White House hires attorney Ty Cobb to manage Russia response

The White House announced Saturday that it has hired attorney Ty Cobb who, as a White House official confirmed earlier to ABC News, will serve as part of an internal legal team to manage matters related to the ongoing investigations into Russian election interference and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

Cobb -- a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Hogan Lovells, where he focuses on white-collar crime, and a former federal prosecutor -- will handle the administration's media responses to the Russian-meddling inquiries and coordinate with President Donald Trump's outside counsel, Marc Kasowitz. Cobb is said to be related to the deceased baseball Hall of Famer of the same name.

His hiring comes in a week in which scrutiny of the Trump family's possible involvement in the election interference was invigorated by revelations that the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., agreed to a meeting in June 2016 with a Russian attorney he was told had incriminating information about Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Trump Jr. hired an attorney of his own, Alan Futerfas, earlier in the week.