Former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb says Robert Mueller is "an American hero" and the special counsel's investigation is not a hoax.
“I don't feel the same way about Mueller,” Cobb said in an extensive interview for the latest episode of ABC News' podcast The Investigation. “I don't feel the investigation is a witch hunt.”
Until his retirement in May, he was the main point of contact for Congressional investigators and Mueller, whom he has known for years.
Cobb's personal belief is that Mueller's report will not implicate the president.
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.
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Unlike some of the other attorneys hired to grapple with the Mueller probe, Cobb’s client was not the president, but “the presidency,” which he considered a subtle but important distinction.
“My legal obligations were to the institution,” he said.
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.”
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“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.”
Cobb said Trump’s approach shifted in part because he was growing increasingly frustrated by the way the investigation was eating into his presidency, particularly as he sought to pursue a foreign policy agenda. For a time, the instinct of the president’s lawyers was to try and persuade him that the investigations would soon be over, Cobb said.
“But it's never going to be over,” Cobb said. “I mean, this is going to go through 2020. And if the president is reelected, it'll go beyond that.”
Former Trump White House lawyer calls Mueller 'American hero,' says probe is no witch hunt (ABC News)