President Donald Trump has added another lawyer to his legal team as FBI special counsel Robert Mueller prepares to interview a slate of senior White House aides.

Steven Groves, who until last month served as chief of staff to U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, will serve as deputy to White House special counsel Ty Cobb, who is managing the response to Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling into the 2016 election. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed Groves’ hire on Monday.


His addition is the latest sign that the president is looking to beef up his legal team as Mueller’s investigation picks up steam. Cobb joined the White House in July when it became clear that White House counsel Don McGahn’s ability to advise the president on Russia-related matters could be compromised if he were called as a witness in Mueller probe – and his decision to bring on a deputy is a signal that the White House is preparing for more Russia-related legal work.

The president’s legal team, like the rest of the White House, has been bedeviled by drama and infighting. They have been forced to work in an awkward, tripartite structure divided between McGahn, Cobb, and John Dowd, a veteran Washington lawyer serving as the president’s personal attorney, and their interests and advice have often clashed.

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Cobb has complained loudly – and, apparently, publicly – about what he perceives to be McGahn’s lack of transparency with regard to Mueller’s investigation, citing in particular a set of documents locked away in a safe, according to a conversation first reported by the New York Times on Monday. Cobb, who has argued the president has nothing to hide, has pushed the president to turn over as many documents as possible.

Before joining the administration, Groves worked as a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and as senior counsel to the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, investigated the U.N.’s oil-for-food scandal.

