Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein proposed secretly recording conversations in the Oval Office with President Trump last year and discussed the possibility of Cabinet officials invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president, according to a New York Times report.
The bombshell story sparked a political firestorm Friday afternoon, prompting an immediate denial from the Justice Department and sparking calls from conservative circles for Trump to fire his No. 2 law enforcement official.
The Times, citing people familiar with the matter, reported on Friday that Rosenstein made comments to other Justice Department officials in meetings in spring 2017 about secretly recording Trump after the president fired FBI Director James Comeyin May.
The allegations are said to be laid out in contemporaneous memos written by then-acting FBI director Andrew McCabe who was fired by the Justice Department earlier this year amid an internal leak probe.
Rosenstein is fiercely denying the Times’ account, and reports from other outlets on Friday have offered conflicting pictures of the events, with many characterizing Rosenstein's comment about a wire on the president as sarcastic.
“The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect,” Rosenstein said in a statement issued by the Justice Department. “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,” he added.
According to the Times, which cited unnamed sources, Rosenstein made the remarks last year to McCabe who then detailed the Justice Department official's comments in memos.
In the discussions, Rosenstein reportedly floated the possibility of recruiting Cabinet members, such as Attorney General Jeff Sessionsand then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly now the White House chief of staff, behind an effort to invoke the 25th Amendment.
The amendment allows Cabinet members to trigger removing the president by majority vote if they deem the president unfit for office.
There is no evidence that Rosenstein acted on the alleged assertions.
A Justice Department spokeswoman provided a comment to the Times from a person who was said to be present when Rosenstein reportedly suggested wearing a wire. That person, who was not named, said Rosenstein's remark was made sarcastically.
The Washington Post confirmed later Friday that McCabe’s memos state that Rosenstein suggested surreptitiously recording the president.
However, the Post also cited an unnamed official present for the meeting who claimed the comment was made in jest and that it came in response to McCabe’s own suggestion that the Justice Department open a probe into Trump following Comey’s firing.
Michael Bromwich, an attorney for McCabe, said in a statement after the Times article was published that the former FBI deputy director has “no knowledge” of how his memos were leaked to the media. The lawyer added that the memos have been provided to Mueller’s office.
"Andrew McCabe drafted memos to memorialize significant discussions he had with high level officials and preserved them so he would have an accurate, contemporaneous record of those discussions,” Bromwich said.
“When he was interviewed by the Special Counsel more than a year ago, he gave all of his memos -- classified and unclassified -- to the Special Counsel's office,” Bromwich added.
“A set of those memos remained at the FBI at the time of his departure in late January 2018. He has no knowledge of how any member of the media obtained those memos."PASTORIUS NOTE: I wondered why the NYT came out with this story, when they so clearly and consistently work to undermine Trump. Well, here is the reason: Because they feared Trump would order the release of these Memos, so they figured they might as well beat him to the punch, thereby being able to be first to the spin.
I suspect the official quoted in the Washington Post article is a plant. In other words, I believe the Post and the NYT coordinated this. The NYT would get the story out, and the Post would undermine the story by quoting someone who tried to make the whole thing seem like a joke.
Andrew McCabe certainly had no love for Trump. Why would he not get the joke, if it were a joke?
McCabe was fired by the Justice Department in March, before a scathing inspector general report concluded that he lied to FBI agents about his unauthorized disclosures to the media. A grand jury has reportedly been convened to examine McCabe’s actions.
The events last year, as reported by the Times, came after Trump fired Comey, a decision that the White House initially attributed to a Justice Department memo written by Rosenstein that faulted the now-former FBI director for his handling of the agency's investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server.
Comey’s firing sparked a fury of criticism, and eventually resulted in Rosenstein appointing Robert Mueller as special counsel to spearhead the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
BREAKING: Rosenstein Discussed Wearing a Wire in Plot to Take Down Trump — A SECOND TIME
New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt tweeted out late this afternoon the NY Times learned since their breaking report that Rosenstein discussed wearing a wire a SECOND TIME!
A lot of the talking heads are saying this is a trap the Times set for Trump to lure him into firing Rosenstein (and Sessions for not doing the firing) thereby giving us our very own Friday Night Massacre.
ReplyDeleteAt one level I can see this EXCEPT that, although the firings would look very bad politically, I think they are al legally within Trump's purview AND in firing Rosenstein and Sessions he would be able to put in place someone who would release the info without all the redacting bullshit which the Times, one would think, really doesn't want.
Furthermore I would think anyone with two synapses still firing could see this was a rap and Trump would easily as well so I'm less convinced that was the Times motive.
This has all become a Very Special Kind Of Fucked Up.
That makes sense.
ReplyDeleteAnd,
Even if it is a trap of the sort you describe, it still also makes sense that they would want to simultaneously release such inflammatory info, and undermine it at the same time, giving their team (the Democrat-Media/Academia Complex) plausible deniability in a court of law.
Because this is a kind of treason. They had no evidence of Russian collusion now, much less then.
So wear a wire for what?
Oh, it was a joke.
Haha.
Here's a rope for your neck, Mr. Rosenstein.