President Donald Trump is hiring Emmet Flood, who helped represent Bill Clinton during his impeachment, to replace the retiring Ty Cobb, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

Cobb, who joined Trump's legal team last summer, informed the president weeks ago of his intention to retire, the Times reported. Cobb told the Times he plans to stay on until his replacement gets up to speed.

The hiring of Flood is not official, the Times reports.

Flood was in talks to join Trump's legal team last summer but ultimately decided against it to avoid working with attorney Marc Kasowitz, who was the first Trump attorney to leave, the Times reports.

John Dowd also resigned earlier this year, but Trump added former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani recently.

Flood is considered more of a bulldog than Cobb, and is expected to toe a tougher line with special counsel Robert Mueller, the Times reports.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed Cobb's retirement, saying he had been discussing it for several weeks and informed White House chief of staff John Kelly last week he would retire at the end of May.

Cobb's retirement was announced shortly after ABC News' "Powerhouse Politics" podcast released excerpts of an intervew with Cobb in which he said the issue of Trump submitting to a Mueller interview was "certainly not off the table and people are working hard to make decisions and work toward an interview."