On Tuesday, a White House spokesman insisted that was it. “There are going to be no changes to the White House legal team,” Raj Shah said, a statement that is true only in a legalistic sense, since Dowd headed the president’s team of outside lawyers.

This shows the problem for any lawyer representing Trump: He lies repeatedly, a liability in any client; and furthermore, no lawyer speaking for him can trust that the president won’t undercut or contradict him soon afterward, just as he does to aides.

Dowd is the second personal lawyer for Trump to leave, after Marc Kasowitz, who resigned in July 2017, following ill-advised and vulgar emails to strangers. (Mark Corrallo, a spokesman for Trump’s legal team, left around the same time, and has reportedly spoken to Mueller since.) Dowd is a veteran, successful lawyer, and his appointment was viewed by experts as a step up from Kasowitz, who had represented Trump in New York but had little experience with a complex Washington investigation like Mueller’s.

Dowd did make some notable missteps during his tenure. In addition to the changing attribution of his statement to The Daily Beast about firing Mueller, he was also overheard by a Times reporter speaking loudly about the investigation with Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer, at a steakhouse in Washington. Dowd also claimed responsibility for a tweet from Trump’s account, which seemed to contradict the president’s earlier statements about the firing of National-Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and to some observers implied obstruction of justice by Trump.

Dowd’s most notable publicly known position was his reluctance to have Trump testify to Mueller. While experts think it is unlikely Trump could simply refuse to speak to the special counsel, there are good reasons for the president’s lawyers to be wary of such an encounter, and to seek to find ways to limit the scope of such an interview, whether by topic, length, or format, like submitting written answers. Given the seriousness of the probe and Trump’s difficulty telling the truth, an interview presents a serious legal risk (although as I have reported, Trump tends to be more honest under oath). Negotiations between Trump’s team and Mueller are currently in process, and it’s not yet clear how Dowd’s exit will affect them.

At the end of an event about tariffs on China on Thursday, Trump reiterated his desire to speak with Mueller. “Yes. I would like to,” he said.

While Dowd has lobbied against speaking to Mueller, Trump has pronounced himself eager to be interviewed. This is one possible area for Dowd’s frustration with his erstwhile client, but hardly the only one. Trump speaks often and impulsively about matters that fall under the realm of the investigation, sending lawyers scrambling. He has also taken to speaking to Mueller witnesses about their interviews, a practice frowned upon by defense lawyers.