President Donald Trump, or any other commander in chief, can't be found guilty of obstructing justice because the Constitution says so, according to one of Trump’s top lawyers. 
 
 John Dowd, among several attorneys representing the president, told Axios that the Constitution makes Trump the nation's top cop, so by definition the president "cannot obstruct justice, because he is the chief law enforcement officer," Dowd said. He added that Trump "has every right to express his view of any case." 
 
 The latter comment refers to Trump's tweets dismissing special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 election. Most recently, Michael Flynn, the president's former national security adviser and campaign aide, pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI, and one day later, Trump's Twitter account posted a comment that could help bolster a case of obstruction: 
 
 “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!” Trump posted, the first time he suggested he knew Flynn lied to investigators. 
 
 The tweet could be seen as evidence of obstruction of justice because Trump later reportedly asked then-FBI Director James Comey to “let” the Flynn thing “go." 
 
 Dowd said that he wrote the tweet. Not that it matters, because the president can't be found guilty of obstruction, the lawyer claims. 
 
 It’s not clear which section of the Constitution's Article II Dowd was referencing, though Section Two does read: “ The president] may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices.” 
 
 Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now 
 
 But according to Dowd, the tweet was the furthest thing from an admission of guilt or obstruction. 
 
 "The tweet did not admit obstruction. That is an ignorant and arrogant assertion,” Dowd told Axios. 
 
 Dowd’s comments hark back to former President Richard Nixon’s defense of his actions in office. Nixon, who resigned in August 1974 before he could be impeached, famously said during his interviews with British journalist David Frost in 1977 that “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” 
 
 REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan 
 
 In Nixon’s case, he was talking about the cover-up in the Watergate scandal, while Trump’s case involves the president’s powers over the Justice Department. Trump lamented in November that the “saddest thing” about being president is that he is “not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department” and the “FBI.” 
 
 Trump then asked why the Justice Department was not going after his former presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton, and her private email server scandal. He also wondered why the department was not investigating Clinton’s campaign for hiring the company that created the infamous Trump-Russia dossier that has dogged Trump’s first year in office. ||||| Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team of a dozen-plus lawyers and investigators have proven stealthy in their wide-ranging Russia probe. They have surprised the White House with one indictment after another, and summoned President Trump's confidants for lengthy interviews. In the case of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort alone, court filings show, they have collected more than 400,000 documents and 36 electronic devices. 
 
 Mueller and his deputies are, in the fearful word of some Trump loyalists, "killers." 
 
 Trump's response, by contrast, is being directed by John M. Dowd, the president's personal lawyer retired from a large firm who works essentially as a one-man band, and Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer who works out of a small office in the West Wing basement, near the cafeteria where staffers get lunch. 
 
 Dowd and Cobb, along with attorney Jay Sekulow, serve not only as Trump's lawyers but also as his strategists, publicists, therapists and — based on Dowd's claim that he wrote a controversial presidential tweet — ghostwriters. 
 
 When Mueller requests documents, they provide them. When Trump reacts to new twists in the Russia saga, they seek to calm him down. When he has questions about the law, such as the Logan Act or Magnitsky Act, they explain it. And when the president frets that Mueller may be getting too close to him, they assure him he has done nothing wrong, urge him to resist attacking the special counsel and insist that the investigation is wrapping up — first, they said, by Thanksgiving, then by Christmas and now by early next year. 
 
 As lawyers for the world's highest-profile client, Dowd and Cobb have come under scrutiny for their every move and utterance — and the criticism has been harsh. 
 
 Many in the Washington legal community chide them as being indiscreet, error-prone and outmatched. They say public blunders — such as Dowd and Cobb casually chatting about their legal strategy on the patio of a downtown Washington steakhouse in September within earshot of a reporter — suggest a lack of discipline. 
 
 Critics also question why, seven months into Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, they have not assembled a battalion of lawyers as President Bill Clinton had when he was being investigated by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr. And some Trump loyalists, spoiling for a fight, say the president's lawyers should be combative rather than cooperative with Mueller. 
 
 "There certainly have been gaffes," said Alan Dershowitz, a criminal defense attorney and Harvard Law School professor who has won praise from Trump for his television appearances defending a president's constitutional prerogative to fire his FBI director. 
 
