U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One as he departs for a state visit to Britain, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., September 16, 2025. REUTERS Kevin Lamarque
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Ty Cobb was a member of President Donald Trump’s first administration legal team, so he feels he speaks with some familiarity when describing his old employer.
This does not mean his familiarity is in any way flattering, however. While speaking with news journalist and podcaster Jim Acosta on Friday, Cobb actually had plenty to say about Trump’s character. He also had much to say about how badly that character is abusing a U.S. government system that was never designed to deal with an overtly corrupt cad.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts recently sided with progressives on the court in calling what Trump was trying to do with building a ballroom “probably illegal.” But even though Cobb mostly agreed that the National Trust for Historic Preservation did not have standing in trying to prevent Trump from building his controversial ballroom and charging taxpayers for the construction, he could see why Roberts probably was concerned about what's happening to the rule of law and the “level of corruption that we see in the White House.”
“The chief justice's opinion was is basically … a line in the sand,” said Cobb of the decision that ultimately allowed Trump to move forward with building the ballroom while ducking rules for funding and approving it. “He could have easily kept his powder dry, but he basically made it clear this was lawless. Keep in mind this is the chief justice who wrote the tariffs opinion. He wrote the birthright citizenship opinion. He wrote the opinion protecting the Federal Reserve. And he wrote this opinion. I mean, he's made it very plain that … he perceives Trump as the existential threat that he is.”
But at the same time, Cobb said Roberts was obligated to apply the Constitution, which clearly does provide Article II powers to the White House that are extraordinary.
“They were intended to be extraordinary because the presidency was intended to be occupied by extraordinary people,” Cobb added. “The George Washington's, the FDR's, the Teddy Roosevelt's, the Obama's.”
“Not a scumbag,” interjected Acosta.
“Yeah. I mean, not somebody who was just purely evil and out for himself,” Cobb said in agreement. But he added that the court would not have it’s hands so full if the Republican-run Congress was not beholden to party over country.
“We have a Congress that has been neutered by its cowardice,” said Cobb. “You've got Little Mikey Johnson (Speaker Mike Johnson) who shut down Congress for two months merely to avoid a vote on the release of the Epstein files in connection with the last piece of Epstein legislation. … So, the fact that Congress exists only to facilitate Trump's whims at this stage the game is not something that the founders could have ever anticipated. And they also never anticipated that the presidency would be occupied by somebody as evil as Trump, somebody who is a functional crime boss.”
Cobb added that the U.S. is now “tied with Columbia” in the percentage of people who suspect the federal government is corrupt, at 90 percent.