CNN’s Toobin: Adding Clinton impeachment lawyer increases odds Trump fires Mueller

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said the chances of President Trump firing special counsel Robert Mueller “increased with the arrival” of Emmet Flood, who once represented former President Clinton during his impeachment proceedings.

The comments come after the White House announced that White House lawyer Ty Cobb will retire at the end of the month.

Cobb will be replaced by Flood, a veteran Washington attorney who is expected to be more aggressive with Mueller than Cobb reportedly was while advising the president.

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CNN’s Jim Sciutto, filling in for Jake Tapper on “The Lead,” asked Toobin if Trump would entertain the idea of firing Mueller again now that many of his attorneys have left, including Cobb and the president’s former personal counsel Jim Dowd, who resigned in March.

“Some of his lawyers, including many who have now walked out of the door, have counseled the president not to fire Robert Mueller and the Deputy [Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein,” noted Sciutto. “In these words here, particularly as he has more of a pitbull kind of legal team around him now, do you think that possibility is alive again?”

“It is no question that it’s increased,” Toobin said. “Remember, Emmet Flood is from [D.C. law firm] Williams & Connolly … a famously aggressive law firm.”

“Whether they will fire Mueller or Rosenstein, I don’t know, but certainly the chances increased with his arrival,” Toobin said later in the interview.

There was wide speculation that the president was contemplating hiring Flood, who also served as special counsel in the George W. Bush administration, as recently as almost two months ago. Flood represented Clinton during his impeachment crisis in 1998-99.

But the president staunchly denied any changes were coming to his legal team in a March 11 tweet.

“The Failing New York Times purposely wrote a false story stating that I am unhappy with my legal team on the Russia case and am going to add another lawyer to help out. Wrong. I am VERY happy with my lawyers, John Dowd, Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow. They are doing a great job,” he tweeted to his more than 51 million followers.

The Failing New York Times purposely wrote a false story stating that I am unhappy with my legal team on the Russia case and am going to add another lawyer to help out. Wrong. I am VERY happy with my lawyers, John Dowd, Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow. They are doing a great job and…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2018

The Mueller investigation began in May 2017 shortly after the president fired FBI Director James Comey. He is tasked with looking into Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election, and has scrutinized Trump and his associates as part of that probe.