 "These are not the kinds of things that one would expect from the most powerful man in America, who has a choice of anybody to be his defense counsel," Dershowitz said. "Well — almost anybody," he added, saying that he is not interested in the job. 
 
 [Trump’s legal team faces tensions — and a client who often takes his own counsel] 
 
 
 
 Lawyer Ty Cobb, left, in 2004 and Jay Sekulow, in 2015. The two, along with John Dowd, are representing President Trump in the Russia probe, serving as his strategists, publicists and therapists. (AP photos/AP photos) 
 
 This portrait of Trump's legal team and defense strategy is based on interviews with more than two dozen White House officials, lawyers and other people connected to the Russia probe, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. 
 
 The chorus of criticism may be growing louder, but Trump is not singing along. By most accounts, the president is satisfied with his representation — and talks to Cobb several times a day — though advisers say he has occasionally discussed bringing on new lawyers. 
 
 Trump, 71, connects with Dowd, 76, and Cobb, in his mid-60s, as contemporaries. He appreciates their no-nonsense old-school style, and likes that neither appears on television, believing their absence from the airwaves deprives what he calls the Russia "witch hunt" of oxygen, according to Trump's advisers. 
 
 A former Marine Corps captain, Dowd has a gruff demeanor and has proven able at times to cool Trump's temper and convince him of the virtues of pragmatism over pugnacity, aides said. 
 
 Some Trump advisers dismiss Cobb's predictions that the Mueller probe is nearing its conclusions as misleading happy talk, but the president has internalized it as reality. One reason for Trump's faith is his belief that his lawyers are plugged in. Cobb tells him he is in frequent, and sometimes daily, contact with the special counsel's office, according to people familiar with the dynamic. 
 
 Over Thanksgiving at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Trump boasted to friends that Cobb was "brilliant" and that he was certain Mueller would soon exonerate him. 
 
 Cobb declined to comment, and Dowd responded to an email inquiry with two words: "No, thanks." 
 
 White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, "The president is happy with his legal team." 
 
 Cobb works as a White House lawyer whose salary is paid by the government, and his duty is to the office of the presidency, whereas Dowd and Sekulow are employed by Trump and represent him personally. Dowd and Sekulow enjoy attorney-client privilege, but Cobb does not — meaning that Mueller could seek access to Cobb's notes or ask to interview him about his interactions with the president. 
 
 [Trump lawyer John Dowd brought down Pete Rose. Almost 30 years later, they’re still fighting.] 
 
 Mark Corallo, a Justice Department official under President George W. Bush, served as spokesman for Trump's legal team earlier this year. Corallo is no longer involved, but he praised Dowd and Cobb as "titans." 
 
 "They've been at the top of their profession and were on the shortlist of the top 10 attorneys you would call if you got your knickers in a twist," Corallo said. He added, "One thing I like is Cobb and Dowd are of the same generation as the president. They are contemporaries. There is a comfort that comes with being able to talk with somebody who shares your experience in the world." 
 
 Still, there have been moments of tension. Last Tuesday, anxiety ran high early in the morning because of a report out of Germany that Mueller's office had subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for records related to the transactions of Trump and people close to him. 
 
 Trump was unnerved, but his lawyers tried to soothe his irritation and scrambled to determine whether the report was accurate, aware that if Mueller were digging into Trump's finances, he would be crossing a red line the president had publicly set, according to three people familiar with the discussions. After the lawyers consulted with the special counsel's office, Sekulow issued a statement that afternoon saying that Trump's team had confirmed there was no subpoena for Trump's records. 
 
 The Trump administration's key people in the Russia investigation — including the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., and son-in-law, Jared Kushner — are represented by different attorneys. But some of the various lawyers, along with Dowd and Cobb, cooperate by sharing information on regular conference calls about questions their clients have been asked and documents they have turned over. 
 
 Witnesses in Mueller's probe and their lawyers have reported back to Cobb and Dowd that the special counsel's team has asked detailed questions about Trump's May firing of James B. Comey as FBI director, leading them to believe that Mueller may be gathering evidence of obstruction of justice, according to one witness. 
 
