‘Shaken’ Rosenstein felt used in Comey firing
Friends: Deputy AG was angry that his reputation damaged
WASHINGTON — In the days after FBI Director Jim Comey was fired last year, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein repeatedly expressed anger about how the White House used him to rationalize the firing, saying the experience damaged his reputation, according to four people familiar with his outbursts.
In public, Rosenstein has shown no hint that he had second thoughts about his role — writing a memo about Comey’s performance that the White House used to justify firing him. “I wrote it. I believe it. I stand by it,” Rosenstein told Congress last year.
But in meetings with law enforcement officials in the chaotic days immediately after Comey’s dismissal, and in subsequent conversations with colleagues and friends, Rosenstein appeared conflicted, according to the four people.
He alternately defended his involvement, expressed remorse at the tumult it unleashed, said the White House had manipulated him, fumed how the media had portrayed the events and said the full story would vindicate him, said the people, who in recent weeks described the previously undisclosed episodes.
According to one person with whom he spoke shortly after Comey’s firing, Rosenstein was “shaken,” “unsteady” and “overwhelmed.”
Another person in touch with Rosenstein around that time said he sounded “frantic, nervous, upset and emotionally dis-regulated.” In one of these conversations, with the acting FBI director at the time, Andrew McCabe, Rosenstein became visibly upset.
Rosenstein’s meetings show his mindset at one of the most critical points in President Donald Trump’s administration — the eight days between when Comey was fired and Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel. In that stretch, Rosenstein went from a supporting actor in the dismissal of Comey to the official overseeing the investigation in which the firing was a focus.
His public and private views demonstrate the dueling forces pulling at Rosenstein in the special counsel’s investigation of the president and his associates.
Role in Russian probe
Rosenstein is both the ultimate supervisor of that case — and will determine what information is eventually provided to Congress — and a key participant in the matter being investigated. Trump’s lawyers also regard him as one of the essential witnesses for the president’s defense because Rosenstein, they say, wanted to get rid of Comey.
Yet even the president’s critics are loath to call for Rosenstein’s recusal, fearing that Trump will seize on that opportunity to install a political ally in his place.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Sarah Isgur Flores, disputed the accounts of Rosenstein’s behavior. If he was angry in the days after Comey was fired, she said, it was because McCabe concealed from him the existence of memos by Comey about his interactions with Trump. Detailing the president’s requests for loyalty and to end the investigation into his national security adviser at the time, Michael T. Flynn, the memos were recounted in articles in the New York Times around that time.
“To be clear, he was upset not because knowledge of the existence of the memos would have changed the DAG’s decision regarding Mr. Comey, but that Mr. McCabe chose not to tell him about their existence until only hours before someone shared them with the New York Times,” Flores said.
A person close to McCabe disputed her account, saying Rosenstein did not bring up the memos with him.
Rosenstein’s conversations last spring offer new insights into the tumultuous week that followed Comey’s firing.
In a series of meetings at the Justice Department, senior FBI officials argued for Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel to run the Russia investigation and investigate Comey’s firing, according to people briefed on the matter. Some of Rosenstein’s own allies turned on him, accusing him of sullying his reputation by allowing himself to be used by the president.
Memo was turning point
Even before he enlisted Rosenstein to write the justification, Trump had decided to fire Comey. Trump had grown frustrated that Comey refused to say publicly that, in the investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, the president himself was not under scrutiny. Trump wrote a rambling firing letter, but White House officials urged him not to send it. Instead, they turned to Rosenstein.
His resulting memo, however, focused on Comey’s handling of the 2016 investigation of Hillary Clinton. Rosenstein faulted him for holding a rare and unusually candid news conference to discuss that case and then, just days before Election Day, publicly announcing over the objection of the Justice Department that the investigation had been reopened.
On the afternoon that Mueller’s appointment was announced, Sessions was in the Oval Office with the president discussing candidates to be FBI director when they both learned that Rosenstein had made his decision. Trump erupted in anger, saying he needed someone overseeing the investigation who would be loyal to him. Sessions offered to resign.
Sessions felt blindsided by Rosenstein’s decision. After leaving the White House, Sessions’ chief of staff, Jody Hunt, confronted Rosenstein, demanding to know why he had not given them advance warning, according to a lawyer briefed on the exchange. Rosenstein has told others that he was worried at the time he would be fired by the president.
Andrew White, a former federal prosecutor who worked with Rosenstein and remains close to him, said he believed Rosenstein “had every right to be furious.”
“The White House put Greyhound tire tracks on his back,” White said. “They threw him under the bus.”