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Mr. Cobb arrived at the White House last summer as some of Mr. Trump’s friends and advisers encouraged the president to fire Mr. Mueller. Mr. Cobb feared that the special counsel was on the verge of issuing subpoenas demanding documents and testimony from White House aides, a move that could have locked the administration in a contentious court fight it was certain to lose. Instead, he repeatedly declared the White House to be in “full cooperation mode.”

He said publicly that the White House had no interest in firing Mr. Mueller, and told friends privately that he would not remain in the administration if Mr. Trump moved to fire the special counsel.

“There is not and will not be any consideration of terminating the special counsel, Bob Mueller,” Mr. Cobb said in an interview in October. “I think the path that he chose of trying to minimize conflict and maximize cooperation is one that benefits the country.”

Mr. Cobb’s hiring appeared to have a soothing effect on the president last year. He repeatedly assured Mr. Trump and the public that the Mueller investigation would end quickly — first by Thanksgiving, then by the start of the new year. Whether that was wishful thinking or an effort to calm an irascible president, Mr. Cobb’s prediction proved incorrect.

Behind the scenes, as Mr. Cobb rushed to turn over records to Mr. Mueller, his relationship soured with the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, who thought Mr. Cobb should have more thoroughly reviewed documents and been willing to assert executive privilege. Mr. Cobb in turn thought that Mr. McGahn’s early response to the investigation had been too slow, bringing the White House to the verge of a subpoena.

Mr. Cobb, a longtime white-collar defense lawyer, was not a supporter of the Trump campaign and never viewed himself as part of that team. He has donated money to both Republicans and Democrats and supported Jeb Bush for president in the 2016 election.

He joked that he had “rocks in his head” as he took the job, and told friends that he expected to stay at the White House only as long as it took to turn over all the information to Mr. Mueller and arrange staff interviews with prosecutors. That job is nearly complete, with only Mr. Trump’s interview with prosecutors still being negotiated.

As for Mr. Flood, he has already had a whiff of the drama that follows Mr. Trump. Following a New York Times report in March that Mr. Trump was in discussions to hire Mr. Flood, the president attacked the article and one of the reporters who wrote it.

SAO PAULO (AP) — An abandoned building occupied by squatters in Sao Paulo caught fire and collapsed Tuesday, sending chunks of fiery debris crashing into neighboring buildings and surrounding streets.

Firefighters said at least one person had been killed in the collapse and that there could be more.

The building, a former headquarters of the federal police, caught fire around 1:30 a.m. local time. Firefighters set up a perimeter and worked to evacuate people.

A few hours later, as flames engulfed the building of at least 20 stories, it collapsed. Globo TV, which was covering the fire, captured the destruction. Images showed the floors falling on themselves like dominoes and debris flying in all directions.

Romulo de Souza, 49, said he was part of a squatter occupation in the neighboring building. He said that when the fire began on the fourth floor of the former police headquarters, families began evacuating.

“Happily the majority got out,” he said.

De Souza said that residents believed the fire could have been started by a gas leak.

Firefighter Lt. Andre Elias told Globo TV that at least one person had been killed in the collapse. Authorities were working to locate several others who were missing.

Clearing debris and accounting for people who had been in the building could likely take days. Three hours after the collapse, smoldering debris continued to emit smoke.

The fire and collapse are sure to put a spotlight on occupations in Sao Paulo, South America’s largest city. Several dozen buildings have been occupied in downtown by highly organized fair-housing groups that take over and then fight for ownership. Many such dwellings are run like regular apartment buildings, with doormen and residents paying monthly fees and utility bills. Others are less established and more precarious.

Former Sao Paulo mayor Joao Doria, who recently stepped down to run for governor, cracked down on squatter communities as a plan to revitalize the downtown.

Doria argued the downtown should showcase Sao Paulo, the engine of Brazil’s economy and one of the hemisphere’s most important financial centers. Fair-housing activists, on the other hand, argue that the area could offer affordable housing to tens of thousands of people.

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Associated Press reporter Peter Prengaman reported from Rio de Janeiro and photographer Andre Penner from Sao Paulo.

Stephanie Clifford, the former adult-film actress professionally known as Stormy Daniels, filed a lawsuit on Monday against President Donald Trump in Manhattan federal court, accusing him of defaming her in a recent tweet.

