Former Trump lawyer calls Mueller 'an American hero,' says the investigations are 'never going to be over'

Ty Cobb, the lawyer who represented the Trump presidency during a critical 10 months of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, says he doesn't agree with President Trump and his personal lawyers that Mueller's Russia inquiry is a politically motivated hoax.

"I don't feel the investigation is a witch hunt," Cobb told the ABC News podcast The Investigation, released Tuesday. Trump was on board with his strategy of cooperating with Mueller, he said, at least "in my first nine-and-a-half months," when "I was able to prevent the president from going on the attack against Mueller." It was when Trump lawyer John Dowd "sent out a critical tweet of Mueller and Rudy [Giuliani] joined the team that the president felt unleashed," Cobb said.

Cobb thinks Mueller will submit his final report "no later than mid-March," he said, but the investigations won't end there. Trump has "found this very frustrating," he continued. "It's particularly frustrated him in foreign affairs. He doesn't like the timing. He, you know, wants this over. But it's never gonna be over. I mean, this is going to go through 2020. And if the president is reelected, it'll go beyond that."

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Calling Mueller's an investigation a "witch hunt" has "been effective in a way," as Trump and Giuliani "have ratcheted up the public's concerns about the investigation and its legitimacy," Cobb argued. "I object to that approach. But it's his choice. He's the president."

For his own part, he said, "I never had a bad interaction with Mueller or his staff." And in fact, "I think Bob Mueller's an American hero. ... I've known him for 30 years as a prosecutor and a friend. And I think the world of Bob Mueller. He is a very deliberate guy. But he's also a class act. And a very justice-oriented person." You can listen to the podcast below. Peter Weber