OFFICIALS
As often happens in government, the two sides heading for a high-stakes confrontation decided instead to hold another meeting.
“At the request of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, he and President Trump had an extended conversation to discuss the recent news stories,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “Because the President is at the United Nations General Assembly and has a full schedule with leaders from around the world, they will meet on Thursday when the President returns to Washington, D.C.”
Sanders, in her statement, also said Rosenstein and Trump had “an extended conversation” about the reports that Rosenstein had discussed secretly taping the president. Trump, for his part, told reporters after Sanders’s announcement that “I spoke with Rod today, and we’ll see what happens.”
After Rosenstein met with White House chief of staff John Kelly, he proceeded to a meeting of senior administration officials, indicating that, at least for the moment, he was staying on the job. He later departed the White House, escorted by Kelly.
Rosenstein has been overseeing the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and whether any Trump associates conspired with those efforts. Rosenstein has been a fierce defender of Mueller, repeatedly refusing to consider firing him despite accusations by Trump and his allies that the special counsel is part of a Democratic conspiracy to undermine his presidency.
The emergence early this year of a memo by congressional Republicans made Rosenstein’s position even more precarious because it accused him of acting inappropriately when he signed off on the FBI’s request to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.
Rosenstein’s potential departure prompted immediate questions about whether Trump would seek next to topple Mueller, a move he tried to orchestrate last year, only to be talked down by his White House counsel.
But one Trump adviser said the president has not been pressuring Rosenstein to leave. The person said Rosenstein had expressed to others that he should resign because he “felt very compromised” and the controversy hurt his ability to oversee the Russia inquiry, said a person close to Trump.
When White House officials believed over the weekend that Rosenstein was about to depart, they planned to tap Matt Whitaker, the chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to become acting deputy attorney general, while oversight of the Russia investigation would pass to someone else — Solicitor General Noel Francisco, the No. 4 official at the Justice Department.
Critics have said that Francisco, a former lawyer for the Jones Day law firm, cannot oversee the Russia investigation without a waiver from the White House because the firm is representing the Trump campaign in the investigation, creating a conflict of interest.
Rosenstein has been the target of Trump’s public ire and private threats for months, but uncertainty about his future deepened after it was revealed Friday that memos written by Andrew McCabe when he was FBI deputy director said that in May 2017, Rosenstein suggested secretly recording the president and invoking the 25th Amendment to replace him.
McCabe memorialized discussions he had with Rosenstein and other senior officials in the stress-packed days immediately after James Comey’s firing as FBI director. At that moment, the FBI was deeply suspicious of Rosenstein’s role in the decision, and the Justice Department was worried that it had lost credibility with Congress for giving Trump a memo that said the FBI needed new leadership.
Others involved in those May 2017 discussions said Rosenstein’s comments about secretly recording the president were sarcastic and came as McCabe was pressing the Justice Department to investigate the president’s firing of Comey as possible obstruction of justice.
In statements Friday, Rosenstein denied that he ever seriously contemplated secretly recording the president or pursuing the 25th Amendment to replace the president, as was first reported by The New York Times. In one, Rosenstein said: “I never pursued or authorized recording the president and any suggestion that I have ever advocated for the removal of the President is absolutely false.”
For more than a year, Trump’s public and private comments about the Russia investigation have led to speculation and concern that Rosenstein could be fired.
Rosenstein, a Republican and career Justice Department official who had served under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, came into office on a wave of bipartisan support, but Comey was fired soon afterward, and Rosenstein was immediately drawn into fierce partisan battles surrounding the Russia inquiry.
Rosenstein became deputy attorney general in April 2017 and assumed oversight of Mueller’s investigation after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the inquiry involving the election.