Trump meeting with Rosenstein is pushed back

WASHINGTON — White House officials said Thursday that President Trump and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will meet next week to discuss Rosenstein’s future at the Justice Department.

The New York Times reported Friday that Rosenstein had suggested secretly recording Trump to document the chaos of the White House in 2017 and had raised the issue of removing the president from office.

That prompted Rosenstein to tell senior White House advisers over the weekend that he was willing to resign. On Wednesday, Trump said that was not his preferred outcome and that Rosenstein had denied the reports.

“I’m talking to him. We’ve had a good talk,” Trump said. “He said he never said it. He said he doesn’t believe it. He said he has a lot of respect for me, and he was very nice, and we’ll see.”

Initially, Trump had said that a face-to-face meeting would take place Thursday, after he returned to the White House from three days in New York for meetings at the U.N. General Assembly.

But later, he told reporters that he did not want a meeting to distract from a Capitol Hill hearing on allegations from a woman who accuses Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, of sexually assaulting her while they were in high school.

In a statement, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said: “The president spoke with Rod Rosenstein a few minutes ago and they plan to meet next week. They do not want to do anything to interfere with the hearing.”

Rosenstein arrived at the White House on Thursday morning for a previously scheduled national security meeting. But even as he arrived, an aide to Trump hinted that the meeting could be rescheduled for another day.

“He will come back here, and there’s a lot on his docket, including the meeting with the deputy attorney general,” Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, told “Fox & Friends” on Thursday morning, a few hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee began hearing testimony from Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, with Kavanaugh to follow.

“If it needs to get pushed a few hours or to the next day, maybe it will,” Conway said of the meeting between Trump and Rosenstein. “But they are both committed to speaking with each other and resolving this once and for all.”

Trump said Wednesday that he was eager to hear what Ford had to say during her testimony. He also said he would consider delaying his meeting with Rosenstein to focus on Kavanaugh’s proceedings.

“I want to watch. I want to see. I hope I can watch,” Trump said Wednesday. “I’m meeting with a lot of countries tomorrow, but I will certainly, in some form, be able to watch.”