 But Cobb and Dowd have told Trump he has no vulnerability, officials said. Dowd went so far as to posit last week to Axios that a president cannot obstruct justice because of his constitutional powers as the chief law enforcement officer — an interpretation that was mocked by some legal scholars. 
 
 [A bold new legal defense for Trump: Presidents cannot obstruct justice] 
 
 On Dec. 2, Trump tweeted that he fired Michael Flynn as national security adviser in part because he had lied to the FBI — an admission that could become evidence in an obstruction investigation. Dowd claimed he drafted the tweet, and fellow lawyers privately said they could not believe a statement so careless was written not by the impulsive president but by his lawyer. 
 
 One of Trump's advisers told the president that weekend: "The first job of a lawyer is to shut up. The second job of a lawyer is to keep their client's mouth shut. I don't know why they're tweeting and talking and trying to explain the tweet," according to someone with knowledge of the conversation. 
 
 People close to the Trump legal team argue that additional lawyers could result in a more proactive and careful approach. "It's amazing the stress and magnitude of representing the president of the United States," said one person familiar with the inner workings. "You'd have to be super human to do it alone. You've got 16 of the best lawyers in the country going up against you." 
 
 For Trump, being under the glare of a legal investigation is familiar territory. A real estate developer and reality-television star before becoming a politician, he has spent much of his professional life enmeshed in litigation. 
 
 When Mueller's Russia investigation began in May, Trump hired as his lead attorney Marc Kasowitz, a litigator from New York with a brawler reputation who had represented Trump and his companies off and on for years in divorce, bankruptcy and other proceedings. 
 
 In the early weeks of the Mueller probe, the hard-charging Kasowitz would scurry in and out of the Oval Office and the adjoining dining room in what aides described as a running — and at times frenzied — commentary with Trump about all things Russia. 
 
 But Kasowitz had scant experience in Washington and with investigations like Mueller's. After he caused a kerfuffle by sending an expletive-laced and disparaging email to a stranger who had criticized him, Kasowitz departed the Russia legal team. He continues to represent Trump in some other matters. 
 
 [When Trump goes looking for a media brawl, this feared lawyer steps in] 
 
 Trump tried to hire or has considered hiring more than a half dozen top litigators to help manage the Russia probe, including William A. Burck, Mark Filip, Emmet Flood, Robert J. Giuffra, Ted B. Olson and Brendan V. Sullivan Jr., according to several people with knowledge of the president's deliberations. For various reasons, none took the job. 
 
 "If you're the president of the United States, typically the top lawyers are lining up to pitch you," said one person close to the White House and familiar with the legal team's dynamics. "Here, you have the opposite." 
 
 Bob Bauer, who was President Barack Obama's White House counsel, said in assessing the Trump legal team: "Some people may want to blame the lawyers, but my principal question is, 'How do you represent a client like Trump?' And at what point do these lawyers decide they're so hemmed in, so compromised by his behavior, his impulses, his tweets, that they just can't represent him effectively?" 
 
 The face of the legal team has been Sekulow, who has deep ties to the Christian right, though he has adopted a lower profile since the spring and summer when he was a frequent television presence. 
 
 Cobb, who had been a partner at Hogan Lovells, enjoys a reputation as a seasoned white-collar advocate whose last high-stakes legal case involving Washington politics was in the 1990s. Dowd has been a higher-profile criminal defender and represented Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during a 1990 ethics investigation into whether McCain had improperly intervened in a savings and loan probe. He is perhaps best known for representing the commissioner of baseball in the late 1980s and producing the "Dowd Report," a document that resulted in Pete Rose's lifetime suspension from the sport. 
 
 Dowd was widely perceived by other lawyers to be in the twilight of his career, having formally retired in 2015 from Akin Gump, where he had worked since 1990. 
 
 Dowd lost one of his most recent big cases when his client, hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, was convicted in 2011 on insider trading charges in New York. Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney prosecuting Rajaratnam, reflected on facing Dowd in that trial in an episode last week of his podcast, "Stay Tuned with Preet." 
 
 "John Dowd said a lot of — how shall I put it? — ludicrous, silly things," said Bharara, who was fired as U.S. attorney two months into the Trump administration. 
 
