Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast
President Donald Trump’s lawyer Ty Cobb, who has been overseeing the White House response to the special counsel investigation, is retiring at the end of the month, according to the White House. “For several weeks Ty Cobb has been discussing his retirement and last week he let Chief of Staff Kelly know he would retire at the end of this month,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday. Cobb will be replaced by Emmet Flood, the lawyer who represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment, Sanders said. Flood was reportedly in talks to come aboard Trump’s legal team last summer, but didn’t join because he “did not want to deal with” lawyer Marc Kasowitz, who was leading the legal team through the special counsel investigation at the time, The New York Times reported. Flood, if officially brought on board, could potentially bring a more adversarial tone to the president’s legal approach—differing from Cobb, who wanted Trump to be “cooperative[.]” Flood was a lead lawyer at the White House when George W. Bush dealt with congressional investigations in his second term.