The redemption tour starts for some...

Former White House lawyer Ty Cobb calls Mueller 'an American hero'

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO

One of President Donald Trump’s former White House lawyers said this week that special counsel Robert Mueller is an "American hero" and that the probe he is leading is not a "witch hunt," rejecting the president's repeated characterizations of the Russia investigation and the man leading it.

In an interview on ABC News’s “The Investigation” podcast published Tuesday, Ty Cobb disputed many of the president’s complaints about Mueller and his team, chiefly that Mueller’s examination of the 2016 election and Trump’s possible obstruction of justice was a "witch hunt," as the president has claimed.

“I don’t feel the investigation is a witch hunt,” Cobb said, though he conceded that he wished the investigation “had happened on a quicker time frame” through no fault of Mueller’s own.

Cobb, who joined the White House months after Mueller was appointed special counsel in 2017 and left last May, had nothing but praise for the former FBI director who Trump derides on a regular basis.

Citing Mueller’s status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran, Cobb called Mueller a friend who was “an American hero” with a “backbone of steel.” The former White House lawyer said he had known Mueller for three decades.

“I think the world of Bob Mueller,” he said, adding that he believed Mueller to be a “very justice oriented person.”

Cobb also offered his predictions for Mueller’s much-anticipated report on the Russia probe, now approaching its second anniversary. Mueller is reported to be close to announcing the completion of the investigation, at which point he would submit his findings to Attorney General William Barr for dissemination to Congress and potentially the public.

While Cobb said “it’s conceivable” Mueller’s report will contain new revelations, he predicted that it’s more likely the report will not, speculating that it would be “shorter rather than longer” because of Mueller’s level of detail in sentencing memos and so-called speaking indictments throughout the investigation.

He also asserted that at least on the matter of Russian collusion, Trump would likely be exonerated.

Citing Mueller’s “highly detailed” indictment of three dozen Russian hackers and an 800-page long sentencing memorandum for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, he said “there’s just no link to Trump or the campaign.”

"I don't buy" the notion that Mueller's report will include a silver bullet for Democrats to end Trump's presidency, Cobb said.

The former White House attorney also criticized Trump’s personal lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, for allowing Trump’s attacks on Mueller and his investigation.

“In my first nine months out of 10 and a half, I was able to prevent the president from going on the attack against Mueller,” he said, noting that Trump’s choice to begin launching personal attacks against the special counsel coincided with Giuliani’s addition to the president’s personal legal team.

Cobb suggested Trump was justified in his frustration over the effect Mueller's investigation was having on how he conducts the duties of the office.

But he also offered a word of warning for the president, who is visibly itching for the investigations into his administration to end: “It's never gonna be over," he said, pointing to congressional Democrats who have aggressively pursued further investigations. "This will go through 2020. And if the president's reelected, it'll go beyond that.”