AP sources: Rosenstein spoke of possible secret Trump taping
WASHINGTON » Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed secretly recording President Donald Trump last year amid law enforcement concerns about chaos in the White House, according to people familiar with exchanges at the time. But one person who was present said Rosenstein was just being sarcastic.
Rosenstein’s comments were first reported by The New York Times, which also said that he raised the idea of using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump as unfit for office.
The reports create even greater uncertainty for Rosenstein in his position at a time when Trump has lambasted Justice Department leadership and publicly humiliated both him and A8torney General Jeff Sessions.
More broadly, it’s the latest revelation that could affect Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible coordination between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. Sessions recused himself from that issue soon after he took office, to Trump’s dismay, and Rosenstein then appointed Mueller. With all that hanging in the air, Trump has resisted calls from conservative commentators to fire both Sessions and Rosenstein and appoint someone who would ride herd more closely on Mueller or dismiss him.
The reported conversation about possibly secretly recording the president took place at a tense May 2017 meeting during the tumultuous period that followed Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, a decision that upset many rank-and-file bureau agents and that the White House said was based on the Justice Department’s recommendation.
Among the participants at the meeting was Andrew McCabe, the FBI official who was temporarily elevated to director after Comey’s firing and who documented conversations with senior officials, including Rosenstein, in memos that have been provided to special counsel Mueller as part of his Trump-Russia investigation.
The interactions lay bare the conflicts within the FBI and Justice Department early in the Trump administration after Rosenstein, just weeks into his job, wrote a memo critical of Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email server investigation that the White House used as justification for firing the FBI director.
Friday’s news reports threatened to cloud Rosenstein’s fate at the Justice Department, with some conservatives calling for him to be fired immediately. Any dismissal could affect Mueller’s Russia probe given that Rosenstein still oversees Mueller’s work.
Trump, for his part, ignored questions shouted from reporters as he arrived for an evening rally in Springfield, Missouri. The White House did not respond to questions about Rosenstein’s reported remarks.
It was difficult amid the conflicting accounts to discern the precise context for his comments and how they were intended.
The Justice Department, for instance, released an email from one attendee who said Rosenstein’s “statement was sarcastic and was never discussed with any intention of recording a conversation with the president.”
Rosenstein himself called the Times story “inaccurate and factually incorrect.”