--- title: John Dowd Resigned From Donald Trump's Legal Team description: President Donald Trump's top attorney handling special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation resigned after calling for it to end. canonical: https://time.com/5210993/john-dowd-donald-trump-resigned/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-03-22T15:47:31.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T19:44:35.929Z article:section: Politics og:title: Trump's Top Lawyer on the Robert Mueller Investigation Resigned og:description: Continuing turmoil on the president's legal team og:url: https://time.com/5210993/john-dowd-donald-trump-resigned/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb2bd98d67b4d43af/69892b7f86f68ed7dd6e8a95/gettyimages-1137273212.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: John Dowd, lead attorney for Raj Rajaratnam, co-founder of Galleon Group LLC, enters federal court in New York, U.S., on Thursday, May 5, 2011. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Trump's Top Lawyer on the Robert Mueller Investigation Resigned twitter:description: Continuing turmoil on the president's legal team twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb2bd98d67b4d43af/69892b7f86f68ed7dd6e8a95/gettyimages-1137273212.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # President Trump's Top Lawyer on the Robert Mueller Investigation Just Resigned > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. by [Ryan Teague Beckwith](https://time.com/author/ryan-teague-beckwith/) ## Ryan Teague Beckwith Mar 22, 2018 3:47 PM UTC  John Dowd, lead attorney for Raj Rajaratnam, co-founder of Galleon Group LLC, enters federal court in New York, U.S., on Thursday, May 5, 2011. John Dowd, lead attorney for Raj Rajaratnam, co-founder of Galleon Group LLC, enters federal court in New York, U.S., on Thursday, May 5, 2011.Bloomberg—Bloomberg via Getty Images by [Ryan Teague Beckwith](https://time.com/author/ryan-teague-beckwith/) ## Ryan Teague Beckwith Mar 22, 2018 3:47 PM UTC President Donald Trump’s top attorney handling the response to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation [resigned](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/us/politics/john-dowd-resigns-trump-lawyer.html) just days after calling for it to end, according to a report in the New York _Times_. Veteran Washington attorney John Dowd had [led the president’s legal team since June](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/politics/trump-lawyer-russia-investigation.html), when he replaced Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz during a reshuffling. Dowd had recently argued that the Department of Justice should [“bring an end”](http://time.com/5204181/donald-trump-andrew-mccabe-fbi-firing/) to the Russia investigation, which he said had been “manufactured” by former FBI Director James Comey. **Read More:** [_Meet the 7 Lawyers Advising Trump on Robert Mueller and Stormy Daniels_](http://time.com/5208957/donald-trump-lawyers-legal-team/) The change comes amid uncertainty over the direction of Trump’s legal team. The president recently hired former federal prosecutor Joseph diGenova, who has argued on cable TV for a conspiracy theory that the FBI and the Department of Justice are framing Trump. The president also sought to hire powerhouse D.C. lawyer Ted Olson, who [declined](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-legal-team-seeks-to-add-gravitas-with-offer-to-star-gop-attorney-theodore-b-olson/2018/03/20/571f1e46-2c41-11e8-8ad6-fbc50284fce8%5Fstory.html) just hours after the offer was made public. The turmoil comes as the president’s legal team has to decide how to respond to Mueller’s request for a sit-down interview, which Trump attorney Ty Cobb has argued could be a [perjury trap](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ty-cobb-trump-lawyer-takeout-interview/). Mueller is interested in learning more about Donald Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting with Russians in Trump Tower, the president’s role in crafting a public statement about that meeting and the firings of Comey and national security adviser Michael Flynn, according to [a recent report on CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/21/politics/mueller-four-main-areas-questions-trump/index.html). Meantime, Trump’s personal lawyers are also suing [porn star Stormy Daniels](http://time.com/5208483/stormy-daniels-lie-detector-test-donald-trump-affair/), arguing she violated a hush agreement, and fending off a defamation lawsuit from _Apprentice_ contestant [Summer Zervos](http://time.com/4636828/donald-trump-summer-zervos-sexual-assault-defamation-apprentice/) for calling her a liar over accusations of sexual assault. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5210993/john-dowd-donald-trump-resigned/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5210993/john-dowd-donald-trump-resigned/"},"headline":"President Trump's Top Lawyer on the Robert Mueller Investigation Just Resigned","datePublished":"2018-03-22T15:47:31.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T19:44:35.929Z","description":"Continuing turmoil on the president's legal team","url":"https://time.com/5210993/john-dowd-donald-trump-resigned/","keywords":["Donald Trump","White House","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb2bd98d67b4d43af/69892b7f86f68ed7dd6e8a95/gettyimages-1137273212.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ryan Teague Beckwith","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/ryan-teague-beckwith/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb2bd98d67b4d43af/69892b7f86f68ed7dd6e8a95/gettyimages-1137273212.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"John Dowd, lead attorney for Raj Rajaratnam, co-founder of Galleon Group LLC, enters federal court in New York, U.S., on Thursday, May 5, 2011.","caption":"John Dowd, lead attorney for Raj Rajaratnam, co-founder of Galleon Group LLC, enters federal court in New York, U.S., on Thursday, May 5, 2011.","creditText":"Bloomberg—Bloomberg via Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/donald-trump/","name":"Donald Trump"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5210993/john-dowd-donald-trump-resigned/","name":"President Trump's Top Lawyer on the Robert Mueller Investigation Just Resigned"}}]}] ```