Mr. Trump posted the tweet on April 18, in response to a sketch Ms. Clifford released of a man who allegedly threatened her in 2011. According to Ms. Clifford’s lawsuit, a few weeks after she had agreed to discuss with a magazine an alleged sexual encounter she had with Mr. Trump, the man approached her…

James Shaw Jr. saved countless lives last week when he stepped in and stopped a shooting at a Waffle House just outside of Nashville.

It only seemed right that the Nashville Predators — while in the midst of their second-round playoff series against the Winnipeg Jets — took time to honor the local hero.

The Predators invited Shaw to their playoff game against the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday afternoon, where he met with head coach Peter Laviolette and players Roman Josi and P.K. Subban before the game. The team gave him a customized jersey, and Shaw even took a swing at the Predators ‘smash jet.’

Shaw was honored by the team early in the first period, and received a standing ovation from Bridgestone Arena.

Shaw was eating at the iconic breakfast chain early on April 22 when a shooter walked in and opened fire, killing four people. Shaw, while the shooter was reloading, jumped in. He wrestled the gun away and tossed it over the counter. The shooter then fled the restaurant, and was apprehended the next day.

Shaw has been hailed a hero since the shooting, and has raised more than $200,000 with a GoFundMe campaign for the victims families.

The Predators beat the Jets 5-4 in double overtime on Sunday, tying the series 1-1.

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AMMAN (Reuters) – The Syrian army said on Sunday that rockets had struck several military bases in the Hama and Aleppo countryside in what it said was new “aggression” by its enemies, state television said.

In a news flash, state television said the missile attacks took place at 10:30 p.m. (2030 GMT)

“Syria is being exposed to a new aggression with some military bases in rural Hama and Aleppo hit with enemy rockets,” an army source was quoted as saying without elaborating.

Israel has previously hit Iranian-backed militia outposts in Syria, mainly targeting arms convoys of the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah. Israel regards the group, which is fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad, as the biggest threat on its borders.

“We don’t comment on foreign reports and we have no information at this time,” Israel’s military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said.

A war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Sunday’s attack had targeted a warehouse for rockets and killed 26 people, mostly Iranians and Iraqis.

An opposition source said one of the locations hit was an army base known as Brigade 47 near Hama city, widely known as a recruitment centre for Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias who fight alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

An intelligence source who closely follows Syria said it appeared that multiple missile strikes hit several command centres for Iranian-backed militias and there were dozens of injuries and deaths.

The strikes hit weapons warehouses, and further explosions were heard, the source who requested anonymity said.

Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the allegations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this month his country will continue “to move against Iran in Syria.”

Earlier this month, the New York Times, quoting an unnamed Israeli military source, reported that Israel struck a Syrian air base that Tehran used. Iran’s Tansim news agency said seven Iranian personnel were killed in the attack.

The strike on an air base brought warnings from Tehran it would retaliate.

Israel has said Iran was expanding its influence in a belt of territory that stretches from the Iraqi border to the Lebanese border, where Israel says Iran supplies Hezbollah with arms.

Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias have a large military presence in Syria and are well entrenched in central and eastern areas near the Iraqi border.

Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi, additional reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg

“To anyone that is associated with this caravan, think before you act,” Scott continued. “If anyone has encouraged you to illegally enter the United States, or make any false statements to U.S. government officials, they are giving you bad advice and they are placing you and your family at risk.”

After more than two decades of hunting the East Area Rapist, Paul Holes was sure he had his man a few weeks ago.

It was a white man with blonde hair. He was born in 1958, meaning he was in his late teens and 20s when the notorious crime spree took place. And he had an uncle who lived in the Cordova Meadows neighborhood of Rancho Cordova, giving him a possible geographical connection.

Everything fit, Holes said. Except for one key element.

“We just couldn’t place this guy in California,” Holes said, meaning they could never determine the man actually spent time here.

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But they could place Joseph James DeAngelo in California. Better yet, they knew DeAngelo was living in the Sacramento area during the 1970s.

Both DeAngelo and the blonde man born in 1958 were on the same family tree as someone who loaded a DNA profile onto the open-source genealogy website GEDmatch. Police started to investigate them and three other white men of a certain age related to the GEDmatch user, who was at best a third cousin of the suspected East Area Rapist.

At first, Holes thought DeAngelo, now 72, was too old to be their suspect. And while investigators always believed the East Area Rapist could have been a police officer because he had evaded authorities for so long, Holes thought it would have been very difficult for DeAngelo to have committed attacks in San Jose, Contra Costa County and throughout the Sacramento area while serving full-time as a cop in Auburn.

