The White House announced Saturday the appointment of Washington lawyer Ty Cobb as special counsel, after reports that President Trump’s advisors were looking to beef up the in-house team defending him in the growing Russia scandal.
Cobb is a partner in the investigations practice of Hogan Lovells, a white collar D.C. law firm. His hiring was first reported by Bloomberg Friday.
He joins the White House’s team of lawyers after a particularly tumultuous week of the ongoing allegations of ties between Russia and Trump-connected figures during the 2016 campaign. A week ago it was revealed the Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. met with Kremlin-aligned figures in June 2016—a meeting attended by then-campaign chair Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and a top adviser.
The White House was reportedly blindsided by the revelations. The initial response from Donald Trump Jr. was undermined by Don Jr.’s own emails leading up to the meeting. The younger Trump posted the emails on Twitter as the New York Times was about to report them. They revealed that Don Jr. knew the figures he was meeting with had ties to the Russian government and that he was expecting them to offer damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
Hope Mr. Cobb has a good “glove” for Presidential tweets. He’ll need it.
I’m not sure Ty Cobb can hit it out of the park with a White House full of forced errors. Unless he’s pretty good at umpiring a bad game, this won’t make a difference.
If Mr. Cobb doesn’t secure Dear Leaker’s Tweetie machine, the Trumpire is toast.
“Ty Cobb wanted to play, but none of us could stand the son-of-a-bitch when we were alive, so we told him to stick it!”
He should be a good replacement for Jamie Gorelick, who resigned from Kushner’s team. Hope you got the bucks up front, Jamie!
(BTW, when your high-powered, high-profile, high-dollar lawyer quits, it’s probably a sign that you don’t have any defense, even a crappy one.)