The man likely to take over as the lead White House attorney for Robert Mueller’s Russia probe is no stranger to presidential scandal.
Emmet Flood, who’s expected to fill the retiring Ty Cobb’s role, worked on Bill Clinton’s legal team when Clinton was impeached and then in the final years of George W. Bush’s White House.
The 61-year-old attorney will handle the day-to-day response to special counsel Robert Mueller’s sweeping Russia probe, the New York Times reported.
Flood, who couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday, reportedly interviewed for the White House gig last year, but opted to remain at the Williams & Connolly law firm in Washington, D.C.
The Yale Law School graduate was part of the team defending Clinton when the House of Representatives impeached him in December 1998 on perjury and obstruction of justice charges.
Flood wasn’t at the front of the legal effort, but the Times noted he was present when the Senate deposed longtime Clinton pal and veteran attorney Vernon Jordan.
The Senate acquitted Clinton in February 1999.
Flood later served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s personal attorney when prosecutors indicted Scooter Libby in 2005.
Libby, Cheney’s former adviser, was convicted in 2007 for obstructing a special prosecutor’s investigation into his role in outing CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.
Investigators pressed Cheney for what he knew about Libby’s actions with the undercover agent in 2003. Trump pardoned Libby in April.
Flood officially joined the White House in June 2007, not long after Libby’s conviction, becoming deputy assistant to the President and special counsel to President George W. Bush.
He handled the Bush administration’s responses to 700 Congressional and other probes during his two-year tour at the White House, according to his law firm’s bio.
Among the tensest probes in that time was the House Judiciary Committee’s inquiry into why the administration axed several U.S. Attorneys in late 2006.
Then-White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former counsel Harriet Miers were held in contempt in of Congress in 2007 for disregarding subpoenas, and a judge ruled in 2008 the two had to comply.
Flood returned to private practice at Williams & Connolly when Bush’s term ended in 2009.
Some of his clients since that time have been no stranger to scandal, either.
He represented Cameron International, which made the blowout preventing device that failed to prevent the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Flood’s focused on representing the company in government matters for its role in the environmental catastrophe, handling congressional and other government probes.