 At one point, Dowd was filmed swearing at and flashing his middle finger at reporters covering the trial. It garnered him unflattering press coverage — but it was the kind of dramatic move that a client like Trump could see as an attribute. 
 
 Sari Horwitz and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report. ||||| WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A series of tweets by U.S. President Donald Trump about the investigation into contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russia prompted concerns on Sunday among both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham saying Trump could be wading into “peril” by commenting on the probe. 
 
 U.S. President Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, before his departure back to Washington, U.S., December 2, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas 
 
 “I would just say this with the president: There’s an ongoing criminal investigation,” Graham said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” 
 
 “You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril,” he added. 
 
 On Sunday morning, Trump wrote on Twitter that he never asked former FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating Michael Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser - a statement at odds with an account Comey himself has given. 
 
 That tweet followed one on Saturday in which Trump said: “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President (Mike Pence) and the FBI.” 
 
 Legal experts and some Democratic lawmakers said if Trump knew Flynn lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and then pressured Comey not to investigate him, that could bolster a charge of obstruction of justice. 
 
 Trump’s attorney, John Dowd, told Reuters in an interview on Sunday that he had drafted the Saturday tweet and made “a mistake” when he composed it. 
 
 “The mistake was I should have put the lying to the FBI in a separate line referencing his plea,” Dowd said. “Instead, I put it together and it made all you guys go crazy. A tweet is a shorthand.” 
 
 Dowd said the first time the president knew for a fact that Flynn lied to the FBI was when he was charged. 
 
 Dowd also clouded the issue by saying that then-Acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates informed White House counsel Don McGahn in January that Flynn told FBI agents the same thing he told Pence, and that McGahn reported his conversation with Yates to Trump. He said Yates did not characterize Flynn’s conduct as a legal violation. 
 
 Part of Yates’ testimony in May before a Senate committee appears to conflict with Dowd’s account. She said at the time that she declined to answer McGahn when he asked how Flynn had done in his FBI interview. Dowd said he stood by his version of events. 
 
 Dowd said it was the first and last time he would craft a tweet for the president. 
 
 “I’ll take responsibility,” he said. “I’m sorry I misled people.” 
 
 Yates did not respond to an email seeking comment, and a lawyer for McGahn did not respond to requests for comment. 
 
 The White House also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 
 
 ‘CONTINUAL TWEETS’ 
 
 The series of tweets came after a dramatic turn of events on Friday in which Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations last December with Russia’s then-ambassador in Washington, Sergei Kislyak, just weeks before Trump entered the White House. 
 
 Flynn also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors delving into contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russia before the president took office. 
 
 Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she believed the indictments in the investigation so far and Trump’s “continual tweets” pointed toward an obstruction of justice case. 
 
 “I see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of Director Comey. And it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation. That’s obstruction of justice,” Feinstein said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” 
 
 “The president knew he (Flynn) had lied to the FBI, which means that when he talked to the FBI director and asked him to effectively drop this case, he knew that Flynn had committed a federal crime,” Adam Schiff, senior Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told the ABC program “This Week.” 
 
 The Russia matter has dogged Trump’s first year in office, and this weekend overshadowed his first big legislative win when the Senate approved a tax bill. 
 
 Flynn was the first member of Trump’s administration to plead guilty to a crime uncovered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election and potential collusion by Trump aides. 
 
 Russia has denied meddling in the election and Trump has said there was no collusion. 
 
 Comey, who had been investigating the Russia allegations, was fired by Trump in May. He told the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in June he believed his dismissal was related to the Russia probe, and said Trump asked him to end the investigation of Flynn. 
 
 “I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!” Trump said on Twitter on Sunday. 
 
 On CBS, Graham criticized Comey, saying he believed the former FBI director made some “very, very wrong” decisions during his tenure. But Graham also said Trump should be careful about his tweets. 
 
 “I’d be careful if I were you, Mr. President. I’d watch this,” Graham said. ||||| It's John Dowd, and not the president, most at risk if a quid pro quo was offered. 
 
 It's John Dowd, and not the president, most at risk if a quid pro quo was offered. 
 
 If John Dowd discussed the possibility of a presidential pardon with lawyers for Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort while Dowd was serving as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, it’s a big deal -- definitely for Dowd, and conceivably for Trump. 
 
