meanwhile over at WaPo:

Trump-allied House conservatives draft articles of impeachment against Rosenstein as ‘last resort’

The lawmakers are targeting the deputy attorney general, who oversees the special counsel investigation, setting up a possible GOP showdown over the federal probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

• By Robert Costa, Sari Horwitz and Matt Zapotosky, April 30 @ 9:30 pm

Document: Draft of articles of impeachment

Conservative House allies of President Trump have drafted articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the ongoing special counsel probe, setting up a possible GOP showdown over the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The document, which was obtained by The Washington Post, underscores the growing chasm between congressional Republican leaders, who have maintained for months that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III should be allowed to proceed, and rank-and-file GOP lawmakers who have repeatedly battled the Justice Department during the past year.

The draft articles, which one of its authors called a “last resort,” would be unlikely to garner significant support in Congress. But the document could serve as a provocative political weapon for conservatives in their standoff with Mueller and the Justice Department.

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus — led by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a Trump confidant — finalized the draft in recent days. It came after weeks of disputes with Rosenstein over the Justice Department’s response to congressional requests for documents about the decisions and behavior of federal law enforcement officials working on the Russia investigation and other federal probes, including the investigation into 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s email server [....]

The odds experts talk game:

Should Trump Answer Mueller’s Questions? A FiveThirtyEight Chat, May 2

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): For your consideration today: Should President Trump agree to be interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller?

Obviously, we’re not lawyers or legal analysts, so we mostly want to focus on the politics of that question [....]

Ty Cobb: you're fired! Big shot Emmet Flood who helped Bill Clinton: hired:

Trump has a new, aggressive approach to Mueller's probe, and it doesn't include Ty Cobb

By Chris Cizzilla @ CNN, 4:38 pm

On Wednesday at 12:16 p.m. ET, ABC News tweeted out this quote from Ty Cobb, one of the lead lawyers on President Donald Trump's legal team, about the possibility of the president sitting down for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller: "It's certainly not off the table and people are working hard to make decisions and work towards an interview."

Less than 45 minutes later, Cobb was gone -- "retiring" from the president's legal team.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said that "for several weeks Ty Cobb has been discussing his retirement and last week he let Chief of Staff Kelly know he would retire at the end of this month."

Cobb himself told CNN's Jim Acosta that he was leaving because his work was done. "I've done what I came to do in terms of managing the White House response to the special counsel requests," said Cobb [....]

The White House calls Ty Cobb’s exit a ‘retirement,’ but it sounds as though he was pushed

by Collum Borchers @ WaPo, 5:00 pm

Clinton Impeachment Lawyer Emmet Flood to Join Trump Team

By MATT APUZZO and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT 4:38 PM ET @ NYTimes.com

Ty Cobb, who had at one time persuaded Mr. Trump not to attack the special counsel publicly, will be replaced by the more adversarial Emmet Flood, who represented Bill Clinton in his impeachment.