A White House spokeswoman on Thursday declined to confirm or deny a report that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein threatened to resign his post after the Trump administration painted him as the key decision maker in the dismissal of former FBI Director James Comey.
The Washington Post reported late Wednesday that Rosenstein threatened to resign Tuesday night after the administration developed a narrative that he had decided to review Comey’s performance. The White House said Rosenstein had made the decision to investigate Comey himself and then brought a recommendation to Trump to fire Comey.
White House deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders said Thursday she didn’t know if that report was true.
“I’m not aware of that conversation, but I do know that the decision to fire Comey was the president’s and the president’s alone,” Sanders said on NBC Thursday. “Obviously, he took their recommendations very seriously but the president has been thinking about this since November.”
The official White House timeline is that Trump had been skeptical of Comey’s job performance, but wanted to give him a chance to do the job. Sanders said Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions came to Trump on Monday to recommend Comey be fired, after which Trump asked Rosenstein and Sessions to put that recommendation in writing. After receiving that recommendation, Trump made the decision to dismiss Comey.
However, the Post reported Trump made up his mind to fire Comey over the weekend and asked Rosenstein and Sessions to come to the White House Monday to figure out how to do it. Trump has been accused of using Rosenstein’s good reputation — he was approved 94-6 by the Senate and is well-regarded by both Democrats and Republicans — to fire Comey due to the FBI’s probe into possible links between Trump’s campaign and Russia.
Sanders denied that Trump ordered Rosenstein to come up with a rationale for firing Comey.
“He did not direct him to write the context of the memo, he asked him to make the comments that he already made into writing,” she said to ABC.
