Weingarten were among the elite attorneys who declined job offers from Trump last spring, while former George W. Bush attorneys Bill Burck and Emmet Flood rejected overtures for the position ultimately accepted by Cobb.

“The notion of saying no to represent the president of the United States is kind of amazing,” said Bennett, a former personal attorney to President Bill Clinton.

Trump may not be done looking for lawyers. Flood met with the president earlier this month at the White House, though it’s unclear if that has led to a job offer.

The diGenova hiring came days after Dowd issued a Saturday morning statement calling for Mueller’s work to end.

“I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier,” Dowd told the Daily Beast, responding to Sessions’ decision the night before to fire Andrew McCabe, the former deputy FBI director.

Dowd initially said he was speaking in his official capacity as Trump’s lawyer. But he later retracted that statement, telling POLITICO he was commenting in his personal capacity.

It was one of several instances where Dowd raised eyebrows—and in some cases, drew ridicule—for his public commentary about the Russia probe.

Last December, Dowd took blame for a tweet posted on Trump’s account that appeared to admit Trump was aware that his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had lied to the FBI before Trump urged Comey to drop the Russia investigation. The tweet puzzled legal experts who said the admission could fuel an obstruction of justice case against Trump.

Dowd later argued that Trump could not be found guilty of obstruction of justice because of his role as chief executive under the Constitution, an argument that many legal experts disputed.

Both Dowd and Cobb also were embarrassed last summer after a New York Times reporter overheard them speaking about the Russia investigation at a Washington restaurant.

Dowd is well-known for his gruff manner, which was on vivid display outside a federal courthouse in 2011 when he told a CNBC camera crew to “get the fuck out of here” before giving the cameraman the middle finger.

Asked recently by POLITICO to comment on talks between the president’s lawyers and Mueller’s investigators, Dowd was only somewhat friendlier: “None of your business,” he said.

