Trump-Rosenstein meeting postponed
Original timing conflicts with Kavanaugh hearing
WASHINGTON — A highly anticipated meeting between President Donald Trump and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was postponed until next week to avoid conflicting with a Senate hearing involving Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the White House said Thursday.
The two were set to meet Thursday following news media reports that Rosenstein last year discussed possibly secretly recording the president and using the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
But White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the men agreed to reschedule their meeting because “they do not want to do anything to interfere with the hearing.”
Amid speculation that the meeting could result in Rosenstein’s dismissal or resignation, Trump said Wednesday that he would “certainly prefer not” to fire Rosenstein and that the Justice Department’s No. 2 official had denied making the remarks first attributed to him in a New York Times report.
“I would much prefer keeping Rod Rosenstein,” Trump said at a news conference in New York. “He said he did not say it. … He said he has a lot of respect for me, and he was very nice and we’ll see.”
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway would not say Thursday when the meeting would take place, but stressed that the two will talk and Trump has made clear “he would prefer that the deputy attorney general stay on the job and complete the job.”
Rosenstein is overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and his dismissal would put that probe in jeopardy and create a political storm.
The meeting delay prolongs the uncertainty of Rosenstein’s status. Rosenstein headed to the White House Monday morning preparing to be fired and had discussed a possible resignation over the weekend with White House officials. But after meeting with chief of staff John Kelly and speaking by phone with Trump, he got a reprieve with the Trump meeting scheduled for Thursday.
Since then, the White House has sought to tamp down anxiety that Rosenstein would be fired.
White House officials called senators Monday to say Trump had said he wouldn’t be firing Rosenstein at the meeting, according to two people familiar with the conversations. Aides have advised Trump against taking any extreme actions ahead of the midterm elections with his party’s majorities in Congress already under threat.
Friends and former colleagues of Rosenstein say they don’t expect him to step aside and give up oversight of the Russia investigation and the enormous swath of Justice Department operations for which he is responsible.
Rosenstein, who has spent his entire career in government, “has tremendous loyalty to the department,” said former Justice Department lawyer and longtime friend James Trusty.