In a tweet Saturday, President Donald Trump announced that Emmet Flood, the special counsel to the President who served as interim White House counsel, will be “leaving service” in mid-June
Emmet Flood, who came to the White House to help me with the Mueller Report, will be leaving service on June 14th. He has done an outstanding job – NO COLLUSION – NO OBSTRUCTION! Case Closed! Emmet is my friend, and I thank him for the GREAT JOB he has done.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 1, 2019
Flood, a well-connected D.C. lawyer, was first hired as a White House lawyer in mid-2018 to deal with the then-ongoing Mueller probe, picking up where Ty Cobb left off. As interim counsel, Flood replaced Don McGahn in October 2018 and was replaced by Pat Cipollone that December.
Flood had previously worked on then-President Bill Clinton’s legal team and in the George W. Bush White House in 2007.
In an April letter responding to special counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted final report, Flood attacked Mueller’s probe for not reaching a final prosecution or declination decision regarding potential obstruction of justice charges against the President.
Mueller, who noted in his report that an existing Justice Department memo precluded the prosecution of a sitting president, found instead that he could not “exonerate” the President.
Flood wrote that Mueller “produced a prosecutorial curiosity — part ‘truth commission’ report and part law school exam paper.”
