The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
DID DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL PROPOSE PLAN TO TAPE TRUMP?
Rosenstein also said to discuss 25th Amendment option.
WASHINGTON — The deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Donald Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office for being unfit, according to multiple sources.
Rosenstein made these suggestions in the spring of 2017 after Trump fired James Comey as FBI director. Over the ensuing days, revelations emerged that Trump had asked Comey to pledge loyalty and end an investigation into a senior aide.
Rosenstein was just two weeks into his job. He had begun overseeing the Russia investigation and played a key role in the president’s dismissal of Comey by writing a memo critical of his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. But Rosenstein was caught off guard when Trump cited the memo in the firing, and he began telling people that he feared he had been used.
Rosenstein made the remarks about secretly recording Trump and about the 25th Amendment in meetings and conversations with other Justice Department and FBI officials. Several people described the episodes, insisting on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The people were briefed either on the events themselves or on memos written by FBI officials, including Andrew McCabe, then the acting bureau director, that documented Rosenstein’s actions and comments.
None of Rosenstein’s proposals apparently came to fruition. It is not clear how determined he was about seeing them through, though he did tell McCabe that he might be able to persuade Attorney General Jeff Sessions and John Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security and now the White House chief of staff, to mount an effort to invoke the 25th Amendment.
Rosenstein disputed this account.
“The New York Times’ story is inaccurate and factually incorrect,” he 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.”
A Justice Department spokeswoman also provided a statement from a person who was present when Rosenstein proposed wearing a wire. The person, who would not be named, acknowledged the remark but said Rosenstein made it sarcastically.
But according to the others who described his comments, Rosenstein not only confirmed that he was serious about the idea but also followed up by suggesting that other FBI officials who were interviewing to be the bureau’s director could also secretly record Trump.
McCabe, who was later fired from the FBI, declined to comment. His memos have been turned over to the special counsel, Robert Mueller, in the investigation into whether Trump associates conspired with Russia’s election interference, according to a lawyer for McCabe. “A set of those memos remained at the FBI at the time of his departure in late January 2018,” the lawyer, Michael R. Bromwich, said of his client. “He has no knowledge of how any member of the media obtained those memos.”
Days after ascending to the role of the nation’s No. 2 law enforcement officer, Rosenstein was thrust into a crisis.
On a brisk May day, Rosenstein and his boss, Sessions, who had recused himself from the Russia investigation because of his role as a prominent Trump campaign supporter, joined Trump in the Oval Office. The president informed them of his plan to oust Comey. To the surprise of White House aides who were trying to talk the president out of it, Rosenstein embraced the idea, even offering to write the memo about the Clinton email inquiry. He turned it in shortly after.
A day later, Trump announced the firing, and White House aides released Rosenstein’s memo, labeling it the basis for Comey’s dismissal. Democrats sharply criticized Rosenstein, accusing him of helping to create a cover story for the president to rationalize the termination.
“You wrote a memo you knew would be used to perpetuate a lie,” Sen. Christopher Murphy, D-Conn., wrote on Twitter. “You own this debacle.”
The president’s reliance on his memo caught Rosenstein by surprise, and he became angry at Trump, according to people who spoke to Rosenstein at the time. He grew concerned that his reputation had suffered harm and wondered whether Trump had motives beyond Comey’s treatment of Clinton for ousting him, the people said.
Rosenstein began telling associates that he would ultimately be “vindicated” for his role in the matter. One week after the firing, Rosenstein met with McCabe and at least four other senior Justice Department officials, in part to explain his role in the situation.
During their discussion, Rosenstein expressed frustration at how Trump had conducted the search for a new FBI director, saying the president was failing to take the candidate interviews seriously. A handful of politicians and law enforcement officials, including McCabe, were under consideration.
To Rosenstein, the hiring process was emblematic of broader dysfunction stemming from the White House. He said both the process and the administration itself were in disarray, according to two people familiar with the discussion.
Rosenstein then raised the idea of wearing a recording device, or “wire,” as he put it, to secretly tape the president when he visited the White House. One participant asked whether Rosenstein was serious, and he replied animatedly that he was.
If not him, then McCabe or other FBI officials interviewing with Trump for the job could perhaps wear a wire or otherwise record the president, Rosenstein offered. White House officials never checked his phone when he arrived for meetings there, Rosenstein added, implying it would be easy to secretly record Trump.
In the end, the idea went nowhere, the officials said.
Rosenstein’s suggestion about the 25th Amendment was similarly a sensitive topic. The amendment allows for the vice president and a majority of Cabinet officials to declare the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
Merely conducting a straw poll, even if Kelly and Sessions were on board, would be risky if another administration official were to tell the president, who could fire everyone involved.
McCabe told other FBI officials of his conversation with Rosenstein. None of the people interviewed said that they knew of him ever consulting Kelly or Sessions.