 The president has the inherent power to pardon anyone he wants. But doing so with a corrupt reason -- such as saving the president’s skin -- would be obstruction of justice. 
 
 Supposing that Dowd acted after conversations with Trump, the chain of obstruction would lead back to the president. And even if Dowd acted on his own initiative, he himself could be guilty of obstruction of justice. 
 
 Start with an important caveat: This episode is unlikely to lead to Trump’s being impeached or charged with a crime. What we know so far is that someone (or rather three someones) told the New York Times that Dowd discussed the possibility of pardons with lawyers for Flynn, the former national security adviser, and Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, while both were being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller. 
 
 Dowd, who resigned last week as the president’s lead lawyer for Mueller’s investigation, denies the allegations. If they can credibly be shown to be true, they wouldn’t on their own be enough to put Trump in the hot seat. Trump could say that Dowd never discussed the pardons with him. And it would be very difficult to get Dowd to testify against Trump, who was his client at the time. 
 
 Technically, what Dowd may have said to other lawyers outside Trump’s presence isn’t likely to be covered by attorney-client privilege between Dowd and Trump. And if a lawyer and a client together conspire to commit a crime, it’s not impossible for prosecutors to break privilege. In theory, it isn’t totally impossible that Dowd could be made to testify against Trump. 
 
 In reality, however, it would be unusual for prosecutors to flip a criminal defense lawyer against a client -- and all the more so when the client is the U.S. president. 
 
 Practically, then, Dowd’s future is more on the line than Trump’s. If he was waving the possibility of a pardon before Flynn and Manafort in order to induce them not to cooperate with Mueller, then he was corruptly trying to influence and obstruct the course of justice. 
 
 Dowd has defenses available to him other than the denial he has already issued. He could, for example, say that he was not in any way suggesting that Trump would confer a pardon as part of a corrupt deal to stop Flynn and Manafort from cooperating. He could insist that by mentioning the pardon, he was just reviewing possible options. 
 
 There’s something even plausible about that notion: Everyone on earth was speculating about whether Trump might pardon close associates. We know that Trump told then-FBI Director James Comey that Flynn was a good guy. Assuming that Trump meant it, the speculation about a possible pardon was perfectly reasonable. 
 
 There’s no law against telling a potential defendant’s lawyer that his client might ultimately be pardoned. Proving that Dowd was implicitly offering some sort of deal to the lawyers for Flynn and Manafort would be pretty difficult. So while Dowd should be hiring his own lawyer today, he probably doesn’t have to fear for his liberty, at least not yet. 
 
 That’s the thing about obstruction of justice that would operate through the president’s exercise of authority that would otherwise be lawful. It’s not only that there’s a robust debate about whether such activity could legally be prosecuted as a crime. What really matters is that in practice, it would be very hard to prosecute without concrete evidence of corrupt intent like a quid pro quo. 
 
 Of course, obstruction of justice can also be a high crime or misdemeanor for purposes of impeachment, as it was for President Bill Clinton and as it would have been for President Richard Nixon had he not resigned. 
 
 But the president’s lawyer isn’t the president. Dowd can’t be impeached, because he isn’t and wasn’t a public official. Conceivably, he could be pressured to testify in a Senate impeachment trial. 
 
 But there, as in a criminal trial, it would be risky business to force a criminal defense lawyer to testify against his client. The precedent is terrible. And lawyers like to stick together and look out for the interests of their profession. (OK, our profession.) 
 
 The true takeaway from Wednesday’s allegations is that there’s something deeply problematic about a situation in which the president’s personal lawyer was talking to lawyers for the president’s aides -- about anything at all. The president’s power to pardon makes any such conversations into a double-edged sword. 
 
 Even if Dowd never mentioned the pardon and never discussed it with Trump, the mere fact of communication raises the implicit possibility of a deal to protect the president in exchange for a pardon. This is what lawyers mean when they warn that criminal investigation begets more criminal investigation. Regardless of whether Flynn or Manafort have anything useful that they might or might not say to Mueller, the investigation of their conduct is already tainting the president. 
 
