Conservatives who are hoping that Democrats will stop investigating President Trump may have to wait for a long, long time, according to former White House attorney Ty Cobb.
Cobb predicted there will be no end to Democratic desire to investigate President Trump, his alleged collusion with Russia and alleged missteps in his financial records. The investigative effort will easily run into 2020 and beyond, Cobb predicted on the latest episode of ABC News’ podcast “The Investigation.”
Cobb, who previously represented the White House against the Mueller investigation, commended the Mueller investigation and defended his investigative effort.
“I don’t feel the investigation is a witch hunt,” he said on the podcast. He also called Mueller “an American hero.”
Here’s more, from ABC News:
But as Mueller prepares to convey his findings to the U.S. Attorney General, Cobb maintains a belief that his report will spare the president from any serious political harm. Cobb said he believes Mueller has already revealed the bulk of the findings that the investigation will produce through the sentencing memos and “speaking indictments” issued against a group of 34 defendants that include Russian hackers and the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. A so-called speaking indictment sets forth more contextual details on a case than is required by law.
The indictment against the Russian hackers was “highly detailed,” he said. “And there’s no link to Trump or the campaign. The same thing with Manafort — they just filed an 800-page sentencing memorandum, and in 800 pages there’s no reference to collusion,” Cobb said, referring to Manafort, who was convicted last year of tax and bank fraud charges and pleaded guilty in a separate case to conspiracy charges brought by Mueller as part of his probe.
According to the report, Cobb joined the White House legal team during the early months of Trump’s presidency.
Therein, Cobb said he was there to serve “the presidency,” not specifically Trump.
Cobb clarified, “My legal obligations were to the institution.” This slight but significant difference eventual led to Cobb’s decision to leave the administration., ABC News reports:
In that role, he said he often endorsed a different strategy than more combative lawyers in Trump’s corner. And over time, he said his view of the probe has diverged from some of his former colleagues on the case. John Dowd, another veteran defense attorney on Trump’s team, told “The Investigation” podcast recently that he considered the special counsel probe “one of the greatest frauds this country’s ever seen.”
“Yeah. I don’t share that view,” Cobb said.
“I think Bob Mueller’s an American hero … even though he came from an, arguably, privileged background, he has a backbone of steel. He walked into a firefight in Vietnam to pull out one of his injured colleagues and was appropriately honored for that. I’ve known him for 30 years as a prosecutor and a friend. And I think the world of Bob Mueller. He is a very deliberate guy. But he’s also a class act. And a very justice-oriented person.”
And:
Those differing strategies ultimately drove a wedge between Cobb on one side, and on the other Dowd and Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani — as the president gravitated towards a more combative approach. Cobb left the White House after ten months.
“In my first nine-and-a-half months … I was able to prevent the president from going on the attack against Mueller,” Cobb said. “It wasn’t really until Dowd sent out a critical tweet of Mueller and Rudy joined the team that the president felt unleashed.”
After getting a first-hand perspective of the investigation and the combative efforts of Trump’s legal team, Cobb predicted the investigation will “never” end.
“But it’s never going to be over,” Cobb contended. “I mean, this is going to go through 2020. And if the president is reelected, it’ll go beyond that.”