Updated at 5:34 p.m.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told President Trump last week that he is not the target of special counsel Robert Mueller or the FBI investigation into his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, a move that helped Trump rethink removing Rosenstein from his position, according to a report Thursday.
During their meeting at the White House, Rosenstein brought up the topic, and after assuring him he was not a target, Trump told his advisers that it would be the wrong time to remove Rosenstien or Mueller from their positions, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
Trump tamped down fears that he might be on the cusp of firing Rosenstein and Mueller when he told reporters on Wednesday, “They’re still here.”
“They’ve been saying I’m going to get rid of them for the last three months, four months, five months,” Trump said at the Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. “And they’re still here. We want to get the investigation over with, done with, put it behind us. And we have to get back to business.”
One source contradicted Bloomberg’s report, telling CNN’s Jim Acosta that Rosenstein only told Trump he was not the target of the investigation into Cohen during their meeting last week.
The source told @Acosta it was not about the Mueller investigation (and noted that Mueller’s team had informed Trump’s lawyers previously he was not considered a target at that point in the Mueller probe)
— Dianne Gallagher (@DianneG) April 19, 2018
