Donald Trump’s new hire of attorney Emmet Flood has already backfired on him
At the same time Ty Cobb announced he was quitting Donald Trump’s legal team in the Russia scandal today, Trump announced the hire of new attorney Emmet Flood. This might have been a good move, considering that Flood is capable and widely respected, if not for the fact that Trump has already found a way to blow it.
Ty Cobb was never actually Donald Trump’s attorney. Trump decided to save a buck by putting him on the White House payroll, meaning that Cobb represented the White House and not Trump. This meant Cobb and Trump never had attorney-client privilege. In turn, this means that whatever Trump may have confessed to Cobb, Robert Mueller can legally compel Cobb to testify about it. Trump only seemed to be keeping Cobb on the payroll to try to keep him loyal, and his resignation today suggests that he has no intention of violating the law for Trump’s sake. We suspect this is why Trump exploded on Twitter just as Cobb resigned. So did Trump learn his lesson with Flood?
As it turns out, no. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced today that Emmet Flood will also be on the White House payroll. This means that Flood will not really be Trump’s attorney, and that Trump and Flood will have no attorney-client privilege. In other words, Trump is setting himself up for the same nightmare that he already has with Cobb.
So why does Donald Trump keep doing this to himself? One theory is that he’s too arrogant and oblivious to listen or understand it when people have tried to explain to him that he has no attorney-client privilege with people on the White House payroll. Another theory is that because he’s so obviously broke, he can’t afford to pay high priced attorneys like Cobb and Flood out of pocket, so he has no choice.