“I thought that was a strike against DeAngelo,” he said.

Plus, DeAngelo’s name had never come up – not once – in the 15,000 pages of case files and the several thousand tips police received over the years.

But nuggets of information from DeAngelo’s past started to convince Holes and others he could be their suspect.

During a July 1978 rape of a 33-year-old housewife in Davis, the East Area Rapist “was sobbing and saying, ‘I hate you Bonnie, I hate you Bonnie,'” Holes said. “We thought that was significant.” After some searching, investigators discovered DeAngelo had been engaged to a woman named Bonnie in 1970.

On Holes’ last day of active duty in late March, he parked across the street from DeAngelo’s Citrus Heights home. He thought about doing what he’d done many times before.

“I’m just debating whether I should knock on this guy’s door,” he said. “Just tell him, ‘I’m looking at old cases, your name has come up, can we chat and can I have a sample of your DNA?'”

Later, Holes said police discovered DeAngelo had “numerous guns registered to him.” If he was their suspect, that meant he also had shot at a police officer during a chase in Visalia in 1975. And he had killed 12 people.

“In retrospect, it was a good decision to drive off,” Holes said. “This is a very dangerous man. My wife is extremely relieved by that decision.”

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Police kept a close eye on DeAngelo for several days, increasing their surveillance in mid-April. He is 72, “but he’s moving around like a young 50-year-old man,” Holes said.

“He’s out riding his motorcycle, bombing down the freeway at over 100 miles per hour,” he said. “Stop signs are optional for this guy.”

On April 20, detectives picked up an item DeAngelo discarded in public and ran the DNA through the crime lab. It had some similarities to the East Area Rapist, but not enough for an arrest. Detectives grabbed another sample from something DeAngelo tossed on Tuesday morning. That one was a hit.

Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert talks about the circumstances and arrest of East Area Rape suspect Joseph James DeAngelo Randy Pench

By 5 p.m. that day, DeAngelo was in custody. Despite Holes’ concerns for what DeAngelo might do if confronted by police after all these years, Sacramento sheriff’s detectives arrested him without incident.

After DeAngelo has spent several days in custody, investigators still don’t appear to have a clear picture of who he is.

They know he was a police officer in the Tulare County community of Exeter from 1973 to 1976 and in Auburn from 1976 to 1979, when he was dismissed after being charged with stealing a hammer and dog repellent from a Citrus Heights drug store, according at an article in the Auburn Journal.. They know he worked as a truck mechanic at a Save Mart distribution center in Roseville from 1989 to 2017.

They also know he is separated from his wife and has three adult daughters, one of whom lived with him at the Citrus Heights house – along with DeAngelo’s granddaughter. The other two daughters “are very bright, beautiful and successful,” Holes said. One is a doctor and the other is a PhD candidate at a University of California campus. They had no clue about their father’s alleged criminal past; in fact, Holes said they didn’t even know he was a police officer.

“For all three of these kids, another tragedy is to find out that their dad is the worst serial killer maybe in the nation’s history,” Holes said.

Other relatives have told The Sacramento Bee there was no reason to think DeAngelo was involved in this horrific crime spree. His sister, Rebecca Thompson, said Thursday she had “never seen anything to allow myself to think he could do such things.”

“As stunned as I am – because I’ve never seen him display any kind of madness or anything like that – I just can’t believe it,” Thompson said.

There’s still a decade-long gap –from 1979 to 1989 – in which police aren’t sure what DeAngelo was doing or where he was living. He has been implicated in 10 murders and four rapes across Southern California between 1979 and 1986. Public records link him to addresses in Long Beach and the Los Angeles County city of Whittier in the 1980s.

“We don’t know a lot about him,” Holes said. “But between the investigative reporting and the online sleuths, all of that information will be filled in.”

As DeAngelo had his arraignment in Sacramento Superior Court on Friday, Holes was finishing up a week unlike any other in his 27 years in law enforcement. He went days without sleep and had done several media interviews.

“I had the one thing happen that I wanted to happen,” he said. “This case is solved. To talk with the victims, to hear their sobs of joy, it is such a pleasure to have it happen right now.

“Now I’m going to turn off my phone and enjoy my weekend.”

Sheriff Scott Jones talks to The Bee’s Sam Stanton about the investigation and arrest of suspected East Area Rapist. Randall Benton