Adios.



John Dowd’s time at Camp Runamuck has ended. From The New York Times:



Mr. Dowd, who took over the president’s legal team last summer, had considered leaving several times in recent months and ultimately concluded that Mr. Trump was increasingly ignoring his advice, one of the people said. Under Mr. Dowd’s leadership, Mr. Trump’s lawyers had advised him to cooperate with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russia’s election interference and possible ties to Trump associates as well as whether the president obstructed the inquiry.

Those of us who remember that Dowd was the legal point man on the late Bart Giamatti’s endless pursuit of Pete Rose always thought Dowd was a crazy-assed choice for this particular gig. Of course, with the possible exception of Crazy Guggenheim, it’s hard to think of anyone who might be suited to handling this particular client.

It is not clear who will run the team in his place. Mr. Trump’s other personal lawyer for the investigation, Jay Sekulow, is liked by the president and recently brought on one of his longtime friends, Joseph E. diGenova, to join the team. Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer for the investigation, came aboard around the same time as Mr. Dowd and Mr. Sekulow and advocated on behalf of cooperating with the special counsel. But the president has discussed with close associates in recent days whether to fire Mr. Cobb, while reassuring Mr. Cobb that he had no plans to do so.

If Cobb isn’t surreptitiously slipping his valuables out of his White House office by now, he’s not as sharp as he should be. Eventually, the president*’s legal team is going to consist entirely of people who have appeared before Judge Jeannine Pirro.

(It is pretty cool that Pete Rose’s pursuer and a guy named Ty Cobb both may be out of their jobs fairly soon. Supreme Court Justice Napoleon Lajoie can’t be far off.)

It’s hard to imagine why Dowd would have become so fed up with a client who spent the morning trying to arrange the Senior Tour World Boxing Championships.

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy. Actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically, and yet he threatens me, for the second time, with physical assault. He doesn’t know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way. Don’t threaten people Joe! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2018

In truth, Biden should have stayed away from the whole Let’s Step Outside crapola in which he indulged himself earlier, but the president*’s response was a perfect indication of why he can’t seem to keep a lawyer to keep him from immolating himself before Bob Mueller gets around to doing it. This is why John Dowd is returning to the obscurity from which he emerged. Back when he was chasing Charlie Hustle, Dowd made this point about gambling in his final report:

The secret gambling enterprise is typically exposed only when a participant is apprehended and begins to cooperate with the authorities. The difficulty for the investigator lies in the gathering of corroborative evidence. The gambling enterprise is designed to leave few tracks and, upon exposure, to provide alibis to the participants.

You don’t say.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io