Trump’s lawyers are clashing over how to handle the Russia probe

President Donald Trump’s personal defense lawyers are apparently butting heads with the White House counsel as FBI special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia heats up.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that Ty Cobb, the white collar criminal defense attorney leading Trump’s outside legal team, has sparred with White House counsel Don McGahn over how much to cooperate with Mueller’s probe.

During lunch last week with fellow Trump attorney John Dowd, Cobb reportedly called another White House lawyer a “McGahn spy” and said McGahn had “a couple of documents locked in a safe” that it appeared Cobb wanted access to. A Times reporter sitting nearby overheard the conversation.

Cobb was explaining to Dowd that he wanted as many documents as possible to be turned over to Mueller, according to the Times, in order to speed up the investigation. McGahn, on the other hand, has resisted being too forthcoming because he thinks Trump will be able to assert executive privilege over many of their interactions.

It is unclear which “douments locked in a safe” Cobb wants access to. But one of them could be the original draft of a letter Trump wrote in May with his adviser Stephen Miller outlining his reasons for wanting former FBI Director James Comey fired. McGahn heavily edited the letter, which he reportedly thought would be legally problematic, before sending it to the DOJ. It was ultimately never sent to Comey.

The advice McGahn gave to Trump about that letter – and the original draft, if it hasn’t been handed over already -may prove pivotal in the obstruction of justice case that Mueller is building against the president.

“If he said anything along the lines of, ‘There’s potential criminal liability if you shut down this investigation,’ that would be extraordinarily powerful evidence against Trump,” said former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti.

Mueller’s team wants to interview McGahn and a handful of other White House staffers, but before fully cooperating with investigators, McGahn reportedly wants Cobb to tell him whether Trump is planning on exerting executive or attorney-client privilege over their communications, so he can establish which details he can divulge and which he cannot.

If McGahn is called to testify before a federal grand jury, however, his conversations with Trump may not be protected by attorney-client privilege.

A federal court of appeals ruled in 1998, at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, that deputy White House counsel Bruce Lindsey had to submit to the special prosecutor’s questions about President Bill Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky. In that case, the court held that there is no attorney-client privilege between a government lawyer and a government employee in response to a grand jury inquiry.

A pattern of indiscretion

At the Washington, DC restaurant, Cobb also blamed another colleague for “some of those earlier leaks” and for trying to oust Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law. Kushner is also a subject in the Russia investigation, and Trump’s lawyers mulled over the possibility of urging him to leave the White House earlier this year amid concerns over his Russia ties.

After the Times contacted the White House over Cobb’s conversation, McGahn reportedly “erupted” at Trump’s lawyer, and chief of staff John Kelly criticized Cobb for his indiscretion, according to people familiar with the matter.

This is not the first time Cobb has invited scrutiny in recent weeks.

After Business Insider reached out to Cobb asking follow up questions after he criticized an earlier article about Mueller’s obstruction of justice investigation, he asked the reporter if she was “on drugs.”

In a later exchange with amateur Trump-Russia sleuth Jeff Jetton, Cobb defended his decision to join Trump’s legal team and appeared to refer to himself and White House chief of staff John Kelly as the “adults in the room.”

Cobb also mentioned the Russia investigation – which he called “bulls—” that “is totally political limiting Russian cooperation against” North Korea – and said he “walked away from $4 million annually” to join Trump’s legal team.

The next day, Business Insider reported that Cobb engaged in a lengthy email exchange with a prankster posing as White House social media director Dan Scavino, during which Cobb asked whether there was “any drone time left” when discussing a Business Insider reporter he described as “insane.”

Cobb did not respond to a request for comment on this story.