The truth about whether Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wanted to secretly record President Trump won’t be known until Congress sees memos written by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, according to a top House Republican.
The New York Times reported Friday that Rosenstein spoke about rallying members of Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment after FBI Director James Comey was fired and offered to wear a wire to tape incriminating conversations between the pair. The Times relied on memos McCabe wrote about Rosenstein to help authenticate its story. Rosenstein has denied considering such actions.
“We won’t know that until we see the McCabe memos, which if you really want to see them, don’t run for Congress, go be a reporter, because they have seen them and we have not,” Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said during Sunday an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “Look at the McCabe memos, find out who else, if anyone, was in the room, then give Rod a chance to explain whether or not it’s true and the context in which it was said.”
Gowdy is one of several Republicans who are upset over their lack of access to the McCabe documents.
Gowdy added Sunday that Rosenstein deserved the right to be heard, but that Trump simultaneously deserved a deputy attorney general who does not believe he is incompetent nor feels the need to tape discussions.
Follow-up reports by the Washington Post and NBC News indicated that Rosenstein’s comments about recording Trump were made in jest.
“It’s not a very funny joke,” Gowdy said when asked about those reports.
McCabe’s legal team denies being behind the leak of his memos, which they said were given to special counsel Robert Mueller and a copy of which was left at the FBI at the time of his departure earlier this year.
