White House lawyer Emmet Flood will be leaving his post June 14th, President Trump tweeted Saturday. The move came shortly after Robert Mueller announced the closure of the special counsel’s office.
In his tweet, Mr. Trump called Flood a “friend” and commended his work representing the president. Flood was hired in May 2018 to replace Ty Cobb and has previously represented former President Clinton during his impeachment process. An official White House statement released at the time described Flood as representing Mr. Trump in “the Russia witch hunt.”
Mr. Trump maintains that there had been no collusion between his 2016 presidential campaign and that there were no findings of obstruction of justice. Flood echoed the president’s statements in an April 2019 letter blasting Mueller, claiming Mueller made “political statements” and mishandled obstruction of justice allegations.
In the letter, which he sent to Attorney General William Barr, Flood said the investigation “placed a cloud over the presidency that has only begun to lift in recent weeks.”
“The inverted burden of proof knowingly embedded in the [special counsel office’s] conclusion shows that the special counsel and his staff failed in their duty to act as prosecutors and only as prosecutors,” Flood wrote.
Muller said at a press conference Wednesday that “if we had confidence that the president did not clearly commit a crime, we would have said so.”
Mueller’s report listed 10 instances of potential obstruction, but made no determination on the matter. After receiving Mueller’s report, Barr publicly decided the evidence was insufficient to show the president obstructed justice.
