White House lawyer to leave as Russia probe heats up

Donald Trump said Wednesday that White House counsel Don McGahn will be leaving his post, signalling more upheaval in the US president's legal team as the probe into Russia's election interference closes in on his inner circle.

McGahn, who has advised Trump on dealing with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe, also has been interviewed at length as a cooperating witness by Mueller's team.

He will be leaving his White House post "in the fall," Trump said via Twitter.

The 50-year-old lawyer is one of the few people left in the White House who had a senior role in Trump's election campaign, where McGahn was general counsel.

His replacement, according to media reports, could be his current deputy White House counsel Emmet Flood, a Washington veteran who represented president Bill Clinton when he faced impeachment in the late 1990s.