Trump finally got a top-notch lawyer. How long will he last?

Trump finally got a top-notch lawyer

The early departure of Ty Cobb from President Trump’s legal team initially seemed like more bad news for the president’s long-troubled efforts to build a first-rate operation to go toe to toe with Robert Mueller. But that swiftly turned around with the news that Cobb will be replaced by Emmet T. Flood, a political legal star with experience handling, among other things, Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

• An impressive résumé: While Trump often seems to hire people based on how they perform on television, Flood has a low media profile and an impressive legal résumé. He graduated Yale Law School in 1991, clerked for Second Circuit Judge Ralph Winters and then Antonin Scalia, and later joined Clinton’s legal team. He worked in the White House counsel’s office under George W. Bush and later represented Vice President Dick Cheney in a civil suit related to the Valerie Plame matter, then Hillary Clinton in the email inquiry.
• No more Mr. Nice Trump: Cobb was known as the voice in favor of conciliation and cooperation with Mueller, essentially playing good cop to the bad cop of Trump’s Twitter feed. Flood is a well-regarded professional who probably won’t say wild and crazy things, but he’s been a part of a lot of teams that have taken tough uncooperative stances.
• What’s next? The larger context is that Flood is joining the team at a time when talks between Mueller and Trump for an interview have broken down. The Trump-Russia investigation has thus far proceeded with remarkably little procedural wrangling, but that may be about to change as Mueller starts pressing for evidence the White House doesn’t want to hand over.