 This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. ||||| John Dowd (pictured) had been spearheading negotiations with Special Counsel Robert Mueller for a potential interview with the president, while Jay Sekulow handled public communications. | Richard Dew/AP Photo Trump’s Russia probe lawyer John Dowd resigns The departure comes amid a larger shakeup of the legal team handling the Mueller investigation. 
 
 John Dowd resigned Thursday as President Donald Trump’s lead lawyer for the Russia investigation amid a wider shakeup of Trump’s legal team that raised new questions about Trump’s strategy for dealing with special counsel Robert Mueller. 
 
 Dowd stepped down just days after he issued a statement calling for Mueller’s probe to be shuttered, which he first attributed with his title as the president’s lawyer and then backtracked to say he was speaking only for himself. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 “I love the president and wish him well,” Dowd said in an email to POLITICO. 
 
 Dowd, a prominent Washington white collar defense attorney with a prickly demeanor, signed on as a personal attorney to the president last June and recently had been spearheading negotiations with Mueller for a potential interview with the president. 
 
 But the 77-year old attorney had grown increasingly frustrated by his work for Trump, according to a source familiar with the Trump legal team strategy. Dowd was particularly upset to learn on Monday that Trump had decided to hire Joseph diGenova, another bulldog lawyer and scandal veteran to help with his Russia response. 
 
 Trump had also been gauging interest from other prominent attorneys, including former George W. Bush Solicitor General Ted Olson, who recently turned down an offer from Trump by citing conflicts with his law firm. 
 
 Trump’s legal team has long been riven by a debate about how Trump should handle Mueller’s investigation in both political and legal terms. Dowd had preached a confrontational approach, warning Trump of the risks of speaking to Mueller—at the risk of perjuring himself—and calling in a Saturday morning statement on the Justice Department to “bring an end” to its “manufactured” Russia probe. 
 
 Asked Thursday at a China trade event at the White House whether he was still willing to speak to Mueller, the president responded, “Yes, I would like to.” 
 
 Given the recent addition of the combative diGenova to Trump’s team, it is not clear that Dowd’s departure will substantially impact its overall strategy. 
 
 
 
 Playbook PM Sign up for our must-read newsletter on what's driving the afternoon in Washington. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. 
 
 
 
 Dowd had previously been known best for representing Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the Keating Five Scandal, and for leading a Major League Baseball investigation of gambling allegations surrounding baseball great Pete Rose. 
 
 Jay Sekulow, who has been handling public communications and research on constitutional issues for the Trump legal team, declined on Thursday to answer questions about how the president’s attorneys would be organized going forward. 
 
 “John Dowd has been a valuable member of our legal team and we will continue our ongoing cooperation with the office of special counsel regarding this inquiry,” Sekulow said in a statement to POLITICO. 
 
 Trump’s legal team has seen remarkable flux, particularly given the stakes for a president who could potentially face impeachment or even indictment over allegations that his campaign colluded with the Kremlin and that he has sought to obstruct justice. Trump insists that such charges have been manufactured by political partisans. 
 
 The president originally tapped his longtime personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz to represent him in the Justice Department’s Russia probe, which Mueller has led since shortly after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey last May. 
 
 But the New York-based Kasowitz stepped down last summer amid concerns he wasn’t best positioned to tangle with a Washington scandal. 
 
 While the president continues to speak with Kasowitz, he has mainly relied on Dowd and Sekulow to manage the Russia probe for him as an individual. Washington lawyer Ty Cobb runs the White House’s official response to the investigation with a team of about five aides who draw taxpayer salaries. 
 
 The changes to the Trump legal team are seen as a bad omen for Cobb, who has been urging cooperation with Mueller. In an interview on Wednesday, former Cobb law partner Robert Bennett called for Cobb to resign in order to preserve his professional reputation. 
 
 “I hope my friend Ty Cobb will leave the team. He’s not helping himself or his reputation,” Bennett said. 
 
 Cobb did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 
 
 Trump has recently been frustrated with his lawyers, who had been giving him a steadily changing series of target completion dates for a Mueller probe that has only appeared to widen in recent weeks to include allegations, seemingly unrelated to Russia, that a consultant for the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates worked with a top GOP fundraiser. 
 
