Rosenstein: N.Y. Times has wires crossed
Deputy AG denies report he wanted to oust president
WASHINGTON — Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein denied a New York Times report yesterday that he floated the idea of using the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump as unfit for office and suggested secretly recording the president to expose the chaos in the administration.
The Times cited several people, who were not named, who described the episodes that came in the spring of 2017 after FBI Director James Comey was fired. The newspaper’s sources also included people who were briefed on memos written by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
Rosenstein is a frequent target of Trump’s attacks and the story could add to the uncertainty about his future at the Justice Department, despite his denial.
“The New York Times’ story is inaccurate and factually incorrect,” Rosenstein said in a statement. “I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the department and are advancing their own personal agenda. But let me be clear about this: Based on my personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.”
The 25th Amendment to the Constitution spells out that a president can be declared “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” upon a majority vote of the vice president and the Cabinet.
A person who was in the room when Rosenstein made the 2017 comment, and provided a statement through the Justice Department, said Rosenstein was “sarcastic” and that he “never discussed any intention of recording a conversation with the president.”
The newspaper reported that Rosenstein, frustrated with the hiring process for a new FBI director, offered to wear a “wire” and secretly record the president when he visited the White House. He also suggested that McCabe and other officials who were interviewing to become the next FBI director could also perhaps record Trump, the newspaper reported.
McCabe’s lawyer, Michael Bromwich, said in a statement that his client had drafted memos to “memorialize significant discussions he had with high level officials and preserved them so he would have an accurate, contemporaneous record of those discussions.”
McCabe’s memos, which were later turned over to special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, had remained at the FBI until McCabe was ousted in January and McCabe doesn’t know how any reporters could’ve obtained those memos, Bromwich said.
Rosenstein has been a target of Trump’s ire since appointing Mueller as a Justice Department special counsel to investigate potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.