Rosenstein keeps job — for now
Embattled deputy AG will meet with Trump
WASHINGTON — After a long weekend spent wondering if he should resign or would be fired, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein still has his job.
President Donald Trump gave Rosenstein a three-day reprieve pending their face-to-face White House meeting on Thursday. That’s when the man who oversees the Trump-russia investigation will respond to reports that he had discussed secretly recording the president and possibly using constitutional procedures to remove him from office.
The revelation that Rosenstein last year had broached the idea of taping the president touched off a weekend of conversations with the White House in which he offered to one official to resign and confided to another that he was considering doing so, according to two people familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Even as he took issue with the reports, Rosenstein arrived at the White House on Monday expecting to be fired, according to another person who spoke on condition of anonymity. Instead, after he met with chief of staff John Kelly and spoke by phone to Trump himself, questions about his future were effectively tabled until the personal meeting on Thursday.
The position of deputy attorney general is ordinarily a relatively low-visibility one in Washington, but Rosenstein has assumed outsized significance given his appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Any firing or resignation spells immediate uncertainty for an investigation that Rosenstein oversees and would place that responsibility in the hands of a replacement.
Were Rosenstein to be forced out, Solicitor General Noel Francisco, the highest-ranking Senate-confirmed official below him in the Justice Department, would take control of the Mueller investigation.
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew Mccabe, whose private memos document comments allegedly made by Rosenstein, said he was concerned that a Rosenstein departure would put the investigation at risk.