 On Saturday, Trump tweeted that “the Mueller probe should never have been started,” insisting that “there was no collusion and there was no crime” and branding the investigation a “WITCH HUNT.” It was the first time Trump had specifically mentioned Mueller by name on Twitter — something his lawyers have counseled him to avoid doing. 
 
 This week he hired diGenova, a fierce critic of the Russia investigation who earlier this year told Fox News that Trump had been framed by the Justice Department and FBI “with a falsely created crime.” 
 
 Trump’s free-wheeling style has worn on his lawyers. He’s ignored their advice to restrain himself on Twitter and disregarded their counsel that he not discuss details of the probe beyond his legal team. 
 
 poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201803/1853/1155968404_5756709788001_5756676647001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true 
 
 Legal experts say those are reasons why Trump has struggled to attract the caliber of lawyer that has historically leapt to represent a sitting president. Olson, Robert Giuffra Jr. and Reid Weingarten were among the elite attorneys who declined job offers from Trump last spring, while former George W. Bush attorneys Bill Burck and Emmet Flood rejected overtures for the position ultimately accepted by Cobb. 
 
 “The notion of saying no to represent the president of the United States is kind of amazing,” said Bennett, a former personal attorney to President Bill Clinton. 
 
 Trump may not be done looking for lawyers. Flood met with the president earlier this month at the White House, though it’s unclear if that has led to a job offer. 
 
 The diGenova hiring came days after Dowd issued a Saturday morning statement calling for Mueller’s work to end. 
 
 “I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier,” Dowd told the Daily Beast, responding to Sessions’ decision the night before to fire Andrew McCabe, the former deputy FBI director. 
 
 Dowd initially said he was speaking in his official capacity as Trump’s lawyer. But he later retracted that statement, telling POLITICO he was commenting in his personal capacity. 
 
 It was one of several instances where Dowd raised eyebrows—and in some cases, drew ridicule—for his public commentary about the Russia probe. 
 
 Last December, Dowd took blame for a tweet posted on Trump’s account that appeared to admit Trump was aware that his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had lied to the FBI before Trump urged Comey to drop the Russia investigation. The tweet puzzled legal experts who said the admission could fuel an obstruction of justice case against Trump. 
 
 Dowd later argued that Trump could not be found guilty of obstruction of justice because of his role as chief executive under the Constitution, an argument that many legal experts disputed. 
 
 Both Dowd and Cobb also were embarrassed last summer after a New York Times reporter overheard them speaking about the Russia investigation at a Washington restaurant. 
 
 Dowd is well-known for his gruff manner, which was on vivid display outside a federal courthouse in 2011 when he told a CNBC camera crew to “get the fuck out of here” before giving the cameraman the middle finger. 
 
 Asked recently by POLITICO to comment on talks between the president’s lawyers and Mueller’s investigators, Dowd was only somewhat friendlier: “None of your business,” he said.
– The Trump attorney who says he penned the "sloppy" tweet that some say indicates a possible obstruction of justice isn't done making headlines. John Dowd spoke to Axios' Mike Allen, scoffing at criticism of the tweet regarding Mike Flynn, which suggested Trump knew the former national security adviser had lied to the FBI before Trump canned James Comey. "The tweet did not admit obstruction," Dowd says. "That is an ignorant and arrogant assertion." Plus, the Constitution has Trump's back, per Dowd. "[The] president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case," he claims. Newsweek notes it's not clear which section of Article II Dowd refers to, though it speculates on one part involving the president seeking the opinion "of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices." Allen notes that with this pronouncement, Trump's legal team is "setting the stage" to keep Trump insulated from obstruction of justice or collusion charges in the Russia probe—meaning, Allen speculates, that his lawyers may be nervous charges are coming down the pike. But one of Barack Obama's former counsels notes "it is certainly possible" for Trump to have obstructed justice, and Allen points out Richard Nixon's Articles of Impeachment were jump-started with the assertion that Nixon "has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice." But whether Trump can or can't be held responsible for such a transgression may be moot, Allen adds. "The one thing everyone agrees on is that the House of Representatives, with its impeachment power, alone decides what is cause for removal from office," he writes. "For now, at least, the House is run by Republicans."